Pressure, pressure. When I get back from delivering the kids to school, my day goes into overload mode. The office contains me, squeezes me, overloads me.
        The fax machine seems demonically possessed. Too many things are snaking out of it today, everything from random pizza advertisements to an absurd request from National Taxation Research asking me to estimate the payroll for Udamana Holdings for a date seven years in the future. It seems I have a statutory duty to give the tax people an answer, though my reading of the small print is that any answer will do, unless it is "maliciously distorted in a manner designed to sabotage the statistical intent of the survey".
        On top of that, the people from the landscape care company who were supposed to come early in the morning to spruce up the Moss Mansion's grounds have failed to arrive. The man who runs the company is in hospital following a car crash. The landscape care company's workers have not been paid recently and are refusing to move. Can I get a replacement company to come here at short notice? It seems not. And there are other matters to deal with, involving telephone messages and e-mail. I regret the time lost taking the kids to school.
        The Zudadera work cannot be delayed, so I work as best I can on my web of lies, trying to think about the future in which manifest incompetence ("I didn't realize that") will be my best defense against legal guilt.
        My stress is nearing its peak when Iola comes to the office door with a laden tray, and suggests that I need some time out.
        "It's almost ten o'clock," she says. "Why don't you take a break? It's sunny out, you could sit in the Inner Garden."
        This sounds nice to me, so I retreat to that hideaway with the tray and its platter of goodies which Iola has provided for me, which includes five (count them, five!) of the chocolate biscuits which she usually hides away from me. I suppose this is her way of saying sorry about that stupid fuss about Chelooza supposedly invading us after midnight.
        It is nice to sit in the sun, which we haven't really seen for a while because of all the rain. And, given the amount of time I might one day spend in jail, sitting in the sun right now is a good thing to do.
        Chelooza did not trespass into our house under cover of darkness, but she has been here in the Inner Garden again. Baby Huppy's squiffer cushion testifies to that. Or perhaps the cushion is left over from yesterday's visit. I suppose it's not entirely dignified, but I borrow the cushion for myself, and it certainly adds to my comfort.
        It's while I'm indulging myself in chocolate biscuits that I become aware of someone standing at the entrance to the Inner Garden. It's a man, heavy in blue, silent as a piece of cheese. Chobber, the local cop. Our assigned patrolman.
        I glance at my watch. It's ten, precisely. Ten in the morning. Chobber, then, fits Melshu's prophecy.
        "He will come at ten in the morning and he will tell you your death."
        But I do not imagine for a moment that Chobber is here to fulfill an act of prophecy. Nothing as serious as death has brought Chobber here, surely.
        It's possible that Chobber is here to follow up my complaint about the threatening messages I've received. But I rather doubt it. With no obvious suspects in sight, it's all too easy to put the menace messages in the too hard basket. Chobber is more likely to pursue a case which has a better chance of a payoff.
        At a guess, Chobber is here to question me about the latest allegations concerning the twins, whatever those allegations might be. Last time they were accused of pilfering from unattended bags at a nightclub. Probably this time it is more of the same.
        Although I know that Chobber is a good cop, and although I appreciate that (in a sense) we're lucky to have him assigned to our neighborhood, I can't say that I like him. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that he has been trying, for the last couple of years, to get both Tanto and Helena thrown into jail.
        Not that kids go to jail (technically speaking). But the institutions that Chobber has in mind for them are the practical equivalents of jail. And, although I am fully aware of the fact that, on more than one occasion, the twins have transgressed across the boundaries of the permissible, I really believe that Chobber has been taking too much of a hard line. After all, even Tanto's famous fire, by far and away the most serious of these incidents, did not result in the loss of human life.
        Maybe Chobber is here to reopen the case of the Hengooli Park incident, the one in which Tanto and some of his friends beat up a homeless person.
        The aftermath of that sublethal episode saw Chobber become the hunter and me become the defender of the prey. (At the time, what irritated me more than anything was Tanto's steadfast refusal to take the hunt seriously.)
        My working assumption, then, is that Chobber is here to take another shot at convicting Tanto and Helena. Consequently, in this confrontation, my priority has to be to protect the twins. This is the most important thing for me: to keep my children from the clutches of the law. I know that they are seriously delinquent. But I am their father. And I can do a better job of bringing them up than can the supervisors of the world of official cages. And, in any case, I think the worst of the trouble is behind us now.
        As I'm thinking about it, Chobber (who perhaps has been waiting for me to rise from my seat, which I have no intention of doing) enters the Inner Garden. A little tentatively, I think. Perhaps Chobber is one of those who believes in the existence of the gorgel. With my thoughts full of Hengooli Park, I brace myself to confront Chobber, rising as he approaches, drawing myself up to my full height.
        "Good morning," says Chobber.
        "A very busy morning," I say. "I have a big business negotiation scheduled for today."
        A lie, but "today" gives me an urgency which "Friday" will not. And, as one of the training videos says, there are times when undersignalling your own pressure levels can be an error.
        "This won't take long," says Chobber. "All I need to know is where you were last month, on the seventeenth."
        "Why?" I ask, taken aback by this completely unexpected question.
        What happened on the seventeenth? Planes dropped bombs, people got married, snakes shed their skins, spam spermed through the Internet and so forth, but I can't recall that I did anything at all on the seventeenth, unless that was the day on which I inadvertently dropped and smashed Iola's precious cut glass fruit bowl.
        "You don't deny it," says Chobber.
        In context, this statement does not seem to make any sense. Even so, Chobber succeeds in rattling me. One thing is clear by now. On this occasion, Chobber's target is neither Tanto nor Helena. Rather, Chobber is after me.
        As I am entirely innocent of any infringements of the law, apart from speeding, jaywalking, cheating on my taxes and fraudulently concealing the mounting insolvency of Udamana Holdings (crimes which are highly unlikely to have come to Chobber's attention) I would ordinarily expect to be filled, at this stage, by the warm glow of self-righteousness. I am, after all, being unjustly accused, although I don't yet know what the accusation is. And, under ordinary circumstances, nothing is more spiritually uplifting than to be wrongfully suspected of a crime, serious or otherwise. It fills you with death-dealing wrath.
        However, somehow, Chobber has succeeded in getting me off balance. I really don't know why this should be so, given that he is a man of distinct limits, a slow, methodical neighborhood beat cop. What did we used to say at school, all those years ago? A beetroot brain, that's it. However, slow Chobber has already disconcerted smart me. Maybe the fact that he has found me sitting on baby Huppy's squiffer cushion has something to do with it.
        "You recognize this," says Chobber, producing a photocopy of a delivery slip.
        I recognize the logo of Nizon Now Deliveries. The slip bears both the signature of the recipient and the imprint of the recipient's seal. The seal appears to be mine. As for the signature, that is a dribble of ink, a meaningless scrawl. The slip is dated a month ago -- on the seventeenth, to be precise.
        "I can see it's a delivery slip," I say. "Cash on delivery, right? May I see? A delivery slip for ... what does it say here? Playing cards?"
        "I think we've all watched enough TV to know what the supposed playing cards were," says Chobber.
        At first, what he is saying does not register with me. Then it does. I take a closer look at the delivery slip. I see who the "playing cards" were sent by. Now I start to understand. Well, technically. Even so, it's hard to accept that this is real. I can't relate the extravagant world of the TV news to my own corner of orderly domesticity. The TV news (war, genocide, sinking ships, burning airliners and all the rest of it) does not inhabit the same universe as my own household routine.
        "You ordered five syringes from X Cognizance Blanca," says Chobber, spelling it out in his heavy-handed beat cop manner. "Five syringes and five vials of injectable cyanide."
        "You're kidding," I say.
        But, actually, I don't think that he is.
        Despite the absurdity of the accusation, Chobber really seems to think that it is true. And the impact of this accusation is rather like being hit full in the face with a blunt instrument. It is as unexpected as a meteorite strike. It is as if the headline news marched off the front page of the newspaper and proceeded to run amok in the living room.
         The infamous Nizonian death cult, X Cognizance Blanca, exists in a world of glowering melodrama which has no connection whatsoever with the conventional domestic life of the Moss Mansion.
        "The seventeenth," says Chobber. "The delivery was made on the seventeenth. Where were you on the seventeenth?"
        Ordinarily, this would be an absurd question, and I am sure that Chobber is aware of the fact. Nobody can remember where they were a month ago. Where were you at three o'clock on Saturday afternoon two weeks ago? What was the color of the shirt you were wearing on the previous Friday? Precisely what TV programs did you watch on the Thursday before that? In the natural order of things, none of us have the answers to these alibi questions at the tips of our fingers.
        This, however, is a special case. I am almost sure that I have an alibi. But perhaps I misremember. I have seen too many TV shows in which suspects get themselves into trouble by trusting to their own intelligence rather than taking a safety first approach.
        "At this stage," I say, "I need to talk to my lawyer."
        "Are you refusing to answer the question?" asks Chobber.
        "I'll answer the question in the presence of my lawyer," I say. "We'll come to the police station and talk with you."
        "How about having your lawyer come down here right now?" says Chobber.
        This is a very busy day, and I don't really have time for this cop show stuff. Even so, I have to recognize that Chobber's request (if you can call it a request) is reasonable. There are five vials of injectable cyanide in play, and a vial of injectable cyanide is a potential murder weapon. Chobber has a duty to investigate, and to do so in a timely fashion.
        "It would really assist my investigation," says Chobber, "for me to know where you were on the seventeenth. One month back from today. It would really assist my investigation for me to know that right now."
        An option occurs to me. Tell Chobber what Chelooza said. Tell Chobber that Chelooza said that I was to be murdered. "You're going to be murdered." That's what she said. Didn't she? Unless I'm hallucinating, she did. Armed with that knowledge, Chobber would crack Chelooza in ten minutes or less. He would get at the truth. But what if the truth is that Tanto and Helena organized this cyanide delivery?
        Wait a minute! For once, Tanto and Helena are definitely innocent. They didn't have a chance to misbehave on the seventeenth. Why? Because they were with me. Weren't they? Yes, they were! Undeniably!
        For a moment I'm totally certain of the events of April 17th. Then my memory degenerates from certainty into a set of probabilities. Momentarily, even my own name is on the verge of getting lost, not a certainty but a best guess.
        I'm confusing myself, mislocating my children in time and space, jumbling the calendar. Maybe I'm sick. Maybe I'm getting old. Maybe I'm suffering the cumulative effects of stress. Whatever the answer, I'm not equal to the task of struggling with Chobber, whose strength is his ability to plod away at the task without weakening.
        "You will have to tell me in the end," says Chobber. "You have no option."
        He is pressuring me. Because I am tired and overloaded, the pressure makes me angry. Unexpectedly, like the first feverish intimation of a serious disease, I feel a blurring presence which I know, as surely as I know anything, is the gorgel.
        The gorgel is here. Now. Close. Very close. And while it is not my gorgel, it cannot be said to be totally independent of me. It has a mind of its own, but it is also mine to control. I have never known this before, or not, at least, with such clarity, but I know it now.
        To throw the gorgel into action, all it would take would be a loss of my self-control. That would be sufficient to intensify that presence, converting the latent image into roaring stone. Then there would be a brief spasm of comic book brutality after which Chobber would be no more than the bubbled wet red aftermath of a scream.
        "As a citizen," I say, getting very formal, "I recognize my duty to assist the police with their investigations. However, I have a duty to protect myself against, well, manipulation. If we have to talk, I need to get my lawyer in on this."
        "Then do it," says Chobber. "The sooner the better. This is something that is not going to go away."
        "Okay," I say, giving in. "I'll give it a shot."
        And flip open my cellphone and call Mitodarni. He says the earliest he could possibly make it would be two in the afternoon.
        "I'll come round to your place," says Mitodarni. "Okay?"
        Well, not really. If I were to confess the truth, I had been planning to have a nap after lunch. Something to keep me going until I can fit in a visit to the doctor's. However. It would probably be best to get this out of the way.
        "Two o'clock, then," I say. And then, to Chobber, "My lawyer will be here, at the Moss Mansion, I mean -- let's say we'll meet in my office -- and I'll go over my alibi, if my lawyer advises me to do so."
        "Two," says Chobber. "Very well then. I'll be here at two."
        And with that he leaves, and I am alone in the Inner Garden. Only now do I dare turn and look for the gorgel. There is nothing there. Where I had imagined the gorgel, there is emptiness. Bare air. Summon the gorgel? I was deluded to think so. Surely. I do not have and I have never had and I will never have the power to summon the gorgel. I hope.
        And then I think of Helena, whom I saw (I think) conferring with Chelooza yesterday evening in the Inner Garden.
        A child born and raised in this perturbed zone of ours will not uncommonly have a special ability of some kind or another. In our family, the usual thing is for the child to have the ability to animate fibers, particularly those of bamboo. But what exactly is Helena's ability, if she has one? Does she ever feel the gorgel's presence, close, potential, within summoning range?
        That's one more thing to think about on a day on which there are far too many things to think about. I'm going to have to process this later. But one thing I can process right now. Chobber did, in a way, fulfill Melshu's prophecy. He did arrive at ten in the morning and he did, in a sense, tell me my death. If I am going to die, suddenly, and by violence, then it seems that the instrument of my destruction will be cyanide.