“—as the digit shifts, let us wipe clean the slate—”

“—we have been through the ordeal by fire—”

“—the time has come to build the ultimate society—”

The Ultimate Society.I heard the click and the whirr, and the sound was not so much the shifting of the digit as the extrusion of a new political slogan, and I didn’t need great stochastic gifts to guess that we would all hear much, much more about the Ultimate Society before Paul Quinn was done with us.

Damn, but he was compelling! I was eager to be off and into the night’s exploits, and still I sat motionless, rapt, and so did this whole audience of boozy pols and stoned celebrities, and even the waiters halted their eternal clashing of trays as Quinn’s magnificent voice rolled through the hall. Since that first night at Sarkisian’s I had watched him grow steadily stronger, more solid, as though his rise to prominence had confirmed in him his own self-appraisal and burned away whatever shred of diffidence was in him. Now, glittering in the spotlights, he seemed a vehicle for cosmic energies; there played through him and out from him an irresistible power that shook me profoundly. A new Roosevelt? A new Kennedy? I trembled. A new Charlemagne, a new Mohammed, maybe a new Genghis Khan.

He finished with a flourish and we were up and screaming, no need of Mardikian’s choreography now, and the media folk were running to claim their cassettes and the hard-eyed clubhouse boys were slapping palms and talking about the White House and women were weeping and Quinn, sweating, arms outspread, accepted our homage with quiet satisfaction, and I sensed the first rumblings of the juggernaut through these United States.

It was an hour more before Sundara and Friedman and Catalina and I got out of the hotel. To the pod, quickly home. Odd self-conscious silences; all four of us eager to get to it, but the social conventions temporarily prevail, and we pretend to coolness; and, besides, Quinn has overwhelmed us. We are so full of him, his resonant phrases, his vital presence, that we are all four of us made ciphers, numb, selfless, stunned. No one can initiate the first move. We chatter. Brandy, bone; a tour of the apartment; Sundara and I show off our paintings, our sculptures, our primitive artifacts, our view of the Brooklyn skyline; we become less ill at ease with one another, but still there is no sexual tension; that mood of erotic anticipation that had been building so excitingly three hours earlier has been wholly dissipated by the impact of Quinn’s speech. Was Hitler an orgasmic experience? Was Caesar? We sprawl on the thick white carpet. More brandy. More bone. Quinn, Quinn, Quinn: instead of sexing we talk politics. Friedman, finally, most unspontaneously, slides his hand along Sundara’s ankle and up over her calf. It is a signal. We will force the intensity. “He has to run next year,” says Catalina Yarber, ostentatiously maneuvering herself so that the slit in her skirt flops open, displaying flat belly, golden curls. “Leydecker’s got the nomination wrapped up,” Friedman opines, growing bolder, caressing Sundara’s breasts. I touch the dimmer switch, kicking in the altered-light rheostat, and the room takes on a shining psychedelic texture. About, about, in reel and rout, the witchfires dance. Yarber offers a fresh tube of bone. “From Sikkim,” she declares. “The best stuff going.” To Friedman she says, “I know Leydecker’s ahead, but Quinn can push him aside if he tries. We can’t wait four more years for him.” I draw deep on the tube and the Sikkimese dope sets up a breeder reaction in my brain. “Next year is too soon,” I tell them. “Quinn looked incredible tonight, but we don’t have enough time to hit the whole country with him between here and a year from November. Mortonson’s a cinch for reelection anyway. Let Leydecker use himself up next year and we move Quinn into position in ‘04.” I would have gone on to outline the whole feigned-vice-presidential-bid strategy but Sundara and Friedman had vanished into the shadows, and Catalina was no longer interested in politics.

Our clothes fell away. Her body was trim, athletic, boyishly smooth and muscular, breasts heavier than I had expected, hips narrower. She kept her Transit Creed emblem chained to her thigh. Her eyes gleamed but her skin was cool and dry and her nipples weren’t erect; whatever she might be feeling, it didn’t currently include strong physical desire for Lew Nichols. What I felt for her was curiosity and a certain remote willingness to fornicate; no doubt she felt no more for me. We entangled our bodies, stroked each other’s skins, made our mouths meet and our tongues tickle. It was such an impersonal thing that I was afraid I’d never get it up, but the familiar reflexes took hold, the old reliable hydraulic mechanisms began shunting blood toward my loins, and I felt the proper throb, the proper stiffening. “Come,” she said, “be born to me now.” A strange phrase. Transit stuff, I learned later. I hovered above her and her slim strong thighs gripped me and I went into her.

Our bodies moved, up and down, back and forth. We rolled into this position and that one, joylessly running through the standard repertoire. Her skills were formidable, but there was a contagious chillness about her manner of doing it that rendered me a mere screwing machine, a restless piston endlessly ramming a cylinder, so that I copulated without pleasure and almost without sensation. What could she be getting out of it? Not much, I supposed. It’s because she’s really after Sundara, I thought, and is putting up with me merely to get a chance at her. I was right but I was wrong, for, I would learn eventually, Ms. Yarber’s steely passionless technique was not so much a reflection of a lack of interest in me as it was a result of Transit teaching. Sexuality, say the good proctors, traps one in the here and now and delays transitions, and transition is all: the steady state is death. Therefore engage in coition if you must, or if there is some greater goal to be gained by it, but be not dissolved by ecstasy lest you mire yourself wrongfully in the intransitive condition.

Even so. We indulged in our icy ballet for what seemed like weeks, and then she came, or allowed herself to come, in a quiet quick quiver, and with silent relief I nudged myself across the boundary into completion, and we rolled apart, hardly breathing hard.

“I’d like more brandy,” she said after a bit.

I reached for the cognac. From far away came the groans and gasps of more orthodox pleasure: Sundara and Friedman going at it.

Catalina said, “You’re very competent.”

“Thank you,” I replied uncertainly. No one had ever said quite that to me before. I wondered how to respond and decided to make no attempt at reciprocity. Cognac for two. She sat up, crossed her legs, smoothed her hair, sipped her drink. She looked unsweaty, unruffled, unfucked, in fact. Yet, strangely, she glowed with sexual energy; she seemed genuinely pleased with what we had done and genuinely pleased, as well, with me. “I mean that,” she said. “You’re superb. You do it with power and detachment.”

“Detachment?”

“Non-attachment, I should say. We value that. In Transit, non-attachment is what we seek. All Transit processes work toward creating flux, toward constant evolutionary change, and if we allow ourselves to become attached to any aspect of the here and now, to become attached to erotic pleasure, for example, to become attached to getting rich, to become attached to any ego aspect that ties us to intransient states—”

“Catalina—”

“Yes?”

“I’m very looped. I can’t handle theology now.”

She grinned. “To become attached to non-attachment,” she said, “is one of the worst follies of all. I’ll have mercy. No more Transit talk.”

“I’m grateful.”

“Some other time, perhaps? You and Sundara both. I’d love to explain our teachings, if—”