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Dr. Choate said, “Yes, as a matter of fact we were planning to offer you our collective professional services in that capacity.”

Paul, too, looked at Gus with admiration. You fall, he realized, but in a moment you’re up again, ready to try something else, ready to face the bitter pill of your mistakes. Never willing to give up. And the World Psychiatric Association will be only too glad to take control of your campaign . keeping you on as a figurehead, though of course you will always imagine that you are running things. We’re wise enough to offer you that. And we will be the strongest political force available in this disorganized recon­struction period—possibly strong enough to make you king after all, at least until normal democratic institutions can be set in motion again.

Now Gus Swenesgard had recovered his poise and had begun excitedly talking to Dr. Choate, planning, scheming, plotting, wildly guessing at the future, while Dr. Choate and Ed Newkom nodded, each with a professional medical smile, secure in their knowledge of where the real power lay.

Paul felt admiration for Gus at last, but then he turned and took a good look, perhaps for the first time, at Dr. Choate. Did he imagine it, or was there a certain calculating hardness in Dr. Choate’s eyes?

Shaking himself, Paul forced in place the same professional smile visible on the faces of his two colleagues. And thought, If we can’t trust ourselves, who can we trust?

It seemed to him a good question. But unfortunately—at the moment—he could not readily think of an equally good answer.