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that odd quizzical expression, and then he produced that little phial of capsules, tiny little yellow things no bigger than rice-grains, and said, “This may be the answer. I hope it is.” And I said … God, I must have been drunk by then! I said, “If that’s the case, I’d like some.” And he said, “Okay, here you are. You deserve it more than most people.” And like a crazy fool I took it!
    In the rush to bring Billy, bleeding rivers, to the clinic (by taxi, and was he going to refund the fare? It had swallowed three pounds from Malcolm’s scanty weekly budget), he had had no time to reflect on that capsule and its possible side-effects. But there was that strange point Ruth had raised: how had he known that four godheads were crossing the street when deep snow muffled their tread?
    Briefly, however, he was distracted from worrying about that. The door of the casualty-examination room was fractionally ajar, and through it drifted a snatch of conversation: Nurse Rouse and Dr Campbell. He listened, hoping to catch some clue as to what had become of Billy.
    “Thank goodness they’ve gone!” From the nurse. “We’ll never get through the morning schedule at this rate.”
    “Don’t I know it! Jesus, if only … Why, what’s wrong?”
    Stiffly: “I don’t like to hear the Name taken in vain.”
    “Oh, no. Not you too! Since when have you been on the side of the book-burners, the self-appointed censors, the petty street-corner dictators?”
    “You have no proof!”
    “Proof? I’ve proved that a gang of them invaded the wards yesterday evening at what should have been the patients’ bedtime and marched around singing and begging. Everybody was furious, but there wasn’t anything they dared do. You know how they hit back if you cross them.”
    “Godheads aren’t like that! They’re ordinary decent people trying to put some proper standards back into our lives.”
    “You can say that, after seeing what they did to Mr Cohen?”
    “You heard what his friend said–he picked a quarrel deliberately!”
    “So what became of the injunction to turn the other cheek?”
    –Good question!
    In the privacy of his head, Malcolm applauded the doctor’s argument.
    But, a moment later, Campbell wearily changed the subject. “Speaking of Cohen, what did you do with him?”
    “Oh … Told him to lie down until we’ve seen the X rays. But I don’t think he’s seriously hurt. More shocked than anything.”
    “Yes, if there’s nothing on the plates tell him to go home, not to go to work until tomorrow, dome back if he feels at all giddy or unwell. Is his friend still here?”
    “I think so. Perhaps if he can wait until the X rays are ready he can see Mr Cohen safely home. I don’t think we could possibly spare an ambulance.”

    Rising fretfully, in need of a toilet, Malcolm heard what he had already heard when Nurse Rouse repeated it, and asked directions to a men’s room. She sent him down a long echoing corridor where there was a constant to-ing and fro-ing of staff and patients.
    –Poor woman! Shoulders uneven like that … Must have broken a collarbone when she was a kid, and it was neglected or badly set. And him, too, the man in the shabby jacket: the way he holds his arms over his belly … Ulcer. Yes, an ulcer.
    And came close to stopping dead in his tracks as he realised:
    –I don’t know these people. I never had any training in medicine. So how the hell…? Of course. I’ve seen the same before, haven’t I? Carter-Craig, who had to retire early from the first school I taught at: he used to hold his arms that way when his ulcer was plaguing him. And that boy I was at school with myself, Freddie Grice. His shoulders were uneven and when he grfew up he must have come to look pretty much like that woman. Funny I should think of him, though. Must be the first time in–what?–fifteen years.
    And, as he discovered he was able to make similar rational guesses about the other patients he passed,