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chapters, Giselle?”
    “Whether or not he has any special powers. If he has one, maybe there are others. “
    “You mean can he travel at superlight speed? That sort of thing?”
    “Exactly. But there are other things, too. “
    “Such as?”
    “Well, we both know he can talk to animals, right?”
    “Hold on. He says he can talk to animals, but how do we know that?”
    “Has he ever lied to you?”
    “That’s not the point. He may believe he can talk to them but that’s not the same as fact. Nor is anything else he says that we can’t verify. “
    “I believe him. “
    “That’s your prerogative. “
    “Anyway, I’m going to try to find out whether he can or not. If he can, maybe he’s telling the truth about everything else. “
    “Maybe and maybe not. But how do you propose to find out?”
    “I’m going to ask him to speak with some animals whose history we know something about, and to tell me what they said to him. “
    “Well, all we have are the cats. “
    “That’s a start. But they all came from a pound, and we know very little about them. And cats never say much anyway. I’ve got a better idea. “
    We stopped at the amphitheater. “This is where we get off. ” I thought Klaus would go on in, but he stopped, too. I glanced at my watch. “So what’s your idea?”
    “I want to take him to the zoo. “
    “Giselle! You know we can’t let you take prot to the zoo. Or anywhere else. “
    “No, I mean make it an outing for all the patients in Wards One and Two. Or any others you think might want to go along. ” I heard Villers grunt. Whether it was a positive or a negative response, I couldn’t tell.
    “Look, we’ve got to get to this meeting. Let me think about it. “
    “Okay, boss. But you know it’s a good idea. ” And off she went, half walking, half running, presumably to find prot. Villers stared after her.
    I didn’t pay much attention at the executive committee meeting, which had to do with ways to trim the budget in the wake of government cutbacks for treatment and research. I was thinking about prot’s alleged “superhuman” abilities. What had he really done that was so amazing? True, he knew a lot about astronomy, but so did Dr. Flynn and many others. He somehow managed to get from his room to Bess’s under our very noses five years ago. But that could have been some kind of hypnotic trick or simple inattention on our part. The only really inexplicable talent he possessed was his ability to “see” UV light, but even that had not been rigorously tested. None of these “powers” required an extraterrestrial origin. In any case, my chief concern was with Robert, and not prot.
    When the budget meeting was over Klaus stopped me in the hall. “Ve should get a cut of her book, ” he whispered.
    Owing to prot’s influence, perhaps, I decided to have lunch in Ward Two. Betty and a couple of the other nurses joined us.
    Everyone waited until I sat down. Prot took his place at the end of the table and all eyes were on him as he dug into his vegetables. He refused to eat any of the hot dogs, of course, as did some of his closest followers. He also declined the lime gelatin, saying he could “smell the flesh” in it. Frankie, who was already considerably overweight, eagerly relieved them of the leftovers, gobbling them down to the accompaniment of various bodily noises.
    I glanced around the table at these unfortunate souls, some of whom had been here most of their lives, and tried to imagine what their worlds must be like. Russell, for example, though much improved from his Christ-like delusions of five years ago, was still unable to engage in normal conversation, preferring instead to quote endless passages from the Bible. I couldn’t begin to get inside his head and imagine a life so limited, so joyless.
    And Bert. What a frustrating existence, an eternity of worry and sorrow. What was it about his brain that precluded his dealing with his undeterminable loss and