"What do you mean, Tom?" Max asks me.

"I mean turn off the sodium shunt at the Ratliff intake and dismantle it, today."

Max's worries are back, worries now about me weighing him down. He sinks to the cot.

"Tom," he says, screwing up an eye, "I was aware you knew about the sodium pilot. We've never discussed it, for obvious reasons-since it was Grade Four classified. But since you do-to tell you the truth, I've never been too happy with it-I prefer individual therapy, as you well know-to this sort of mass shotgun prophylaxis. But how can you argue with success? I mean, the numbers from NIH are damned impressive, Tom. I mean, it may not do much for our egos if they can reduce street crime, drug abuse, suicides, and suchlike by a simple sodium ion-but what are you going to do? We weren't too happy with lithium either. But zero recidivism at Angola. How do you argue with success? If it ain't broke-" He trails off.

"So I thought at first, but you don't know, Max," I tell him.

"I don't know what?" he says absently, distracted. He's worried, I know, less about Blue Boy than about me.

"Max, NIH doesn't even know about Blue Boy, the heavy-sodium pilot program. They never heard of it. The FDA never heard of it. ACMUI never heard of it. Dr. Lipscomb even spoke to Jesse Land, the director whom she knows. He says it could only be what he calls an instance of 'aberrant local initiative'- that is, some ambitious regional NIH people using their discretionary funding to run a pilot which might otherwise not be funded and then present them with a fait accompli which they can't turn down. It's been done before-and sometimes with good cause-to get around bureaucratic hassle-until the election next month."

"Wait." Max has risen again, this time with both hands out, palms up. "Hold it. Are you telling me that Dr. Comeaux here and Dr. Van Dorn cooked up this sodium additive without even telling-"

"Just as Dr. Fred McKay did with an equally simple ion, fluoridating water," says Bob Comeaux from the doorway, facing us now, arms folded, eyes level and minatory. "If he'd waited for D.C. bureaucracy, children's teeth would still be rotting out. And as both you doctors know, every kook and Kluxer in the country accused him of everything from mind control to Communist conspiracy."

Silence. Max sighs. "Well-" He is speaking to me.

"Max, Blue Boy was not a pilot involving Angola. It covered the entire parish, in fact, all of Feliciana. Moreover, I'm afraid what we've got here are some side effects which in fact you are aware of and which I can show are related to the additive-"

"Such as? What do you mean, the whole parish?"

"Such as regression of some subjects, especially children, to pre-linguistic pongid levels of behavior, regression of some women from menses to estrus, the sexual abuse of children-"

Bob Comeaux has taken off his hat, placed his hand on his forehead, closed his eyes. "Dear God, do you hear?" He speaks softly. "Where have we heard this before? Do I hear echoes? Of men descended from apes? Who was accused of this? Of corrupting the youth of Athens? You know who was accused of that. But I will confess that tampering with the sexuality of women is a new one." He's shaking his head sorrowfully at me. "From the local yahoos I would have expected it. But from you? Et tu-" He turns to Max. "Well, I suppose it always happens in a scientific breakthrough-"

"I wasn't speaking of science, Bob. I was speaking of you and Dr. Van Dorn. It was you who made the decision to enlarge the pilot to the entire Ratliff water district-exempting Fedville. And it was your colleague Van Dorn who used the additive on the students at Belle Ame for purposes of the sexual gratification of himself and his senior staff-"

"Hold it, Doctor!" Bob Comeaux now stands against the door, hands behind him on the knob. He has entirely recovered, not only himself and his old assurance, but his old anger. "Hear this, Doctor. In the first place, I put my money where my mouth was. I sanctioned a dosage of additive for my own son-and hear this: he is doing brilliantly. And finally, Doctor, you know damn well I'm not responsible for Van Dorn's behavior. But apparently this is the way you want it." From his pocket he takes a paper, slowly tears it once, and again, drops it into my student waste- basket. "That was your release. After what you pulled at Belle Ame this morning, what is going to happen is that we're packing your ass right back to Alabama. I'm sorry, Doctor. I came up here to get you out of here. I had the door open. I did everything but pull you out bodily. Max," he says.

I look at Max.

Max is standing over me, hands deep in his pockets, staring down at the curled-up toes of his Thorn McAns. "He can do it," says Max softly. "Look, Tom. Here's what's let's do. Why don't you-and I'm sure Bob here would accept this-why don't you and Ellen- Look, there's no reason to, ah, go to Alabama-instead, why don't you and Ellen do what I've been trying to get you to do, move down to Mandeville, into Beau Rivage with us-there's a condo on 12 just below us available-and I need a partner-I'm tired of clinical work, want some time for writing. You know we always did well together, especially in group. I know you've had some problems, ah, at home, that is, adjusting. Tom, we could do well together, and economically too-" He breaks off suddenly, eyes widening.

While Max is talking I'm spreading the Belle Ame photos on the floor, plus Lucy's printouts and graphics from the NIH and Public Health mainframe in Baton Rouge and the local Fedvile data bank showing not only the distribution of Louisianians dosed up on Na-24-the starry galaxy over Feliciana-but the procurement order from Fedville, signed by Dr. Comeaux, exempting Fedville from the Ratliff water district and ordering a second intake upstream from Ratliff. The photographs, I can't help but notice again, exhibit the same Victorian propriety, the decorous expressions, every hair in place, bobbed in the women, old-fashioned 1930s high haircuts in the men, a British sort of nakedness, white-as-white skins and vulnerable backs, unlike tan-all-over U.S. California nakedness, and the children above all: simpering, prudish, but, most of all, pleased. It is the proper pleased children- For a while both Max and Bob gaze, at first politely, heads aslant, as people will attend to other people's photos. Max's cheek is even propped reflectively on three fingers.

In my clinical voice-doctor showing slides at a medical conference-I explain the exemption of Fedville from treated water, the sodium-additive arrangement, the presenting behavior of Mrs. Cheney, the anal lesions of this child, her curious linguistic regression, the extraordinary I.Q. of that child-not omitting Ricky's perfect score in Concentration.

"Ricky?" says Bob, not comprehending.

"Ricky is all right, Bob. He's at Lucy's house."

"What?" says Bob. "Ricky?"

"I understood you wanted to have him in the program, Bob."

"Yeah, but at first-level minimum dosage, to improve his-he was flunking math-Jesus, they didn't-Is he all right?"

"He's fine. He's not injured. He's with Claude at Lucy's house. You can pick him up any time."

"Thank God," says Bob. "Thanks, Tom."

"That's okay, Bob. He's with Claude at Lucy's house."

"Jesus," says Bob.

Max seems not to be listening. His attention seems to be caught by one photograph, the one depicting Van Dorn supine, bearing the child aloft and impaled between his knees, the child's expression, demure, as pleased as if she had just won the spelling bee, legs kicking up happily. The child is facing the camera and therefore appears to be looking at the viewer of the photograph.

As Max examines the photographs he falls into an old habit, hissing a tune between tip of tongue and teeth, which I remember him doing as house physician standing with a patient's chart in the nurses' station-a sinister, amiable hissing, the attending intern casting about: How did I screw up this time?

Max is also nodding in his old abstracted way. "So," he says to no one.

Bob Comeaux has come alongside, head medically-comradely aslant, like the attending physician co-inspecting an X-ray with the chief on grand rounds. He too is nodding, hands in pockets, upper lip folded against his teeth.

"Bob," he says in his old ominous-gentle, grand-rounds voice, head back, looking along his cheek. "Just what are we doing here?"

Bob is clucking back-of-tongue-from-teeth tck tck tck meditatively, resident considering case: it's amazing how everything you do, even late in life, you did in school.

Silence, except for the spirituals.

"What are we doing here?" Max asks again.

"We are listening to the darkies singing," I say.

"All I can say is this," says Bob Comeaux. He's squinting into the afternoon sunlight, hat in his hands, head leaning back against the jamb. "I don't know about those, whatever they are"-he nods toward, without quite looking at, the photographs-"but I will say this, you try the best you can to help folks. And what do you get? I'll tell you what you get. You get the same thing Lister got, Galileo got, Pasteur got. Ridicule. Did that son of a bitch use Ricky?" he asks in a different voice.

"Ricky's okay, Bob."

Silence, except for the singing.

I looked over Jordan and what did I see, Coming for to carry me home.

A band of angels coming after me, Coming for to carry me home.

"Don't tell me that's not beautiful," says Bob absently.

"Right, Bob," I say. "Now here's what we ought to do." I exchange glances with Max-one of our "group" glances. We understand each other. We know something movies and TV don't know. Here's where movies and TV go wrong. You don't shoot X for what he did to Y, even though he deserves shooting. You allow X a way out so he can help Y. X is going to have enough trouble as it is. Max already recognizes a tone in my voice, the clinical-helper voice of the "resource person" in group therapy. He and I have run many a group. It's like two cops playing tough cop and softy cop.

"What's that, Doctor?" asks Max in his tough cop voice.

"This is just an idea to kick around. I was thinking: Now that Blue Boy is closed down, wouldn't it make sense to use the NIH discretionary funds and the Ford money to help Father Smith reactivate the hospice? The good Father is a nut, as we all know, but his place can be useful as a facility for your terminal cases-for one thing, save you an awful lot of money. He's going to need all the help we can give him. I'm thinking of giving him a couple of afternoons a week." Group strategy: Don't shoot Bob Comeaux, use him.

We all appear to consider.

"Well, I don't know," muses Max, who is just beginning to grasp what has happened, is astounded, and is not showing it.

Bob Comeaux, still martyred, eyes still closed elegiacally, is actually attending closely. He almost nods.

"I was thinking too," I say, not to Bob, but to Max. "You know, we've not only got a lot of toxic-abused children, overdosed on sodium 24, thanks to Van Dorn's hapless experiment"-blame Van Dorn for now-"who've been knocked back to a cortical deficit, a pre-linguistic level like a bunch of chimps and are going to need all the help Father Smith and the rest of us can give them. I think it would also be a good place to transfer the euthanasic candidates and quarantined patients from the Qualitarian Center."

Max rolls his eyes. Things are moving too fast. It's all right for resource persons to fall out in group, stage mock warfare. But this! For Christ's sake, Doctor, Max is saying, eyes rolled back, you're pushing him too far.

"I for one," says Max, switching to his nice-cop-versus-mean cop voice, "don't think Dr. Comeaux should take that to mean you're suggesting the transfer of all infants who are candidates for pedeuthanasia for one reason or another-hopeless retardation, Down's syndrome, AIDS infants, status epilepticus, gross irreparable malformations, and suchlike-who have no chance for a life of any sort of acceptable quality-you're not suggesting that they too should be transferred from the center to the hospice?"

"That's what I meant. The hospice will take them all."

Bob Comeaux has recovered sufficient footing to lever himself away from the doorjamb and face us both.

"You're talking about violating the law of the land, gentlemen," he says quietly. "Doe v. Dade, the landmark case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court which decreed, with solid scientific evidence, that the human infant does not achieve personhood until eighteen months."

Max's eyes are in his eyebrows. If his junior resource person insists on screwing up, he's on his own.

"Not only that," I go on in the same sociable tone, non compos but not hostile either, "we want all the so-called pre-personhood infants at St. Margaret's by next week, plus all the terminal cases of any age, including adult AIDS patients who've been quarantined-plus your nursing staff until we can get organized."

Why am I saying all this? Father Smith is a loony and can't even take care of himself.

"Shit, Max!" Bob Comeaux, now altogether himself, collected in his anger, has squared off with Max. "He's talking about shooting down the entire Qualitarian program in this area. No way."

Max now, dropping group voice: this is serious. "Tom, we don't want to get into a legal hassle. It is, after all, the law of the land."

"Max, the law of the land does not require gereuthanasia of the old or pedeuthanasia of pre-personhood infants. It only permits it under certain circumstances.

"I know, but-" says Max.

Group falls silent.

"No way," says Bob Comeaux softly.

"Very well," I say, picking up the photos and Lucy's printouts from NIH's mainframe. "I'll be going."

"What you got there?" asks Bob Comeaux quickly, eyes tracking the printouts like a Macintosh mouse.

"You know what these are, Bob."

"What you going to do with them?"

"Return them to Dr. Lipscomb. They're her property. She in turn will be obliged to notify NIH, ACMUI, and the Justice Department."

"But we haven't signed you out!" exclaims Bob Comeaux, actually pointing to the torn paper in my student wastebasket.

"In that case I'll just hand them to Warden Elmo Jenkins, who is familiar with the case and will pass them along to Lucy."

"Ah me," muses Max.

I'm halfway to the door. "Hold it, old son," says Bob Comeaux, uttering, in a sense, a laugh, and clapping a hand on my shoulder. "As L.B.J. and Isaiah used to say, Let us reason together." And, to tell the truth, he looks a bit like L.B.J. back at the ranch, in his Texas hat, smiling, big-nosed, pressing the flesh.

2. ELLEN LOST OUT in Fresno. Cut off from Van Dorn and heavy sodium, she got eliminated in Mixed Doubles and came limping home.

We were all glad to see her. She wouldn't talk to anybody but Hudeen. They exchanged a few murmured syllables which no one else could understand.

The children, out of school, stood around either picking at each other or moony and cross as children are when something is wrong. But Chandra is good with them, playing six-hour games of Monopoly. Between times they're on the floor in front of the stereo-V, as motionless as battlefield casualties, eyes glazed: back to six hours of Scooby Doo and He-Man.

My practice is almost nil. People are either not depressed, anxious, or guilty, or if they are, they're not seeing me.

I begin dropping by the Little Napoleon and having a friendly shooter of Early Times with Leroy Ledbetter.

Ellen is puzzled, distant, and mostly silent. At night we lie in our convent beds watching Carson without laughing and reruns of M*A*S*H and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

What to do?

Leroy makes his usual suggestion, after one of his all-but-invisible knockings-back of a shot glass as part of the motion of wiping the bar and leaning over to tell me.

"Why don't y'all take my Bluebird and go down to Disney World? Y'all will like it. There is something for all ages."

I thank him as usual, hardly listening, since Disney World is the last place on earth I would choose to go.

But as I look at the moony, fretful children and puzzled silent Ellen lying in the silvery glare of the tube watching cockney Robin Leach and Carson and Hawkeye between her toes with exactly the same dreamy, unfocused expression, the thought occurs to me: Why not?

As it turns out, it is a splendid idea, and Leroy is right: Disney World is for all ages.

We find ourselves in the Bluebird parked in Fort Wilderness Resort next to the Magic Kingdom. Fort Wilderness is a pleasant wooded campground with hookups for motor homes. Our campsite is on Jack Rabbit Run.

The Bluebird is a marvel. It cost Leroy over a hundred thousand dollars secondhand, and he's spent another ten on it. He lives in a room over the Little Napoleon. It is like giving me his house.

We go spinning along the Gulf Coast in the fine October light as easily as driving a Corvette, but sitting high and silent as astronauts. The children are enchanted. They spend days exploring the shiplike craft, opening bunks, taking showers, folding out tables and dinettes, working the sound system and control panel and the map locator, which shows us as a bright dot creeping along I-75.

The four-speaker stereo picks up the Pastoral symphony. We're a boat humming along Beethoven's brook. I would be happy, but Ellen, in the co-pilot seat, is still abstracted, brows knitted in puzzlement. I take a nip of Early Times both in celebration and for worry.

Ellen gets better the second night out in a KOA campground in the pine barrens.

While I'm hooking up, figuring out where the plugs go, Ellen disappears.

Oh, my God. But the kids are not worried. They've already found the playground. Neighbors come ambling over, offering a beer, inspecting the Bluebird. They think Meg and Tom are my grandchildren. They show me pictures of theirs. The American road is designed for children and grandparents. Oh, my God, where is Ellen? Have a drink. I have a drink, three drinks. Nobody else is worried. Neighbors assure me she has gone to the commissary.

She has. She's back with groceries. No more Big Macs and Popeyes chicken.

Now in the violet October light after sunset, the air fragrant with briquet and mesquite smoke perfumed by lighter fluid, there is Ellen at the tiny galley cooking red beans and rice, not my favorite boudin sausage but Jimmy Dean sausage and-humming!

I do not dare signify to her that anything is different, let alone approach her from the rear, as I used to. Instead, in celebration and gratitude I step outside in the violet dusk and take three nips like a country man.

We sleep aft in a kind of observation bedroom-Meg has discovered how to slide back the roof, making a bubble under the stars-the kids amidships in complex fold-out astronaut pods. The bed is king-size, bigger than Sears Best. I am having bouts of nervousness and so take a nip for each bout. To keep the key low-no grand epiphanies, thank you-I turn on the tube. Leroy's stereo-V is a pull-down screen big as a movie. There's Hawkeye and Trapper John back in Korea. I never did like those guys. They fancied themselves super-decent and supertolerant, but actually had no use for anyone who was not exactly like them. What they were was super-pleased with themselves. In truth, they were the real bigots, and phony at that. I always preferred Frank Burns, the stuffy, unpopular doc, a sincere bigot.

But if Ellen likes them- But Ellen turns them off.

There we lie in the Florida barrens in a bubble of a spaceship as close to the stars as Voyager V, I not quite drunk but laid out straight as an arrow, feet sticking up, hands at my side, eyes on Orion.

She too.