"You must miss your children terribly," the squeaky voice clucked sympathetically.

"No kids. That was my one break in life."

"That is good."

"I'll say."

"For without a wife or children, a thief such as you will not be missed."

"Missed?"

The squeaky voice grew deep and sonorous, as if telling a story. "Men such as you were chosen by the pharaohs of Egypt for the important tasks of palace building. Men who would toil long days and nights, their efforts unbroken by thoughts of family."

Buzz Kuttner didn't like the way this was going, so he began backing out of the ill-lit room. The voice seemed to follow him. Now it seemed near his left ear, but that was impossible. There was no one there.

"And when their tasks were complete," the squeaky voice continued, "they could be disposed of without a second thought, taking the pharaoh's secrets with them."

"I don't know any secrets."

"You have entered the sanctum sanctorum of the emperor I serve."

"Emperor! You're a nut. Wait a minute, this is a nuthouse. Of course you're a nut."

"I am not a nut."

"This is twentieth-century America, and you're talking about pharaohs and emperors and secret palaces. Of course you're a nut. And this is an asylum. Some crazy kind of asylum, but an asylum just the same. I can't believe you got me so worked up over a pipe dream."

So great was Buzz Kuttner's relief that he started laughing. It was a nervous laughter, and he let it go on a long time.

He never felt the bladelike fingernail that slipped easily into his back between two lumbar vertebrae, severing his spinal cord like a soft strand of spaghetti.

Buzz Kuttner was still laughing when he collapsed on the hard floor in the grit of shattered concrete. The laugh became breathy, then trailed off into a long exhalation and ending in a rattle that sounded like a broken continuation of his laughter.