"Dr. Bloom saw that coming?"

"He said he did."

"He saw it coming, but he kept it to himself. I see. What do you think, Clarice?"

"I'm not sure."

"You have some psychology, some forensics. Where the two flow together you fish, don't you? Catching anything, Clarice?"

"It's pretty slow so far."

"What do your two disciplines tell you about Buffalo Bill?"

"By the book, he's a sadist."

"Life's too slippery for books, Clarice; anger appears as lust, lupus presents as hives." Dr. Lecter finished sketching his left hand with his right, switched the charcoal and began to sketch his right with his left, and just as well. "Do you mean Dr. Bloom's book?"

"Yes."

"You looked me up in it, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"How did he describe me?"

"A pure sociopath."

"Would you say Dr. Bloom is always right?"

"I'm still waiting for the shallowness of affect."

Dr. Lecter's smile revealed his small white teeth. "We have experts at every hand, Clarice. Dr. Chilton says Sammie, behind you there, is a hebephrenic schizoid and irretrievably lost. He put Sammie in Miggs' old cell, because he thinks Sammie's said bye-bye. Do you know how hebephrenics usually go? Don't worry, he won't hear you."

"They're the hardest to treat," she said. "Usually they go into terminal withdrawal and personality disintegration."

Dr. Lecter took something from between his sheets of butcher paper and put it in the sliding food carrier. Starling pulled it through.

"Only yesterday Sammie sent that across with my supper," he said.

It was a scrap of construction paper with writing in crayon.

Starling read:

I WAN TOO GO TO JESA

I WAN TOO GO WIV CRIEZ

I CAN GO WIV JESA

EF I AC RELL NIZE

SAMMIE

Starling looked back over her right shoulder. Sammie sat vacant-faced against the wall of his cell, his head leaning against the bars.

"Would you read it aloud? He won't hear you."

Starling began. " 'I want to go to Jesus, I want to go with Christ, I can go with Jesus if I act real nice.' "

"No, no. Get a more assertive 'Pease porridge hot' quality into it. The meter varies but the intensity is the same." Lecter clapped time softly, "Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old. Intensely, you see. Fervently. 'I wan to go to Jesa, I wan to go wiv Criez.' "

"I see," Starling said, putting the paper back in the carrier.

"No, you don't see anything at all." Dr. Lecter bounded to his feet, his tithe body suddenly grotesque, bent in a gnomish squat and he was bouncing, clapping time, his voice ringing like sonar, "I wan to go to Jesa--"

Sammie's voice boomed behind her sadden as a leopard's cough, louder than a howler monkey, Sammy up and mashing his face into the bars, livid and straining, the cords standing out in his neck:

"I WAN TOO GO TO JESA

I WAN TOO GO WTV CRIEZ

I CAN GO WIV JESA

EF I AC RELL NIIIZE."

Silence. Starling found that she was standing and her folding chair was over backwards. Her papers had spilled from her lap.

"Please," Dr. Lecter said, erect and graceful as a dancer once again, inviting her to sit. He dropped easily into his seat and rested his chin on his hand. "You don't see at all," he said again. "Sammie is intensely religious. He's simply disappointed because Jesus is so late. May I tell Clarice why you're here, Sammie?"

Sammie grabbed the lower part of his face and halted its movement.

"Please?" Dr. Lecter said.

"Eaaah," Sammie said between his fingers.

"Sammie put his mother's head in the collection plate at the Highway Baptist Church in Trune. They were singing 'Give of Your Best to the Master' and it was the nicest thing he had." Lecter spoke over her shoulder. "Thank you, Sammie. It's perfectly all right. Watch television."

The tall man subsided to the floor with his head against the bars, just as before, the images from the television worming on his pupils, three streaks of silver on his face now, spit and tears.

"Now. See if you can apply yourself to his problem and perhaps I'll apply myself to yours. Quid pro quo. He's not listening."

Starling had to bear down hard. "The verse changes from 'go to Jesus' to 'go with Christ,' " she said. "That's a reasoned sequence: going to, arriving at, going with."

"Yes. It's a linear progression. I'm particularly pleased that he knows 'Jesa' and 'Criez' are the same. That's progress. The idea of a single Godhead also being a Trinity is hard to reconcile, particularly for Sammie, who's not positive how many people he is himself. Eldridge Cleaver gives us the parable of the 3-in-One Oil, and we find that useful."

"He sees a causal relationship between his behavior and his aims, that's structured thinking," Starling said. "So is the management of a rhyme. He's not blunted-- he's crying. You believe he's a catatonic schizoid?"

"Yes. Can you smell his sweat? That peculiar goatish odor is trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid. Remember it, it's the smell of schizophrenia."

"And you believe he's treatable?"

"Particularly now, when he's coming out of a stuporous phase. How his cheeks shine!"

"Dr. Lecter, why do you say Buffalo Bill's not a sadist?"

"Because the newspapers have reported the bodies had ligature marks on the wrists, but not the ankles. Did you see any on the person's ankles in West Virginia?"

"No."

"Clarice, recreational flayings are always conducted with the victim inverted, so that blood pressure is maintained longer in the head and chest and the subject remains conscious. Didn't you know that?"

"No."

"When you're back in Washington, go to the National Gallery and look at Titian's Flaying of Marsyas before they send it back to Czechoslovakia. Wonderful for details, Titian-- look at helpful Pan, bringing the bucket of water."

"Dr. Lecter, we have some extraordinary circumstances here and some unusual opportunities."

"For whom?"

"For you, if we save this one. Did you see Senator Martin on television?"

"Yes, I saw the news."

"What did you think of the statement?"

"Misguided but harmless. She's badly advised."

"She's very powerful, Senator Martin. And determined."

"Let's have it."

"I think you have extraordinary insight. Senator Martin has indicated that if you help us get Catherine Baker Martin back alive and unharmed, she'll help you get transferred to a federal institution, and if there's a view available, you'll get it. You may also be asked to review written psychiatric evaluations of incoming patients-- a job, in other words. No relaxing of security restrictions."

"I don't believe that, Clarice."

"You should."

"Oh, I believe you. But there are more things you don't know about human behavior than how a proper flaying is conducted. Would you say that for a United States Senator, you're an odd choice of messenger?"

"I was your choice, Dr. Lecter. You chose to speak to me. Would you prefer someone else now? Or maybe you don't think you could help."

"That is both impudent and untrue, Clarice. I don't believe Jack Crawford would allow any compensation ever to reach me… Possibly I'll tell you one thing you can tell the Senator, but I operate strictly COD. Maybe I'll trade for a piece of information about you. Yes or no?"

"Let's hear the question."

"Yes or no? Catherine's waiting, isn't she? Listening to the whetstone? What do you think she'd ask you to do?"

"Let's hear the question."

"What's your worst memory of childhood?"

Starling took a deep breath.

"Quicker than that," Dr. Lecter said. "I'm not interested in your worst invention."