Being a cataloguer, a librarian, a doorway oneself, is a sad profession. It demands a high level of loneliness for proficiency. People who have many friends cannot be good librarians. Saul knew this loneliness better than others: the entrance to his shop opened onto a popular square, filled with popular people who busied about in chatty well-dressed ways. He could see them as phantoms outside the leaded glass of his odd data shop. Sometimes he would take pictures of their blurred outlines through the glass and draw in the rest with dry erase markers which were still produced by penal camps in Georgia. Saul does almost one thing. Saul sells data to a niche audience. Many of the transactions which keep Saul in business occur outside of his purview. Subroutines, dependent intelligences, even foreigners, researchers, tax-deductible cults, spies and enemies all contact his rather formidable database through a maze of myriad channels and connections. II. ANY PERSON INTERACTION MANIFESTS ITSELF THROUGH RECOGNITION, SYMPATHY, AND WITNESS AS MUCH AS THROUGH IMPERSONATION, PERCEPTION, AND EXPLORATION. APPREHENSION OF CHARACTER IS PARTICIPATORY DESIGN. He seldom knows how much business is actually occurring. The shop hums with a bustle of hidden life, computers talking to each other, AI's beating the fuzzy logic hell out of their comrades. Once he had tried to destroy his mainframe by asking for a synonym for thesaurus. The walk-in crowd is small... there is little else to do. Inherited from his father, and his father before him, who spent all of his pittance to buy the aging microfilm and electronic data collection labeled "Other" at the New York Public Library, and then the famous "Extraneous" collection of the Library of Congress, the data now in his keeping is a virtual monopoly of irrelevant nicknacks from the beginning of recorded time. The collection is periodically updated by a biker named Mordechai O'Hennessy. Saul makes his money from small transaction fees. So small, in fact, that it is cheaper to pay for a continual connection to his database rather than store the data on your own. Check it out. Contact the man via any headset at Saul's Data Emporium, January 13th, 1972. Di Manes diverts to the Interstate, makes a halfhearted chicken run at a Greyhound whose driver doesn't even hit the horn (what is this?) then toggles back to full auto, giving up in disgust. The Q-ship zips and spins improbably across the flatlands like something Chuck Jones never had the nerve to draw. Di Manes cues up the mission log. "Where's the news?" "Try 31." "Fuzz. They've changed it again." La la, another 23-Baker. Single objective: elevated, soft, no evasive potential. Aw, not another billboard! Target to be illuminated in the K-band, visual confirmation required, substantial penalties for unsanctioned collateral impact. Offer void in Alaska and U.S. Virgins. Prices shown do not include radio and paint. Jeepers. "Why do they do that?" "Keeps you anxious and disoriented, preventing early onset of Alzheimers." "Wow, cable cares. But what's that, now?" "That is what we call a TEST PATTERN." "Cool." After a while Boris got up and studied the land as it moved along below them, working out best guesses at course and speed. They were heading north by west, which was not optimal but posed no difficulties. For present purposes, the Z axis meant more than X or Y. He opened his map book, laid out a few plots and ran some rough numbers. They were good numbers. They were just fine. Natasha opened the vent a touch to spill a bit of heat. "We go down now, Boris," she assured him, "so as to faithfully execute Fearless Leader's master plan." And it all seemed so peaceful.