He looked at Ashkenazy, who shrugged elaborately.

"Four?" he croaked.

"Call it five," Anapol said. "Five percent."

"Five percent!" Sammy said, looking as though Anapol's meaty hand had slapped him.

"Five percent!" said Joe.

"To split between you."

"What!" Sammy leapt from his chair.

"Sammy." Joe had never seen his cousin so red in the face. He tried to remember if he had ever seen him lose his temper at all. "Sammy, five percent, even so, this could be talking about the hundreds of thousands of dollars." How many ships could be fitted out, for that, and filled with the lost children of the world? With enough money, it might not matter if the doors of all the world's nations were closed-a very rich man could afford to buy some island somewhere, empty and temperate, and build the damned children a country of their own. "Maybe the millions someday."

"But five percent, Joe. Five percent of something we created one hundred percent!"

"And owe to Jack and me one hundred percent," said Anapol. "You know, it wasn't so long ago a hundred dollars sounded like a lot of money to you boys, as I recall."

"Sure, sure," said Joe. "Okay, look, Mr. Anapol, I'm sorry for what I said about cheating. I think you are being very much square."

"Thank you," Anapol said.

"Sammy?"

Sammy sighed. "Okay. I'm in."

"Hold on a minute," Anapol said. "I'm not done. You get your radio royalty. And the credit I mentioned. And the raises. Hell, we'll raise George's pay, too, and happy to do it." Deasey tipped an imaginary hat to Anapol. "And cut you two in for five percent of the Moth character. There's just one condition."

"What is it?" Sammy asked warily.

"We can't have any more nonsense around here like we had on Friday. I've always thought you were taking this Nazi business too far, but we were making money and I didn't think I could really complain. But now we're putting a stop to it. Right, Jack?"

"Lay off the Nazis for a while, boys," Ashkenazy said. "Let Marty Goodman get the bomb threats." This was the publisher of Timely Periodicals, home of the Human Torch and the Submariner, both of whom were giving the Empire heroes a run for the money now in the antifascist sweepstakes. "All right?"

"What does this mean, 'lay off'?" Joe said. "You mean no fighting the Nazis at all?"

"Not a one."

Now it was Joe's turn to rise from his chair. "Mr. Anapol-"

"No, now listen, you two know I bear no goodwill toward Hitler, and I'm sure eventually we're going to have to deal with him, et cetera. But bomb threats? Crazy maniacs that live right here in New York writing me letters saying they're going to stave in my big fat Jewish head? That I don't need."

"Mr. Anapol-" Joe felt the ground falling away under his feet.

"We've got plenty of problems right here at home, and I don't mean spies and saboteurs. Gangsters, crooked cops. I don't know. Jack?"

"Rats," said Ashkenazy. "Bugs."

"Let the Escapist and the rest of'em take care of that sort of thing for a while."

"Boss-" Sammy said, seeing the blood drain from Joe's face.

"And what's more, I don't care what James Love feels personally, I know the Oneonta Woolens Company, the board of that company is a bunch of conservative, rock-rib Yankee gentlemen, and they are goddamned well not going to want to sponsor anything that's going to get them bombed, not to mention Mutual or NBC or whoever we end up taking this to."

"No one is going to get bombed!" Joe said.

"You were right once, young man," Anapol said. "That may be all the being right you get."

Sammy folded his thick arms across his broad chest, elbows out. "And so what if we don't agree to the condition?"

"Then you don't get any five percent of Luna Moth. You don't get the raise. You don't get a piece of the radio money."

"But we could still keep on doing our stuff. Joe and I could keep fighting those Nazis."

"Certainly," said Anapol. "I'm sure Marty Goodman would be more than happy to hire you two to lob grenades at Hermann Goring. But you'd be finished here."

"Boss," said Sammy, "don't do this."

Anapol shrugged. "Not up to me. It's up to you. You have an hour," he said. "I want to get this all squared away before we meet with the radio people, which we are doing over lunch today."

"I don't need an hour," Joe said. "The answer is no. Forget it. You are cowards, and you are weak, and no."

"Joe?" Sammy said, calming himself now, trying to take everything in. "You're sure?"

Joe nodded.

"That's it, then," said Sammy. He put his hand on the small of Joe's back, and they started out of the office.

"Mr. Kavalier," George Deasey said now, pulling himself up out of his chair. "Mr. Clay. A word. Excuse us, gentlemen?"

"Please, George," Anapol said, handing the editor the painting of Luna Moth. "Talk some sense into them."

Sammy and Joe followed Deasey out of Anapol's office and into the workroom.

"Gentlemen," Deasey said. "I apologize for this, but I feel another little speech coming on."

"There's no point," Sammy said.

"This one is aimed more at Mr. R., here, I think."

Joe lit a cigarette, blew out a long stream of smoke, looked away. He didn't want to hear it. He knew that he was being unreasonable. But for a year now, unreason-the steadfast and all-consuming persecution of a ridiculous, make-believe war against enemies he could not defeat, by a means that could never succeed-had offered the only possible salvation of his sanity. Let people be reasonable whose families were not held prisoner.

"There is only one sure means in life," Deasey said, "of ensuring that you are not ground into paste by disappointment, futility, and disillusion. And that is always to ensure, to the utmost of your ability, that you are doing it solely for the money."

Joe didn't say anything. Sammy laughed nervously. He was prepared to back Joe up, of course, but he wanted to make sure, insofar as you could ever be sure, that it was really the right thing to do. He was hungry to follow Deasey's advice-to follow any fatherly guidance that came his way-but at the same time, he hated the thought of conceding so decisively to the man's cynical view of everything.

"Because, Mr. K., when I look at the way you have our various costumed friends punching the lights out of Herr Hitler and his associates month after month, tying their artillery into pretzels and so forth, I sometimes get the feeling, well, that you may have, let's say, other ambitions for your work here."

"Of course I do," said Joe. "You know that."

"It makes me very sorry to hear," Deasey said. "This kind of work is a graveyard of every kind of ambition, Kavalier. Take my word for it. Whatever you may hope to accomplish, whether from the standpoint of art or out of… other considerations, you will fail. I have very little faith in the power of art, but I remember the flavor of that faith, if you will, from when I was your age; the taste of it on the back of my tongue. Out of respect for you and the graceful idiot I once was, I concede the point. But this." He nodded toward the drawing of Luna Moth, then expanded the gesture with a weary spiral of his hand to take in the offices of Empire Comics. "Powerless," he said. "Useless."

"I… I do not believe that," Joe said, feeling himself weaken as his own worst fears were given voice.

"Joe," Sammy said. "Think of what you could do with all the money they're talking about. Think of how many kids you could afford to bring over here. That's something real, Joe. Not just a comic book war. Not just getting a fat lip from some kraut in the IRT."

And that was the problem, Joe thought. Giving in to Anapol and Ashkenazy would mean admitting that everything he had done until now had been, in Deasey's phrase, powerless and useless. A waste of precious time. He wondered if it could possibly be simple vanity that made him want to refuse the offer. Then the image of Rosa came into his mind, sitting on her disordered bed, head cocked to one side, eyes wide, listening and nodding as he told her about his work. No, he thought. Regardless of what Deasey says, I believe in the power of my imagination. I believe-somehow, when saying this to the image of Rosa, it did not sound trite or overblown-in the power of my art.