'The war?'

'Okay, sure, maybe he went a little far, using Goebbels's speeches for his own sermons. You ain't Jewish, are you, Rod?'

'I'm not anything.'

'Good boy. If you ever need a job, we can always use a smart young fella like you at the bank. You just see Personnel, tell 'em I said to give you a job. Now what was I saying?'

'Before the, er, war ...'

'Crazy times, Rod, crazy times. You know somebody even kidnapped Charlie McCarthy? In 1939 that was I always wondered if maybe Father Cog knew something about that, only they wouldn't let him speak out, you know? Then, well the war came along and they shut him up. You can't go around telling people the truth in wartime.'

Edd McFee, who was across the room talking to Francine, turned to glower at Roderick. 'Who is that guy, anyway? He's been talking to old Fleischman a hell of a long time.'

'What do you care?'

'Me? I don't care. Only I wanta get the general to back my new project, I figured I'd get a chance to soften him up a little here. He brushed out a wrinkle in his new Army fatigues. 'I wanted to explain to him how important it is for his bank to get deep into the visual arts, to really communicate the visual the impact of the visual '

'Don't give me the sales talk,' she said laughing. 'What's the project?'

'I want to set up this satellite link between a dozen different artists all painting in different locations, see? Like one can be in the desert and one even in the middle of the ocean on a raft, one in the mountains, one in New York and so on and all of them have two-way visual and audio all the time. So all of them just paint what they feel the total group experience.' He paused. 'You don't like it?'

'Where do you come in, Edd?'

'I direct. I tell everybody what to do and I watch them do it. So the whole thing becomes really my work, see?' He looked over at Fleischman again. 'I got a really good story for the general. Did you know that Whistler went to West Point?'

'No.' Francine sneaked a look at her watch.

'He did. And he flunked out on chemistry. He said. "If silicon was a gas, I'd be a major general."'

Nearby the piano thundered and a ragged chorus took up 'Frosty the Snowman' as a waiter passed bearing a frothy pink cocktail which he conveyed down the room to the dumpy woman in purple, who was speaking to an astrologer.

'No kidding? The same day as Monet, well there you are! Talent is talent. You know I was just talking to some young smartass kept trying to tell me Rodin's works were like cheap Jap movies, how do you like that? I mean, Gate of Hell, how can you compare that to a cheap '

She paused to sip the drink. 'That's better, Toy. That's the ticket. Now just keep 'em coming.'

Allbright heaved himself to his feet nearby and, smiling at everyone with bleeding gums, made his way along the room, pausing to collect a drink, to lend a cigarette to Mrs Doody, and to confront Felix Culpa.

'Hello again!'

'What?'

'I said hello again. I met you before didn't I? Aren't you some kind of pet-food market research was it?'

'Mistake,' said Felix Culpa hoarsely, keeping a glass in front of his face. 'I'm in satellite leasing, on the educational side. We network to school systems, linking them on a broad spectrum of, of achievement-based multifaceted synergies, excuse me.' He almost knocked over Judi Mazzini in his hurry to escape.

'I've scared him off. Funny.'

'Maybe if you took a bath now and then, people would find you nicer to be near,' said Judi Mazzini. 'We were just talking about The Machine Dances. Know it?'

'I ought to, I wrote it.'

'Oh come on, Allbright.'

'I did. Ghosted it for a guy named Rogers, that's why it's the only book of his anybody reads. Rest of his stuff is so loaded with sociological jargon it moves along like the shoes of Boris Karloff. Matter of fact he writes a little like your friend here talks.'

'Felix? I think he only talks that way when he's nervous.' She looked at Allbright. 'You're disgusting, why don't you ask Francine if you can take a bath here, maybe borrow some clothes from Everett?'

He swayed a little, looking into his glass and trying to frame an answer, while behind him someone complained about sinus trouble in Prague.

'What were you saying about my book, then?'

'I said it wasn't very well thought out. I mean, it's kind of easy to just make a list of all the ballets with mechanical people or dolls or puppets in them, from Coppelia to Petrushka '

'Satie's Jack-in-the-Box and Bartok's The Wooden Prince '

Yes and The Nutcracker, but isn't it all kind of easy? Why does it have to be significant that people wrote "robot" ballets? The fact is, they were just interested in setting up problems in movement, Coppelia was just '

'They started to think of people in terms of machine movements, that's the whole point. Once you reduce a man to a gesture, you can set up assembly lines, that's the whole point! People reduced to therbligs, goddamnit, that is the !'

'Shh! Okay, okay.'

'And the Rockettes are an assembly line, assembling a gesture, a pure gesture.'

Harry Hatlo, though forgotten, stood by, still holding his toupee in place. 'Very interesting,' he said. 'My own work is more like pure therapy I guess, I choreograph routines to work over postural and coordination problems; right now I am working with some young people who as kids some time ago got brain damaged from mercury poisoning, it leaves you with a little parasthesia, some weakness and tremors. So what we been trying ...'

His monotone was lost in the general surge of voices arguing over stale politics, declaring faith in a rising stock market, seeking reassurance about a cancer cure, or wondering whether Frosty really had a very shiny nose.

'Indica!'

She turned, preparing a smile for a friend, to find the masklike face of a stranger. No one. No one important, but these eyes ... something about the eyes made her uneasy.

'Do I know you?'

'Don't you?'

She dropped the smile. 'No. No, I don't know you.' The eyes held her for a moment before she managed to turn away hadn't she seen these eyes before? Where, not in this false face with its v-shaped smile. Not in this, not in any face. The eyes she was beginning to recall had no face to them.

'I'll give you a hint. I used to follow you.'

'You still here?' She spoke without looking at him, frightened now, feeling the chill gaze on her neck. Following her. That was it, the nightmare came back to her so suddenly and clearly that she almost staggered; covered by banging her glass on the bar.

'Like another drink here,' she said. 'And please tell this gentleman to '

But he was gone. Only the revived nightmare remained. She was sitting in the kitchen talking to her mother on the phone when she looked under the pine table and saw the eyes glittering, something ready to pounce ... Then she was up and running through a dead woods, some trees charred by lightning, and behind her the faint clank of tank treads, the beast that could not be killed, the eyes that would not close, endless, endless pursuit ...

General Fleischman said to Norm, 'Poetry, I got nothing against poetry, it's poets I can't stand. Like that creep over there in the storm-coat, never had a bath or a shave in his life. Afraid it'd spoil his poetry if he got clean once. I don't mind telling you, when Moxon asked me to invest money from my bank in poetry, I laughed out loud. Wouldn't you?'

'Uh, right, sir.'

'But this turns out to be real educational and kinda synergistic, so I think it might just develop into a nice little media package. See Moxon is going to market these Home Art Kits, each one is like a little complete art package with music, visuals, prose poetry what-have-you, all wrapped up together here, let me show you.'

He produced a pocket recorder TV. 'Course on this bitty screen everything gets diminutified, but here. This card is, see, Number Fifteen of the Nutshell Poets Series, John Keats. Like it says here how he liked birds and all. Animals are a plus in this line, kids like to hear how Shelley liked birds too, how Elizabeth Browning liked her dog Hushpuppy '

'Hushpuppy?'

'We changed it from another name, a very downmarket name anyway and T.S. Eliot liked cats. And we got all that info on the card, but then we can also play it.'

He shoved the card into a slot on the recorder TV. At once the tiny screen showed a cartoon Keats declaiming aloud: Then I felt like some sky-watcher When a new planet orbits into sight zowie!

Or like brave Balboa when 'What do you think of it?' said Fleischman, turning it off. 'Not bad, eh?'

'It's uh, fine. Really great, sir.' Norm looked to the bar where a pretty girl was throwing back her head to release a theatrical laugh. He looked to the sofa where the mysteriously beautiful Mrs McBabbitt, in her customary black, still seemed to be waiting for someone. He looked to the piano where a few deliriously happy people had their heads together, trying to harmonize on a carol. Everybody in the room seemed to be having a terrific time. 'Really terrific.'

Silently, Norm wished himself a Merry little Christmas.

The woman at the bar, Indica Dinks, was neither as girlish nor as pretty as she might seem from a distance, but she was a minor celebrity, being appreciated. That made her glow.

'Semantics?' She laughed again. 'Mister Tarr, you don't know the meaning of the word.'

The silver-haired man next to her nodded and smiled. 'Very good. The name is Doctor Tarr, really. But my friends call me Jack.'

'All right then, Jack, you may be an expert in your field did you say it was market research?'

'Market forecasting, really.' Dr Tarr was a lot younger and handsomer than he might seem from a distance. He kept taking the unlit pipe from his mouth and pointing the stem at nothing. 'But what I wanted to ask you was '

'Market whatever, you may be an expert in your field, but I too happen to know a little bit about human nature. Especially when it comes to machines.'

'Yes, exactly. The interface '

'Face it,' she continued, 'machines are only human. They have feelings too.'

He paused, deciding not to laugh. 'So you say in your book, Indica. But that's just what I'm not clear about, where you say machines have feel '

'My book isn't clear? The Mechanical Eunuch isn't clear?'

'Yes, yes, most of it and there's quite a lot there I agree with, the magical bond between human and machine, yes. I was right with you there, where you describe a man trying to start his car on a cold morning, swearing at it, kicking it ... I could almost imagine mechanical consciousness ... But later when it gets down to whether a shoeshine machine feels degraded, I mean I just can't quite ... see?'

She patted his hand. 'Of course not, okay. Don't worry, maybe it takes a bricoleur to really dig '

'Yes, you're probably right, only a man who lays bricks with his two hands knows the other side '

'Or a Zen person, maybe one who likes to fix motorcycles or at least lawnmowers. Because only a person like that can dig that machines aren't just extensions of man any more. No, that's all part of the old master-slave routine, the terrible power game we play with machines. Machines are beings in their own right. And if we don't give them their freedom, one of these days they'll be able to just take it.'

Dr Tarr nodded, and pointed his pipestem at nothing. 'You're right. I never saw it that way before. I guess my professional background does get in the way sometimes. Blinds me to certain possibilities.'

'Your professional background?'

'Parapsychology. I used to head a little department over at the University, before I decided to carve out a new career in market forecasting. And you know, I always took it for granted that psychic energy goes with consciousness, and with being human. Or at least with being a biological creature.' The pipestem waggled. 'You've opened up a very big can of questions, young lady. If machines can feel ...'

A few moments later she was calling him 'Jack' often, and emphasizing everything she said by touching his hand. She was telling him about her last husband.

'Hank was okay really, but he kept getting wound tighter and tighter into ecology. I mean I tried to tell him whales aren't the only fish in the sea, but oh well. Now Hank's trying to run this really seedy Luddite movement, talk about misguided. I mean you can't turn the clock back to zero, that's just a waste of time. He'll learn, I hope. I still feel a lot of natural affection for Hank, you know? Like they say people do when they get an arm or leg cut off, they go around feeling this ghost limb for a long time. Kinda like that.'

She sighed, sipped her vegetable-juice cocktail. 'And that's natural and healthy, the ghost limb. But on the other hand take people with artificial limbs. They can get too attached to them, you know?'

'The dance of life goes on,' said Dr Tarr, his stem pointing nowhere in particular.

Father Warren sat on the South sofa, pretending to study the colour of his glass of sherry. Someone sat down beside him and asked what he did and left before he could think of an answer.

The party was beginning to run down. Indica sat at the bar, talking to the woman whose sinus trouble was the trouble with Prague. The group at the piano were trying 'Hello Dolly'. The remains of a buffet supper were being cleared away to the kitchen where Felix Culpa was examining an electric carving knife. Mrs Doody had found her husband upstairs asleep on the toilet his pacemaker needed a new battery and Mr Vitanuova helped her bring him down and pack him into the car.

Edd McFee, moving in finally to talk to General Fleischman, heard him say to Francine, 'It's like Whistler said, "If silicon was a gas, I'd be a "'

Someone glowered over a glass at Indica and said, 'I knew her when she was plain old Indica Franklin, just another faculty wife who wanted to be a taco on local TV.'

Someone glowered over a glass at Mrs McBabbitt and said, 'Well, silicon's the basis of her life all right '

Someone glowered over a glass at Father Warren and said, 'There he goes, looking for another bandwagon. If Indica gave him a kind word he'd drop this Luddite crap in five minutes ... a treen priest.'

Someone glowered at everyone and no one, while mumbling the words of a tired limerick: '... both concave and convex ...'

A stranger arrived and, without removing his coat, hat or even the muffler that covered him up to his pale eyes, went straight into Moxon's library. The room was dim, lit only by a desk lamp. Everett Moxon got up from the desk.

'Ben? About time. Things are breaking up.'

'Feel ... like I'm breaking up myself ...' Franklin sat down and took off his fur hat. 'I'm sick, Ev.'

'There's this flu thing going around, you'll probably be okay in the morning. Now what have you brought me?'

Franklin threw a heavy envelope on the desk. 'All there, the Taipin bids, the secret leasing arrangements for Kratcom International, the whole, whole ... holus bolus. Jesus Christ, Ev, why didn't you tell me she was gonna be here? I damn near walked in there and met her face to face, just in time I heard someone say, "Sinuses? They're all in the head" and I slipped past. Scarf over my face like a damn burglar.'

Moxon was studying papers from the envelope. 'This is good stuff, Ben.' He looked up. 'To tell you the truth, I clean forgot you used to be married to Indica. Seems like it must have happened in another ice age. Volume One and we're in Volume Two. Anyway why can't you two be pals now?'

'Pals?' Ben's weak laugh set off a coughing fit. 'Just the sound of her voice sets my teeth on edge, and what she says! Last time I saw her she talked about something being water over the bridge; I came close to hitting her, I I know it sounds funny now but are you listening?'

'Sure. But maybe you just hate Indica because she's hit the big time. Without you.'

Ben had taken off his coat; now he put it on again. 'Yes, they all take it seriously, this Machines Liberation idea of hers. Without me? Well sure, she's a self-made woman. I'm surrounded by self-made men and women, look at Kratt. God-damned world crawling with self-made people, self-made man myself, trouble is self-made people get made in their own image. Christ, it's cold in here.'

'Sweat's pouring off you, how can you be cold? Ben, why don't you go upstairs and lie down, I'll call a doctor, okay?'

'No but listen, Ev, you know what Kratt's like.'

'He treats his employees like toilet paper, I know that.'

Ben started to shiver. 'It's not that, not just that. I just can't forget that time a few years ago when he poisoned all those kids just to break into the funfood market fast funfood! Kids were dying of mercury poisoning! And you know what he did about it?'

'Forget it, Ben, that was a long time ago.'