'I know,' Eric said, irritably, feeling chagrin. 'With everything else on my mind I forgot momentarily; that's all.'

'Maybe it's a composer. As in the days of Kennedy; maybe it's Pablo Casals. God, he would be old. Maybe it's Beethoven. Hmm.' She pretended to ponder. 'By God, I do think he said something about that. Ludwig van somebody; is there a Ludwig van Somebodyelse other than—'

'Christ,' Eric said angrily, weary of being teased. 'Stop it.'

'Don't pull rank; you're not so great. Keeping one creepy old man alive century after century.' She giggled her low, sweet, and very intimate warm giggle of delighted mirth.

Eric said, with as much dignity as he could manage, 'I also maintain TF&D's entire work force of eighty thousand key individuals. And as a matter of fact, I can't do that from Mars, so I resent all this. I resent it very much.' You included, he thought bitterly to himself.

'What a ratio,' Phyllis said. 'One artiforg surgeon to eighty thousand patients – eighty thousand and one. But you have your team of robants to help you ... perhaps they can make do while you're absent.'

'A robant is an it that stinks,' he said, paraphrasing T. S. Eliot.

'And an artiforg surgeon,' Phyllis said, 'is an it that grovels.'

He glowered at her; she sipped her drink and showed no contrition. He could not get to her; she simply had too much psychic strength for him.

* * *

The omphalos of Wash-35, a five story brick apartment building where Virgil had lived as a boy, contained a truly modern apartment of their year 2055 with every detail of convenience which Virgil could obtain during these war years. Several blocks away lay Connecticut Avenue, and, along it, stores which Virgil remembered. Here was Gammage's, a shop at which Virgil had bought Tip Top comics and penny candy. Next to it Eric made out the familiar shape of People's Drugstore; the old man during his childhood had bought a cigarette lighter here once and chemicals for his Gilbert Number Five glass-blowing and chemistry set.