"Do you know her?" Pete asked.

"Never saw her before." Pausing, Joe Schilling straightened his wrinkled, old-fashioned necktie, smoothed his vest. "Miss," he said, walking toward the girl and smiling, "can I assist you?"

"Perhaps," the red-headed girl said in a soft shy voice. She seemed self-conscious; glancing about her, not meeting Schilling's intent gaze, she murmured, "Do you have any records by Nats Katz?"

"Good grief no," Schilling said. He turned around and said to Pete, "My day's ruined. A pretty girl comes in and asks for a Nats Katz record." In chagrin, he walked back to Pete.

"Who's Nats Katz?" Pete asked.

The girl, roused by amazement from her shyness, said, "You've never heard of Nats Katz?" Clearly, she could not believe it. "Why he's on TV every night; he's the greatest recording star of all time!"

Pete said, "Mr. Schilling here does not sell pops. Mr. Schilling sells only ancient classics." He smiled at the girl. It

was hard, with the Hynes Gland operation, to assess a person's age, but it seemed to him that the red-headed girl was quite young, perhaps no more than nineteen. "You should excuse Mr. Schilling's reaction," Pete said to her. "He's an old man and set in his habits."

Schilling grated, "Come on, now. I just don't like popular ballad-belters."

"Everybody's heard of Nats," the girl said, still indignant. "Even my mother and father, and they're distinctly fnool. Nats' last record, Walkin' the Dog, has sold over five thousand copies. You're both really strange people. You're real fnools, for real." Now she became shy again. "I guess I better go. So long." She started toward the door of the shop.

"Wait," Schilling said in an odd tone, starting after her. "Don't I know you? Haven't I seen a news-wire picture of you?"

"Maybe," the girl said.

Schilling said, "You're Mary Anne McClain." He turned to Pete. "This is the third child of the woman you met today. It's synchronicity, her coming in here; you recall Jung's and Wolfgang Pauli's theory of the acausal connective principle." To the girl, Schilling said, "This man is Bindman for your area, Mary Anne. Meet Peter Garden."