— Look! Who’s that up in the back there, came in a stage whisper.
— The lights, I can’t see nothing…
— It’s that fruit Leroy.
— He’s too little, it’s that Glancy.
— Running…
Faster, Bast played now as though hurrying to catch a train, straining toward the crescendo of its arrival till this, with pain that streaked to his elbow sharp as the chord he struck, was all he heard, and the cry of the dwarf was lost, — Hark floods! Love I renounce forever!… lost, if it was ever made at all, the figure running down the aisle reaching the piano as it crashed with the Rhinegold motif that brought the pile of chairs cascading to the stage and scattered the Rhinemaidens in disheveled pursuit of the dwarf, who seemed indeed to know his part, and had got off with the Rhinegold.
— I told you…! shouted Wotan bursting out into the sun, bearing down on the only figure in sight who watched this extravagant onslaught without alarm; but all they wrested from her was the change purse, its nickeled clasp worn down to brass from being closed, and opened, and closed, opened now and on dead leaves at that, flung back to the ground indistinguishable from the leaves they trampled, drawing up in garish clumps of recrimination.
— Where’d he go? that lousy little…
— Look!
— Look out!
Gravel sprayed them from the drive.
— In the car, that’s Mister Bast. They’re chasing him in the car.
— Whose? Driving…
— Glancy. That big lardass Glancy…
— It wasn’t either that’s deSyph, that old junk heap that’s deSyph’s… and they drifted off to tell, over groundswells of lawn heaving with the slow rise, and fall, of light broken by the gentle sway of trees on winds bearing news, from higher up, of a used car sale blown down on retching waves of the tune Clementine to the wailing counterpoint of the saws in Burgoyne Street, where the used car plunged among the dangling limbs.
— The lesson’s all set up, the visuals everything right from the teacher’s guide… and the brief prospect of a straightaway freed his hand from the wheel to turn on the radio. — The script that’s her script and that book, that’s to pretend like you’re reading it it’s a prop…
— But this money, the boy who ran off with that paper bag we were using it in the Rhinegold rehears…
— You don’t need it no, for the Mozart that Rhinegold bag it would throw off everything the testing, the whole…
— It’s not that it’s the money, it’s the money…
Steel teeth overhead shredded a descending bloat of Clementine as the radio warmed to Dark Eyes, and the driver shifted in a seated schottische overshooting a turn to the right. — My wife will help you out don’t worry, she’s waiting for us I already called her and I told you about the singalong, don’t forget the singa…
— But then maybe your wife could…
— Help out yes she has a resource program on right after, she’s in the arts too maybe you know her? B’hai, folk song, preColumbian sculpture… he cut short with a grimace that might have been merely the effort of swerving to a halt at the door where he promptly resumed the catalog in introducing — my wife Ann Mister Bast, she had the Senior Citizens’ class in clay sculpture too, the ones with arthritis here, wait! don’t forget the script… before leaving Bast in a spray of gravel, where Mrs diCephalis took his hand and kept it.
— In this way, she led him, raising the folds of a many-colored sari to pick her way over the maze of cables, into — an intimate medium, it really is, because when you look into the camera you’re looking each child right in the eye, she said flashing him a blacked sweep of hers over a shoulder. — When I’m on camera, I just keep repeating to myself I am speaking to a single child. I am speaking to a single child, over and over. That’s what makes it intimate… She stopped abruptly in the shadow of a stage flat so that he ran up against her and discreetly lowered his eyes from the caste mark that had begun to run on her forehead, past the distinct lashes, nose shadowed retroussé and white teeth, to come up short on a gape in the sari where her brassiere strap hung errant and anomalous. — I do my own makeup but these are my own eyelashes, I’m naturally dark, she said, taking his attempt to withdraw his hand as provocation to hold it in both of hers. — You see, I am a talented woman, Mister Bast, who has never been allowed to do anything… Somewhere a bell rang but she held him in an instant longer, with peristaltic reluctance let him slip away — in there, we’ll look in there first. It’s where the director monitors the programs.
On the screen was Smokey Bear.
— pledge as an American to save and faithfully to defend from waste, the natural resources of my country, its soil and minerals, its forests, waters, and wildlife.
— The youngsters find it reassuring, said Hyde looking up from Smokey Bear. — Like seeing a commercial.
— Yes, in terms of implementing the study material, Whiteback continued as his guests came to rest on the small sofa under their litter of cameras, coats, pamphlets, brochures and notepaper, — into a meaningful learning experience…
— a series of collapsible pipes, called the intestines…
— Thirty-seven thousand five hundred, came Pecci’s voice from the inner office, — for legislative services rendered in conjunction with proposition thirteen on the referendum on pay subscription televis, you’d better call me back on this…
— of America, the free enterprise system, and man’s modern industrial knowhow, have forged a two edged sword which at one fell swoop has severed the barrier between…
— What’s that?
— The American flag, said Mister Pecci joining them, glittering at the cuff.
— Oh, the film. It’s on film, a resource film on ahm, natural resources, Mister Hyde’s company was kind enough to provide…
— What America is all about, said Hyde standing away from the set with a proprietary air. — What we have to…
— To use, or rather utilize…
— like the iceberg, rising to a glittering peak above the surface. For like the iceberg, we see only a small fraction of modern industry. Hidden from our eyes is the vast…
— Gibbs? Is that you? Come in, come in.
— No, don’t let me disturb you…
— Yes come in, we have some people here from the Foundation, Whiteback insisted. — Their Program Specialist Mister Ford… An arm rose from the clutter of cameras, — and Mister Gall here. Mister Gall here is a writer. Mister Gibbs here is the what you might call chief cook and bottle washer on our science program and… doing a fine job, yes. Mister Gall here is getting material together on the Foundation’s whole in-school television support program, Gibbs. They’re going to publish it in book form.
— Bitten off quite an assignment, Mister Gall. I imagine you need all the information you can get, said Hyde abruptly threatening him with a thick brochure from above. — I just happened to have this research report with me. It’s a pretty good rundown of long-term operating cost estimates on closed-circuit cable setups, compared to what you run into trying to carry a full lesson load on open-circuit broadcasting. I picked it up to show the Senator here, Congressman, Pecci…
— energy still locked in the vast shale oil deposits beneath thousands of barren mountain peaks jutting from the sea of the public domain, two thirds of the stete of Utah…
— Structuring the material in terms of the ongoing ahm, situation yes, on Mozart’s, ah, Ring, is it?
— I noticed something here… Mister Ford spoke for the first time with the commanding indifference of an old-school drawl, running his finger down a catalogued list — here, The Rhinegold is it?