The scrawny little dink behind Playmate kept trying to peek around him. He never stopped talking. He strengthened his case constantly with remarks like, "Is that him, Play? He ain't much. From the way you talked I thought he was gonna be ten feet tall."

I said, "I am, kid. But I'm not on duty right now." Cypres Prose had a nasal edge on a cracking soprano voice that I found extremely irritating. I wanted to clout him upside the head and tell him to speak Karentine like a man.

Oh, boy! After closer appraisal I saw that Prose wasn't as old as I'd thought.

Now I knew how he'd survived the Cantard. By being too young to have gone.

Playmate put on a big-eyed, pleading face. "He's as bright as the sun, Garrett, but not real long on social skills."

The boy managed to wriggle past Playmate's brown bulk. Ah, this child was definitely the sort who got himself pounded regularly because he just couldn't get his brilliance wrapped around the notion of keeping his mouth shut. He just naturally had to tell large, slow-witted, overmuscled, swift-tempered types that they were wrong. About whatever it was they were wrong about. What would not matter.

I observed, "And the truth shall bring you great pain."

"You understand." Playmate sighed.

"But don't hardly sympathize." I grabbed the kid as he tried to weasel his million freckles into the small front room. "Not with somebody who just can't make the connection between cause and effect where people are concerned." I shifted my grip, brought the kid's right arm up behind his back. Eventually he recognized a connection between pain and not holding still.

The Goddamn Parrot decided this was the ideal moment to begin preaching, "I know a girl who lives in a shack... " Playmate's friend turned red.

I said, "Why don't we go into my office?" My office is a custodian's closet with delusions of grandeur. Playmate is big enough to clog the doorway all by himself. We could manage the kid in there. If I dragged him inside first.