"Maybe we'll go up and look.”

"Look at what?" she said.

"The terrain. Get the feel of it. Just to see. He's telling everyone. Maine or else. Not that I'd commute, obviously. But just to see. Three or four weeks. He'll get it out of his system and we'll come back. Life as before, the same old grind.”

"Maine.”

"You're right, you know, Pammy old kid. It does have a kind of hewn strength. Sort of unbreakable, unlike Connecticut. I like hearing it.”

"Maine.”

"Say it, say it.”

"Maine," she said. "Maine.”

Lyle saw his number on die enunciator board. He went to one of the booths along the south wall, reaching for the phone extended by a clerk.

"Buy five thousand Motors at sixty-five.”

"GM.”

"There's more behind it.”

He put down the phone and walked over to post 3. An old friend, McKechnie, crossed toward him at an angle. They passed without sign of recognition. Sporadically over the next several hours, as Lyle moved to different parts of the floor, traded in the garage annex, conversed with people at his booth, he thought of something that hadn't entered his mind in a great many years. It was the feeling that everyone knew his thoughts. He couldn't recall when this suspicion had first occurred to him. Very early on, obviously. Everyone knew his thoughts but he didn't know any of theirs. People on the floor were moving more quickly now. An electric cross-potential was in the air, a nearly headlong sense of revel and woe. On the board an occasional price brought noise from the floor brokers, the specialists, the clerks. Lyle watched the stock codes and the stilted figures below them, the computer spew.