Autumn of Eros and the Winter of Whoopee—that Edwina had obtained not only her darling children, but a method of earning more money than her dear, departed Daddy had ever imagined, even had he lived long enough to invest in Microsoft.

Her darling children ...

Edwina turned her back on the family portraits above the fireplace and returned her full attention to the framed photograph in her hands. She shook her head sadly. The smiles frozen in the instant of a camera's shutter click meant nothing. A photograph was a moment's illusion artificially preserved. The reality of the situation concerning her precious offspring had nothing at all to do with smiles.

"Why can't the two of you just get along?" she inquired peevishly of the glossy faces. "I'm not asking you to adore one another. I'm not even asking you to remember each other's birthdays. All I want is just one itsy-bitsy little indication that you can work together. And I don't mean simultaneously plotting each other's professional destruction. Good gods, I hope it would be limited to professional destruction only, but the way you two have been going for each other's throats lately, who knows? A little cooperation for your mutual benefit, to say nothing of cooperation for the benefit of the company: Is that so much to ask?"

Something behind one of the parlor walls went *ding!* This was followed by the sound rather like a passel of cats scratching madly in their litterboxes, but when Edwina went to the wall whence issued these noises and touched the spring catch that opened the desired panel, she revealed their true source, a flock of fountain pens rapidly scribbling away as if guided by unseen hands. There were twelve of them in all, though only two of them were working at the moment, transcribing a telephone conversation between Dov Godz and his older sister, Peez. Each one of the dozen pens was linked by suitably arcane spells to a piece of office equipment—be it telephone, fax machine, or any item of