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Show Acting Alone pa g e 414 open around them in a flaming vacuum of full-throttle death. All these scores of dead young bodies, eyeballs exploded, pecked, clawed, sucked out, tongues lolling, necks twisted around 180 degrees, empty faces staring through the television monitor at Elder Cicerone. There is but a single individual left more or less alive to wander the flattened aspen grove, toting his video equipment, his porta-pak, his creepie-peepie, cackling like a madman. Escaped to tell thee. Streckfus. The Elder awoke. He must have slipped into a momentary doze. He'd been dreaming of the plain of Megido. Then he sat up, it having been revealed to his dreaming mind precisely whence his imperious godlet had been directing his attention all along: to the young men who remain more or less alive on this earth, with whose lives he still intermingled his own today. Elder Cicerone's godlet told him, "There is the direction, and that is the quarter from which I want my conciliation and libation to be drawn." It became clear in a rush of anticipated relief. At least he knew whence his peace of mind and his full practical business efficiency might be ransomed. The Elder was visited now in his mind by the touching image of how young Axelrad had looked that first day back in Chicago. Trying so hard to keep his voice and body deadpan and cool as befits a young intellectual, but his face nevertheless glowing brighter by the minute with his deepest heart-blood, Axelrad had described this "great big huge acquaintance" of his to the visiting lecturer from the real world of business. In order to gather extra in-depth poop on Sammy that no mere conventional on-paper intelligence probe could provide, to see if the two boys' earlier relationship had been as, shall we |