"Two things," says Vergil presently in a matter-of-fact voice. "You can see the pipeline in both directions, toward the tower and toward the intake, by the faint yellowing. See?"

"Yes."

"You see the hatch?"

"Yes."

"I judge the pump is waterproofed against high water, which can get up to six feet here."

"I see."

"I don't see any nipples or caps like over at the intake."

"Nipples? Caps?"

"You didn't notice it?"

"No, I didn't, Vergil."

"Next to the intake. A three-inch fiberglass nipple stubbed off and capped. Not something you would notice unless you were looking for it."

"You mean there was a pipe sticking out of the ground?"

"Yes. Probably with a valve just below ground, coming off a T. As if they might be taking samples from whatever is in the pipe."

"Shit, let's go," says the uncle.

"Right," I say, following them down the trail, thinking of nothing in particular. "Right."

"We got time to catch a mess of sac au lait before dinner," says the uncle.

"No, we haven't," says Vergil, pulling up short.

Blocking the jeep trail are two men. I recognize the red fishing caps.

But they're not fishermen. They're police, uniformed in brown, green-yoked shirts. Each carries a holstered revolver. I recognize the six-pointed star of the shoulder patch. They're parish police, sheriff's deputies. One is youngish, slim and crewcut. The other is even younger, but bolder and fatter. Both are wooden-faced. I am relieved. What did I expect, some secret nuclear police?

"You fellows looking for us?" I say, smiling.

They nod, not smiling. The younger, husky one has his hand on the holster strap.

"Could we see some identification, please," says the older, wirier one.

Vergil and I reach for our wallets, hand them over.

"Shit, I didn't bring anything but my fishing license. We were going fishing. Will this do?"

The older one looks at it, doesn't take it. "What were you doing here?"

"I wanted to show them the best place in the parish for woodcock," says the uncle. "But we ain't hunting! Y'all from Wildlife and Fisheries? The doctor here is a birdwatcher."

"You gentlemen better come with us," says the older cop.

"What for?" asks the uncle.

"What's the charge, Officer?" I ask.

"A fellow escaped from Angola last night," says young and stocky.

"Do you think it's one of us?" asks the indignant uncle.

"These two fellows have identification," says old and wiry.

"Jesus Christ, are you fellows telling me you think I escaped from Angola?" asks the uncle. "Wait a minute. Y'all from the sheriff's office in Clinton, ain't you? Wait a minute. Don't I know you?" he says to the younger. "Ain't you Artois Hebert's boy?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then you know me. Everybody knows me. Hugh Bob Lipscomb. Ask Sheriff Sharp. I been knowing Cooter Sharp." The uncle holds out his hand.

But the older deputy says only, "Let's go," and leads the way. The younger falls in behind us.

"There's something funny about this," says the uncle to me. "Those guys are from the sheriff's office."

"I know. Shut up."

"They're not NRC guards or federals! They didn't even mention trespassing!"

"I know. Shut up."

The lead deputy kicks up a woodcock. It squeals and goes caroming off in its nutty corkscrew flight, eyes in the back of its head. Once, the uncle told me why woodcock have eyes in the back of the head: "So they can stick that long beak, head and all, all the way down in the wet ground-and still see you."

"Let's go to Clinton," says the older deputy.

8. BOB COMEAUX SPRINGS US from jail almost before we're booked. Who called him? Nobody, he explains, a routine telex which flags him down whenever one of his federal parolees runs afoul of the law. Aren't you glad I'm your parole officer? he asks amiably, shaking hands all around and even giving me a medical-fraternal hug.

Clinton has a new jail, or rather a carefully restored old jail done up in columns and shutters to match the colonial courthouse and the neat little shotgun cottage-offices of lawyers' row. The jail is strangely silent, with only a black vagrant and a white couple in the squad room who are being released even as we are booked. Unlikely inmates they are, the couple, a solemn, respectable-looking man and wife who could be a Baptist deacon and deaconess, almost formally dressed, he in a somber but stylish charcoal-colored suit and tie, she too in suit and tie, she with handsome unplucked black eyebrows and black hair whirled up like an old-fashioned Gibson girl. He wears oversize horn-rimmed specs, which give him an incongruous impish Harold Lloyd look.

The uncle of course knows everyone. We are received and booked amiably. Some mistake must have been made, we are assured. It will soon be straightened out. The deputy and jailer stand about swinging their arms. They kid the uncle: "Looks like they finally caught up with you, Hugh Bob," etc. Vergil is acutely embarrassed. He sees nothing amusing about jail.

There prevails the tolerable boredom and gossip of all police stations, tolerable because of the gossip. Something always turns up, the latest outrage and the headshaking, not without pleasure, of the cops who thought they'd seen it all and now here's the latest. The uncle, who has just got it from the deputy, passes it along to Vergil and me in the same low voice quickened by interest: a crime against nature, many crimes against nature, against children, by none other than this same couple, it is alleged, who run some sort of day camp, the very sort of childcare business these people get into to get at children, you know-alleged because this couple is being sprung for lack of evidence, but the deputy says we'll get them sooner or later, they always repeat. But children! The couple's name I remember as the very byword of somber, sober caring: Mr. and Mrs. Brunette.

"That's one thing I wouldn't put up with, messing with children," says the uncle cheerfully. "I'd cut their nuts out."

Bob Comeaux is all rueful smiles, chaffing and headshaking. "You old booger, you jumped the gun on us," he says in a low voice, pressing me toward the door. "Another twenty-four hours and you'd have been aboard and on the team."

His hand is touching my back as he escorts us out to his car, a mud-spattered, high-mounted, big-wheeled Mercedes Duck, a forty-thousand-dollar amphibian good for bird hunting in the pines or duck hunting in the swamp. Bob is dressed, if not for hunting, at least for a weekend at his lodge, safari tans and low-quarter boots, cashmere turtleneck. The uncle is impressed. Vergil is impassive. Our truck, I tell Bob, is parked on the Angola road. No problem, he says, and he's genial as can be, but I notice that he drops off Vergil and the uncle at Pantherburn first, even though it's out of the way.

We're sailing through the pines, the morning sun warm on our backs. There is a pleasant sense of openness and of riding high and seeing all around, so unlike being sunk in my old spavined Caprice. The Mercedes smells like leather and oiled wood.

"Now, do you think you can get home without getting in any more trouble," says Bob, smiling at the road, "and make it to our meeting tomorrow when we're going to wind up this parole foolishness, spring you for good, and then make you an offer you can't refuse?"

"I haven't forgotten. I thank you for getting us out of jail, but frankly I'm a little confused."

"What's the problem, Doctor?" he asks, cocking an attentive ear, but I notice he's frowning at the wood dashboard, wipes the grain with his handkerchief.

"I don't understand what's going on at Grand Mer and the Ratliff intake and what your part in it is."

Bob Comeaux shakes his head fondly, socks the wheel. "Same old Tom! You always did lay it right out, didn't you?" All smiles, he goes suddenly serious. "Good question, Tom!" he says crisply.

To emphasize the seriousness-this is too important to talk about while sailing along in his Duck-we pull off at an overlook, the loess hills dropping away to a panorama of Grand Mer, the cooling tower with its single pennant of cloud, the river beyond, and upriver the monolith of Fedville.

Bob swings around to face me, so solemnly his smiling crowfeet are ironed out white. Again he socks the steering wheel softly. The windows of the Duck go down, the sunroof slides back without a sound, letting in sunlight and the fragrance of pines warming. But there is still the smell of leather, oiled wood, and pipe tobacco.

"You old rascal." He's shaking his head again. "You jumped the gun on us. I told those guys! I told them!"

"Told them what?"

"Take a look." From his suede jacket he takes a paper and hands it to me. It is stationery folded letter-size.

"So?"

"Take a look at the date!"

I take a look at the date. "So?"

"The date is the day before yesterday. It's already in your mail. The original, that is."

"Do you want me to read it?"

"At your leisure. It's a job offer-a proposition you can't refuse-employment to begin in"-he consults his wafer-thin Patek-Philippe-"exactly twenty-six hours, contingent only upon your clearing the formality of probation tomorrow. It's official. We even have the brass down from Bethesda, a couple of wheels from NIH. They want you aboard too."

"Job offer?"

"Tom," says Bob, his eyes both solemn and fond, "we want you aboard as senior consultant for NRC's ACMUI."

"What's that?"

He smites my knee. "You're right. That goddamn bureaucratese. Okay, try this. You're being offered a position as senior consultant on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee for the Medical Uses of Isotopes."

"Why?"

"Why? Because you know more about the brain pharmacology of isotopes than anyone else. You broke the ground. You're our man. Starting tomorrow you're on the team."

"What team?" I notice a broken V of ibis lowering on Tunica Island.

"There." He nods toward Fedville. "Your office is waiting for you. Your salary of $85,000-chickenshit, if you ask me, but it was the best I could do, so I went on the assumption that you're like me and that the service counts for something-will be supplemented by local QLC funding, which is mostly foundation money-I'm in with those guys-so you'll be making about $135,000-not up to a big-shot shrink, ha, but we figure it will free you up to do your own research, plus you'll have all the facilities of the center rent-free, as they say."

The wings of the ibis, not great flyers, are out of sync and flutter in the sunlight like confetti.

Bob pops in a cassette and soon the Mercedes is filled with Strauss waltzes coming from all directions.

"God, don't you love that," murmurs Bob, lilting along with "Artist's Life." "Doesn't that take you back to P&S, where we'd catch the Philharmonic, then hoist a tad of bourbon and branch at the Ein und Zwanzig?"

"Actually I'd be more apt to catch the flicks at Loew's State 175th Street and hoist a beer at Murray's Bar and Grill."

"Same old Tom," says Bob absently, but adjusting the four speakers, ear cocked for the right balance, listening with a frown. Satisfied, he settles back.

I take a good look at him. He has aged well. In his safari jacket, he's as handsome as Eric Sevareid, as mellow as Walter Cronkite. We two have come a long way, he as much as says, seen the follies of the world, and here we are. Like Eric and Walter he has grown both grave and amiable.

"Any questions, Tom?" asks Bob, moving his head in time with Strauss.

"What is that heavy-sodium shunt at Ratliff all about?"

Bob nods gravely, eyes going fine and gazing past me at the looming, lopped cone of Grand Mer.

"Good question. Very good question. And if you don't mind, I'll answer it in my own way with a couple of Socratic questions of my own, shrinkwise, you might say. Okay?"

"Okay." The wings of the ibis flash like shook foil and drop into the willows.

Bob leans back, puts forefinger to lips. "I'm assuming, Tom," he says, and pauses, as the strains of "Artist's Life" die away, "that we live by the same lights, share certain basic assumptions and goals."

"Yes?"

"Healing the sick, ministering to the suffering, improving the quality of life for the individual regardless of race, creed, or national origin. Right?"

"Right. But what does that have to do with heavy sodium in the water supply?"

"What does that have to do with heavy sodium in the water supply," he repeats gravely. "Good question, Tom. One might have asked a similar question fifty years ago: What does it have to do with fluoride in the water supply? And if we'd asked it, we'd have gotten the same sort of flak from the Kluxers and knotheads-as you of all people know. Hence our little cloak-and-dagger secrecy. Frankly, I saw no need of it."

"So?"

"What would you say, Tom-" Bob, who has been lilting along with Strauss, leans forward and, turning down the music, fixes me with a smiling, keen-eyed look. "What would you say if I gave you a magic wand you could wave over there"-he nods over his shoulder toward Baton Rouge and New Orleans -"and overnight you could reduce crime in the streets by eighty-five percent?"

I wait, knowing there is more.

"Child abuse by eighty-seven percent?"

"You mean you've done it by-"

He waves me off. "We've done it-the numbers will be out next month-but let me finish. Teenage suicide by ninety-five percent. Ninety-five percent, Tom."

"Yes?"

"Wife battering by seventy-three percent."

"Yes?"

"Teenage pregnancy by eighty-five percent."