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believe,” Pruden said, flushing.
    “Believe it,” Madame Karitska told him firmly. “She will have long pale hair—really
very
pale, so light in color it is very near to white, and she is—how interesting!” Madame Karitska opened her eyes and smiled at him. “She will have considerable clairvoyant ability, Lieutenant.”
    “Good Lord,” he said mildly.
    “But before you meet her you will have a very near brush with death,” she went on, and her voice quickened. “Yes, yes, I see it, and it is very bad, you could be gravely harmed. There will be a Buddha-like figure, I cannot tell whether this is a living man or a statue. He wears reds and blues and he sits, and when you meet him you will be in terrible danger
from something unseen behind you.
”
    “Buddha?” he repeated skeptically. “It sounds rather exotic for my line of work.”
    She opened her eyes. “Then perhaps having been warned you will notice it more acutely,” she said in a stern voice. “It looms like a shadow over your whole future, over the girl, over your becoming Commissar of Police.”
    “Over my becoming
what?
”
    “Oh yes, you will go far,” she assured him. “But you must take care, you understand?” She smiled. “One hopes so, for I look forward to getting further acquainted with you, Lieutenant. And now if you will forgive me,” she said with a glance at her wrist watch, “I have an appointment in ten minutes.”
    Pruden rose and moved toward the door. As he reached it he heard a knock and, after a questioning glance at Madame Karitska, opened the door. A smallboy stood there with a dirty, tear-stained face. “
This
is your appointment?” he asked, amused.
    “He has lost his kitten,” she told him calmly. “You must not think, Lieutenant, that the loss of a kitten is not also a cosmic event. We hope, between us, to discover where he may find it.”

Chapter 5
    Madame Karitska opened her door to Lieutenant Pruden one early morning several weeks later. “I came on impulse, without calling,” he said. “Are you alone?” When she hesitated he rephrased this. “Can you be interrupted?”
    She nodded. “Of course, Lieutenant.”
    He came in, looking around him. “I met your young landlord on the curb putting out the garbage, and he said you always act as if someone’s with you, or shouldn’t I mention the impression you’ve given him?”
    “Consider it a small idiosyncrasy,” said Madame Karitska with a smile. “What can I do for you?”
    “As an opener you could tell me how in hell you look so cheerful mornings, and,” he added with a grin, “if you’re offering coffee I’ll take Turkish.”
    “Marvelous, you will soon begin to appreciate it!”Lighting a match under the carafe on the table she said, “I have the advantage over you of spending many years in the Far East and in eastern Europe as well. The reason for my sanguinity in the morning is both simple and complex: I have experienced much in the way of wise men and prophets.” Carefully she poured Turkish brew into tiny cups. “If psychologists and sociologists claim that we went from the Age of Anxiety into the Age of Alienation, then the next era—for survival, I assure you—must be the Age of Consciousness.”
    He laughed. “If you’re implying that none of us is conscious, Madame Karitska, I shall resent that very much.”
    She smiled at him. “Ah but actually, Lieutenant Pruden, almost every human being is totally sound asleep. We are sleep-walkers … Now what can I do for you, please?”
    He removed a small plastic bag from his jacket, turned it upside down over the coffee table, and delivered a cascade of silver rings to its surface. There were perhaps a dozen of them, all alike. Madame Karitska picked up one and examined it: its design was one of a black enamel seal encircled by crimson with a motto in Latin. Inside the ring were the initials D.H.L. ’78. She picked up another: its initials were G.A.M. ’78.
    “St.