"No thanks," Tinbane said, his mouth embarrassingly full. "And don't watch me; you know how I can't stand to have anyone around when I'm having victual momentum, even if they can't see me. They might hear me--chewing."

He could feel her there; he sensed her resentment.

"You never take me anywhere," Bethel said presently.

"Okay," he agreed, "I never take you anywhere." He added, "And if I did, it wouldn't be there, to hear about religion." We have enough religious nuts in Los Angeles anyhow, he thought. I wonder why Roberts didn't think of making a pilg here a long time ago. I wonder why just now... of all possible times.

Earnestly, Bethel said, "Do you think he's a fake? That there's no such state as Udi?"

He shrugged. "DNT is a potent drug." Maybe it was so. In any case it didn't matter; not to him, anyhow. "Another unexpected rebirth," he said to his wife. "At Forest Knolls, naturally. They're never watching those minor cemeteries; they know we'll handle it--with city equipment." Anyhow, Tilly M. Benton was safely at the L.A. receiving hospital, thanks to Seb Hermes. Within a week she would be disgorging like the rest of them.

"Eerie," Bethel said, still at the doorway to the kitchen.

"How do you know? You never saw it happen."

"You and your damn job," Bethel said. "Don't take it out on me, just because you can't stand it. If it's so awful, quit. Fish or cut bait, as the Romans said."

"I can handle the job; matter of fact, I've already put in for a reassignment." What's hard, he thought, is you. "Let me disgorge in private, will you?" he said angrily. "Go off; read the 'pape."

"Will you be affected?" Bethel asked. "By Ray Roberts coming here to the Coast?"

"Probably not," he said. He did, after all, have a regular beat. Nothing ever seemed to change _that_.

"They won't have you out with your popgun protecting him?"