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world. When Norwood went, who cried at UNAC? All you heard was the haemorrhage shot 'round the world. So they shook out some expandable patsies and then they were right in there pitching again, talking about the increased effect on the goal attainment curve and all that other vocabulary they have to kiss it and make it well with. Scared green for the appropriation; scared to death they picked the wrong voodoo in school. But they're safe. They'd be sick if they realized it, but the whole world's like they are even if it would turn their stomachs to believe it.
    "Christ, yes, they're safe. It's fat, fat, fat in the world, and bucks coming out of everybody's ears; spend it quickly, before the damn economy does what it did in the seventies and we have to redesign whole industries to get rich again. Smart isn't 'Can you do it, is it good to do?' Smart is
    'Can you make 'em believe what you're doing is real?' And real is 'Can you get financing for it?' "
    Michaelmas sat very still, sharing Watson's angle of blind vision down the aisle and being careful not to do anything distracting. He had learned long ago never to stop anyone.
    Watson was unstoppable. "Norwood's up there breathing and feeling in that megabuck beauty shop of Limberg's and suspecting there's a God who loves him. I know Norwood— hell, so do you. Nice kid, but ten years from now he'll be endorsing a brand of phone. The point is, right now he's on that mountaintop with all that glory ringing in him, but that doesn't make him real to his bosses and it doesn't make him real to the little folks in the parlour. What makes him real is Limberg says he's real and Limberg's got not one but two good voodoo certificates. Christ on a crutch, I've got half a mind to kill Norwood all over again—on the air, Larry, live from beautiful Switzerland, ladies and gentlemen, phut splat in glorious hexacolor 3D, and let him be real all over every God-damned dining-table in the world. Ten years from now, he'd thank me for it."
    Michaelmas sat quiet.
    Watson swung his head up and grinned suddenly, to show he was kidding about any part that Michaelmas might object to. But he could not hold the expression very long. His eyes wandered, and he jerked his head towards Cam-pion. "He really asleep?"
    Michaelmas followed his glance. "I believe so. I don't think he'd relax his mouth like that if he weren't."
    "You catch on." Watson looked nakedly into Michael-mas's face with the horrid invulnerability of the broken. "I don't have any legs left," he explained. "Not leg legs— inside legs. Sawed 'em off myself. So I took in a fast young runner. Hungry, but very hot and a lot of voodoo in his head.
    Watch out for him, Larry. He's the meanest person I've ever met in my life. Surely no men will be born after him. My gift to the big time. Any day now he's going to tell me I can go home to the
    'sixties. Galatea's revenge. And I'll believe him."
    Michaelmas couldn't be quite certain of how his own face looked. In his ear, Domino had been telling him : "As you can imagine, I'm getting all three sets of pulse and respira-tion data from your area, so there's considerable garbling. But my evaluation is that Campion hasn't surrendered consciousness for a moment."
    Watson had been clenching at his stomach with one hand. Now he put his drink down and got up to go to the lavatory. Campion continued to half-lie in his seat, his expression slack and tender.
    Michaelmas sat smiling a little, quizzically.
    Domino said with asperity: "Watson's right about one thing. He can't hack it any more. That was a classic maniacal farrago, and it boils down to his not being able to understand the world. It wasn't necessary to count the contradictions after the first one."
    It was extremely difficult for Michaelmas to subvocalize well enough to activate his throat microphone without also making audible grunting sounds. He had never liked strain-ing his body, and the equipment was implanted in him only because he needed it in