"I can't think of anything else to do," Ragle said. And I am going to try again, he said to himself. I want to see that factory; not the photograph or the model, but the thing itself. The _Ding an sich_, as Kant said. "It's too bad you're not interested in philosophy," he said to Vic.

"Sometimes I am," Vic said. "Not right now, though. You mean problems such as What are things really like? The other night coming home on the bus I got a look at how things really are. I saw through the illusion. The other people in the bus were nothing but scarecrows propped up in their seats. The bus itself--" He made a sweeping motion with his hands. "A hollow shell, nothing but a few upright supports, plus my seat and the driver's seat. A real driver, though. Really driving me home. Just me."

Ragle reached into his pocket and brought out the small metal box that he carried with him. Opening it he presented it to Vic.

"What's this?" Vic said.

"Reality," Ragle said. "I give you the real."

Vic took one of the slips of paper out and read it. "This says 'drinking fountain,'" he said. "What's it mean?"

"Under everything else," Ragle said. "The word. Maybe it's the word of God. The logos. 'In the beginning was the Word.' I can't figure it out. All I know is what I see and what happens to me. I think we're living in some other world than what we see, and I think for a while I knew exactly what that other world is. But I've lost it since then. Since that night. The future, maybe."

Handing him back the box of words, Vic said, "I want you to look at something." He pointed out the check-cashing window, and Ragle looked. "At the check-out stands," Vic said. "The big tall girl in the black sweater. The girl with the chest."

"I've seen her before," Ragle said. "She's a knockout." He watched as the girl rang up items on the register; as she worked she smiled merrily, a wide beaming smile of smooth white teeth. "I think you even introduced me to her, once."

Vic said, "Very seriously, I want to ask you something. This may sound like a nasty remark, but I mean it in the most important sense. Don't you think you could solve your problems better in that direction than by anything else? Liz is intelligent -- at least she's got more on the ball than Junie Black. She's certainly attractive. And she's not married. You've got enough money and you're famous enough to interest her. The rest is up to you. Take her out a couple of times and then we'll talk about all this business again."

"I don't think it would help," Ragle said.

"You're seriously giving it a tumble, though, aren't you?"

"I always give it a tumble," he said. "That particular thing."

"Okay," Vic said. "If you're sure, I guess that's that. What do you want to do, try to get hold of one of the trucks?"

"Could we?"

"We could try."

"You want to come along?" Ragle said.

"All right," Vic said. "I'd like to see; sure, I'd like to have a look outside."

"You tell me then," Ragle said, "how we should go about getting one of the trucks. This is your store; I'll leave it up to you."

At five o'clock Bill Black heard the service trucks parking in the lot outside his office window. Presently his intercom buzzed and his secretary said,

"Mr. Neroni to see you, Mr. Black."

"I want to talk to him," he said. He opened the door of his office. After a moment a large muscular dark-haired man appeared, still in his drab coveralls and work shoes. "Come on in," Black said to him. "Tell me what happened today."

"I made notes," Neroni said, setting down a reel of tape on the desk. "For a permanent record. And there's some video tape, but it hasn't come through. The phone crew says he got a call from your wife at about ten o'clock. Nothing in it, except that he apparently thought he'd run into her at his Civil Defense class. She told him she had a date to meet a girl friend downtown. Then the woman who runs the Civil Defense class called to remind him that it was at two o'clock this afternoon. Mrs. Keitelbein."

"No," Black said. "Mrs. Kesselman."

"A middle-aged woman with a teen-age son."

"That's right," Black said. He remembered meeting the Kesselmans several years ago, when the whole situation had been dreamed up. And Mrs. Kesselman had dropped by recently with her Civil Defense clipboard and literature. "Did he go for his Civil Defense class?"

"Yes. He mailed off his entries and then he dropped by their house."

Black had not been told about the Civil Defense class; he had no idea what its purpose was. But the Kesselmans did not get their instructions from anyone in his department.

"Did somebody cover the Civil Defense class?" Black asked.

"Not to my knowledge," Neroni said.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "She gives it herself, doesn't she?"

"As far as I know. When he rang the bell she opened the door herself." Neroni, at that point, frowned and said, "You're sure we're talking about the same person? Mrs. Kesselbein?"

"Something like that." He felt on edge. Ragle Gumm's actions of the last several days had permanently upset him; the sense of the shaky, day-to-day balance that they had achieved had not left him with Ragle's return.

We know now that he can get away, Black thought to himself. In spite of everything, we can lose him. He can revert gradually to sanity, make plans and carry them out; we won't know until it's too late or almost too late.

The next time, we probably won't manage to find him. Or if not next time, then the time after that. Eventually.

Hiding deep in the closet won't save me, Black said to himself. Burying myself under the clothes, in the darkness, out of sight... it won't do me any good.

When Margo arrived at the parking lot she saw no sign of her husband. Shutting off the engine of the Volkswagen, she sat for a time, watching the glass doors of the store.

Usually he's ready to go by now, she said to herself. She got out of the car and started across the parking lot toward the store.

"Margo," Vic called. He came from the rear of the store, from the loading docks. His pace, and the tension on his face, made her aware that something had happened.

"Are you all right?" she asked. "You didn't agree to work Sunday, did you?" That had been in contention between them for years.

Vic caught hold of her arm and led her back to the car. "I'm not driving home with you." Opening the car door he nudged her inside; he got in after her, shut the door and rolled up the windows.

Behind the store, at the dock, a giant two-section truck had started to move in the direction of the Volkswagen. Is that monster going to sideswipe us? Margo wondered. One touch of that front bumper, and nothing would remain of this car and us.

"What's he doing?" she asked Vic. "I don't think he knows how to handle that. And trucks aren't supposed to use this exit, are they? I thought you told me--"

Interrupting her, Vic said, "Listen. It's Ragle in the truck."

She stared at him. And then she saw up into the cab of the truck. Ragle waved at her, a slight flip of his hand. "What do you mean, you won't be driving home with me?" she demanded. "Do you mean you're going to take that big thing to the house and park it?" In her mind she envisioned the truck parked in their driveway, advertising to the neighbors that her husband worked in a grocery store. "Listen," she said, "I won't have you driving home in one of those; I mean it."

"I'm not driving home in it," he said. "Your brother and I are going on a trip in it." He put his arm around her and kissed her. "I don't know when we'll be back. Don't worry about us. There're a couple of things I want you to do--"