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searching for the perennial population of gypsies and hitchers camping just beyond the city limits. But everything was quiet, nothing showed. Today’s world doesn’t shut down at night, but it watches from behind half-closed eyelids.
    I didn’t really want to talk to Curman, and he had said just about all he had to say to me. But he didn’t like the silence, and he was easy enough in his mind to break it instead of putting up with it.
    â€œQuiet night,” he said.
    â€œAll the little mice are home in bed,” I said. “Overloaded. Zapped out when their sets switched off. Network’s contribution to bringing down the crime rate. More effective than the S.S.”
    â€œI thought it was the people who haven’t got E-links who commit all the crimes,” he said.
    I didn’t bother to respond to that. The exchange was pretty meaningless anyhow.
    â€œYou know Valerian well?” he asked.
    â€œNever met him.”
    He glanced sideways at me then, his face showing his surprise.
    â€œI thought—” he began, and then abandoned the sentence, not sure what he had thought. He tried again. “He talked as if he knew you. And you talk as if you knew him.”
    â€œOh,” I said, lazily, “we know one another. We just never met. We have this kind of mutual understanding. I think.” I was willing to let it lie there. He had been content to let me wonder what the hell was what when he first rang my doorbell. Now I was willing to let him stay puzzled for awhile.
    I inspected his profile from the corners of my eyes. His face had tightened slightly. Maybe he wanted to ask questions but didn’t like to drop his act. He had his image to think of.
    He settled for silence. We were too close to home for him to get the whole story. Valerian would be waiting. He drew away from me slightly, maybe because I wasn’t what he’d expected.
    Valerian’s palace was at the top of a long shallow rise, along a private road through a small wood. The gates were pretty but I was willing to bet a lot that the tasteful aspect of the layout discreetly concealed some very effective equipment for discouraging ramblers. Even in the dark I could see that the gardens were pure kitsch—but yesterday’s kitsch always becomes today’s vanity. This place was something entirely disconnected from the reality of contemporary life: an alternative dimension, with its own cocoon of space-time and sense of values.
    The doors of the underground garage were oak outside and good clean steel inside. They shut with a quiet firmness.
    â€œDon’t make too much noise,” said Curman, as we got out and shut the car doors. “Mr. Valerian appreciates discretion.”
    â€œHe receives all his visitors this way?” I queried.
    â€œOnly when the mood takes him.”
    The mood, apparently, had taken him pretty suddenly. My guess was that it had taken him within minutes of Ray Angeli getting knocked over, and had built up to some fairly monstrous proportions. I didn’t expect to find Velasco Valerian at his best.
    We went upstairs, into the dark corpse of the house. Curman turned on a couple of stair-lights so we could find our way, but it was all very discreet. In the capstacks, light is harsh and glaring, stripping all situations naked. But here it was muted. Valerian probably liked to live inside a cloak of shadows.
    He was waiting for me in his library. It was a beautiful room with bookshelves instead of walls and big bookcases forming a cross in the middle. Eight or ten thousand books, all old—the legacy of a century of more-or-less mindless acquisition on the part of Valerian’s immediate forefathers, carefully constructing an image. They could never have read the books—not even a tiny fraction—but that wasn’t important. Like the black car, another of the obscene gestures of pure wealth: the acquisition of purposeless property and its