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keep a file on all this in my apartment safe. When you’re finished with the tape, return it to me. From then on, we’ll discuss this only in the open or in a closed area where the possibility of sharing is minimal.”
    “Understood.”
    “Tomorrow morning, or rather this morning, I’ll get Lieutenant Oliver on the flasher and make arrangements to get into Harris’ apartment. We’ll take IMP samples. And I’ll claim the corpus. Can you do the PM?”
    His face went suddenly white. “I can, but don’t ask me, Nick. Please don’t ask me!”
    I was shocked by his vehemence.
    “All right,” I said gently. “You don’t have to. But I haven’t done an autopsy in more than ten years. I’m not up.”
    “Mary!” he burst out. “Mary Bergstrom can do it! She does them all the time. She likes to do them.”
    “What will you tell her?”
    He thought a moment.
    “That the New York Peace Department requested our cooperation because the case demands a transmission electron microscope, an energy-dispersion analyzer, and a lot of other hardware they don’t have.”
    “You lie very well.” I nodded approvingly. He grinned. “Will she ask questions?”
    “Not Mary. She’ll do what I tell her.”
    “Fine. Tell her to get everything on color tape. She’ll have the corpus later today. I’m going to sleep. You keep the cassette until you run the voiceprint. I’ll call you after I’ve spoken to Lieutenant Oliver in the morning.”
    He locked the tape cartridge in his office safe. Then he opened the door. I put a hand on his arm.
    “Paul, that beachhouse of Angela’s out on the coast. ...” “Yes?”
    “She told me she doesn’t own it, that she borrowed it from a friend. But she moved around in it like she’s lived there all her life. ’ ’ “Oh?”
    “There’s a glassed-in gazebo down on the sand. And a small stable. I saw a stallion and at least one em server. The whole thing has got to cost at least a hundred thousand new dollars, plus upkeep. On Angela’s rank-rate?” I pondered a moment. “Paul, does the Section have a contact in that area who could make quiet inquiries and find out who actually owns the house?”
    “Sure,” he said promptly. “I know just the em. An attorney in Oakland. DIVLAW let one of his clients plead nolo contendere in a case of mislabeling chlordiazepoxide. It might have been an honest packaging error, but I doubt it. Anyway, they ran a good recall, and no one got hurt. But if we had fought it, the client could have drawn a five-year reconditioning sentence instead of a ten-thousand-dollar fine. That lawyer will do anything we ask.”
    “Take care of it. ‘I know I can rely on your loyalty and discretion,’ ” I quoted solemnly. He laughed.
    Paul went over to talk to Mary Bergstrom. I went back to my apartment, to sleep. I didn’t need a Somnorific. I had an REM dream of an ef galloping a black stallion. She had a death’s-head.
X-4
    I awoke irritably at 0700 when my radio alarm clicked on to the strains of “Esperanti Street Songs.” We were enduring one of the periodic Esperanto revivals, although linguists had proved—to my satisfaction at least—that the world had more to lose from a universal language than from a profusion of national tongues. The only valid universal languages were music, scientific symbology, and gold.
    I did twenty minutes of slow hatha asanas, followed by twenty minutes of meditation. I showered, shaved, used my ultrasonic tooth strigil. I applied light pancake makeup, a rosy shade; my skin was rather sallow. Just a touch of lip rouge. An eyebrow darkener. My hair was still black, but my eyebrows were beginning to go gray. Probably an enzyme deficiency. I dressed while drinking the day’s first glass of chilled Smack, laced with a packet of high-potency vitamin concentrate. I also ate two probisks. They tasted as you might expect: anise-flavored sawdust.
    As usual, I arrived at my office before any of my three secretaries. Each was