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Show Acting Alone Page 357 in knowing that at least he was no national figure. The liberal humanists were anything but new on the national scene, and had, of course, lost their grip on the administration of anything worth administering on a national level last November. So it must be some relatively minor-league, perhaps corporate administration being represented by this hyperambitious devil-man, Axelrad's father-figure's arch-nemesis. Perhaps the Councillor of the Parable of the Double-Pronged Earthly and Unearthly Good was working from within Mr. Cicerone's own blurry company. Perhaps Mr. Cicerone had at least one colleague who was out to liquidate him and his considerable assets. Yet, one could never overestimate Mr. Cicerone's own personal power, either. God only knew the extent of this man's influence, or that of his» associates with whom he shared amicable relationships. The very altar of this chapel itself could be located right on top of some ineffable, Cicerone-controlled synapse of some immense ganglia-like system of intercontinental death- and shitstorm-sensors. When the firebomb or the alarm clock or the mousetrap or the bag of cowshit or whatever went off in that flower vase, it could jostle just the wrong silicone chip and motivate a retaliatory or even first nuclear strike by - - Which? Whom? Your assignment, Axelrad, your choice: scare a few poor old unsexed, unwanted women with a simple wad of jismy tissue paper floating among their fresh-cut irises; or cause the vaporization of the earth's surface, the ignition of its atmosphere. Get over to that nun. |
