'How old is she?' The Secretary, Eric guessed, was in his late forties or early fifties

'As young as it's humanly possible to be. Prepare yourself, doctor.' Teagarden chuckled. 'When he met her she was in high school. Working in the late afternoons as a typist. Perhaps she handed him a document... nobody knows for sure, but they did meet over some routine business matter.'

'Can his illness be discussed with her?'

'Absolutely. She's the one – the only one – who's been able to get him to take phenobarbital and, when we tried it, pathabamate. Phenobarb made him sleepy, he said, and path made his mouth dry. So of course he dropped them down a waste chute; he quit. Mary made him go back on. She's Italian. As he is. She can bawl him out in a way he remembers from his childhood, from his mama, perhaps... or his sister or aunt; they all bawl him out and he tolerates it, but he doesn't listen, except to Mary. She lives in a concealed apt in Cheyenne guarded by lines of Secret Service men – because of the 'Star people. Molinari dreads the day they'll—' Teagarden broke off.

'They'll what?'

'Kill her or maim her. Or weed out half her mental processes, turn her into a debrained vegetable; they've got a spectrum of techniques they can make use of. You didn't know our dealings with the ally were so rough at the top, did you?' Teagarden smiled. 'It's a rough war. That's how Lilistar acts toward us, our superior ally beside which we're a flea. So imagine how the enemy, the reegs, would treat us if our defense line cracked and they managed to pour in.'

For a time they rode in silence; no one cared to speak.

'What do you think would happen,' Eric said finally, 'if Molinari passed out of the pic?'

'Well, it would go one of two ways. Either we'd get someone more pro-Lilistar or we wouldn't. What other choices are there, and why do you ask? Do you believe we're going to lose our patient? If we do, doctor, we also lose our jobs and possibly our lives. Your one justification for existence – and mine – is the continual viable presence of one overweight, middle-aged Italian who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming, with his enormous family and his eighteen-year-old mistress, who has stomach pains and enjoys eating a late-evening snack of batter-fried giant prawns with mustard and horse-radish. I don't care what they told you or what you signed; you're not going to be inserting any more artiforgs into Virgil Ackerman for a long time; there won't be the opportunity because keeping Gino Molinari alive is a full-time task.' Teagarden seemed irritable and upset now; his voice, in the darkness of the 'copter cab, was jerky. 'It's too much for me, Sweetscent. You won't have any other life but Molinari; he'll talk your ear off, deliver practice speeches to you on every topic on Earth – ask your opinion about everything from contraception to mushrooms – how to cook them – to God to what would you do if, and so forth. For a dictator – and you realize that's what he is, only we don't like to use the name – he's an anomaly. First of all he's probably the greatest political strategist alive; how else do you suppose he rose to be UN Secretary General? It took him twenty years, and fighting all the way; he dislodged every political opponent he met, from every country on Terra. Then he got mixed up with Lilistar. That's called foreign policy. On foreign policy the master strategist failed, because at that point a strange occlusion entered his mind. You know what it's called? Ignorance. Molinari spent all his time learning how to knee people in the groin, and with Freneksy that isn't called for. He would no more deal with Freneksy than you or I could – possibly worse.'

'I see,' Eric said.

'But Molinari went ahead anyhow. He bluffed. He signed the Pact of Peace which got us into the war. And here's where Molinari differs from all the fat, overblown, strutting dictators in the past. He took the blame on his shoulders; he didn't fire a foreign minister here or shoot a policy adviser from the State here. He did it and he knows it. And it's killing him, by quarter inches, day in, day out. Starting from the gut. He loves Terra. He loves people, all of them, washed and unwashed; he loves his wretched pack of sponging relatives. He shoots people, arrests people, but he doesn't like it. Molinari is a complex man, doctor. So complex that—'

Dorf interrupted drily, 'A mixture of Lincoln and Mussolini.'

'He's a different person with everyone he meets,' Teagarden continued. 'Christ, he's done things so rotten, so goddam wicked that they'd make your hair stand on end. He's had to. Some of them will never be made public, even by his political foes. And he's suffered because of doing them. Did you ever know anyone who really accepted responsibility, guilt and blame, before? Do you? Does your wife?'

'Probably not,' Eric admitted.

'If you or I ever really accepted the moral responsibility for what we've done in our lifetime – we'd drop dead or go mad. Living creatures weren't made to understand what they do. Take the animals we've run over on the road, or the animals we eat. When I was a kid it was my monthly job to go out and Poison rats. Did you ever watch a poisoned animal die? And not just one but scores of them, month after month. I don't feel it. The blame. The load. Fortunately it doesn't register – it can't, because if it did there'd be no way I could go on. And that's how the entire human race gets by. All but the Mole. As they call him.' Teagarden added, '"Lincoln and Mussolini." I was thinking more of One Other, back about two thousand years.'

'This is the first time,' Eric said, 'I ever heard anyone compare Gino Molinari to Christ. Even in his captive press.'

'Perhaps,' Teagarden said, 'it's because I'm the first person you've ever talked to who's been around the Mole twenty-four hours a day.'

'Don't tell Mary Reineke about your comparison,' Dorf said. 'She'll tell you he's a bastard. A pig in bed and at the table, a lewd middle-aged man with rape in his eye, who ought to be in jail. She tolerates him... because she's charitable.' Dorf laughed sharply.

'No,' Teagarden said, 'that's not what Mary would say ... except when she's sore, which is about a fourth of the time. I don't really know what Mary Reineke would say; maybe she wouldn't even try. She just accepts him as he is; she tries to improve him, but even if he doesn't improve – and he won't – she loves him anyhow. Have you ever known that other kind of woman? Who saw possibilities in you? And with the right kind of help from her—'

'Yes,' Eric said. He wished to see the subject changed; it made him think about Kathy. And he did not care to.

The 'copter droned on toward Cheyenne.

In bed alone Kathy lay half sleeping as morning sunlight ignited the variegated textures of her bedroom. All the colors so familiar to her in her married life with Eric now became distinguished one from another as the light advanced. Here, where she lived, Kathy had established potent spirits of the past, trapped within the concoctions of other periods: a lamp from early New England, a chest of drawers that was authentic bird's-eye maple, a Hepplewhite cabinet... She lay with her eyes half open, aware of each object and all the connecting strands involved in her acquisition of them. Each was a triumph over a rival; some competing collector had failed, and it did not seem farfetched to regard this collection as a graveyard, with the ghosts of the defeated persisting in the vicinity. She did not mind their activity in her home life; after all she was tougher than they.

'Eric,' she said sleepily, 'for chrissake get up and put on the coffee. And help me out of bed. Push or speak.' She turned toward him, but no one was there. Instantly she sat up. Then she got from the bed, walked barefoot to the closet for her robe, shivering.