THE NATURAL STRANGER :: BOOK 1, "THE AEON" :: CHAPTER 13, EPISODE 5

I keep hearing people whisper Silk fronted for some low-intensity reptile office when all he had designs on was money. Wally and others let him operate as a coal mine canary, a means of testing the system for cracks - if he'd shown inklings of success, the Martyns would have loaned him their lowest echelon acts who needed the publicity... if not, Silk would be hung out to dry. As it turned out, however, Toggenburg had an escape hatch of his own... at the first whiff of resistance, he folded his hand into that of more-wired Southern Californios doing more or less the same thing at Monterey "for the good and harmony of the community," Silk's last press release observed. I don't even know if or how he got paid off... I certainly didn't, beyond my advance from Wally... but the weather was nice, scenery beautiful, people (aside from Silk) reminding me of pagan Romans in the Golden Age between Trajan and Marcus Aurelius.

Libby lost her Twenty Questions crown under circumstances barbaric, in and of themselves. Placed in the middle booth, she waited as an intense young man in a blue suit and thick, black- rimmed glasses raced through the protocol as if reading from a script... "Is the Enigma an abstraction?" (Bing, $5!) "Is it a creation of the internationalist web? ($10) "Is it supported by scientists, intellectuals and elements of the judiciary?" ($15) "Did its original supporters include the physicist Edward Teller and former President Truman, whose current feelings are less favorable?" (Bing, $20) "Did Herman Kahn believe it might arise in the aftermath of a third world war?" (Bing! $25!) Is the Enigma... World Government?" (Bing! Bing! Bing!)

And while the young man was escorted to Prize Central to dispose of his hundred and five dollars, stagehands waved Libby off and pressed consolation prizes of Edith Statlin's Cookbook and the Illustrated Atlas of the Human Body into her arms.

"That man was there to set me up," she said. "They knew I would win, and that I'd take them for a lot of money... so they brought a ringer in.

"What kind of imbecile would cash out at a hundred and five dollars?"

Junior tends to see rational value reflected in the estimation of experts. "If there is oil," he said, "we must take advantage of it before others take it away from us," aligning himself with the higher production faction at OPEC... the Saudis, mainly... against Mexico. "Unless extraordinary circumstances arise, your country will not invade Mexico. Costazul, however, is nothing... a fly to swat if oil should be needed." Like bugs to a picnic the KM followed... according to its Captain... the failed star of a nonexistent lamp. In its wake, failed, half-completed hotels sprout graffiti... "sin Petroleo, sin polio y sin Pinocchio!"