On the keyboard of the rhetorizor he vigorously, with deliberation, punched two new semantic units. _Squirrel_. And--_genocide_.

The machine, presently, declared, "The funniest thing happened to me on my way to the bank, yesterday. I happened to pass through Central Park, and you know how--"

Incredulous, staring at the machine, Joe said, "_You_ passed through Central Park yesterday? Central Park's been gone forty years."

"Joe, it's just a machine." Cloak on, she returned momentarily to kiss him goodnight.

"But the thing's insane," he protested. "And it said 'funny' when I fed in _genocide_. Did you--"

"It's reminiscing," Colleen said, trying to explain it to him; she knelt briefly, touched his face with her fingers and peered at him, eye to eye. "I love you," she said, "but you're going to die; you're going to rupture yourself working. Through my office at the Agency I'll file a formal petition to Brose, asking if you can take two weeks off. I have something for you, a gift; one of my leadies dug it up near my villa; legally within the boundaries of my demesne, as per that recent little interchange my leadies had with those of my north neighbor's."

"A book." He felt a flicker within him, the peaked flame of life.

"An especially good book, the real prewar thing, not a Xeroxed copy. Know what of?"

"_Alice in Wonderland_." He had heard so much about that, had always wanted to own it and read it.

"Better. One of those outrageously funny books from the 1960s--in good shape: both front and back covers intact. A self-help book; _How I Tranquilized Myself by Drinking Onion Juice_ or some such thing. _I Made a Million Dollars by Leading Two-And-a-Half Lives For the FBI_. Or--"