THE INFORMATION

bonded with the Warlock crowd, Richard had been forced to individualize their predatory presences. There was Hal and Mai, also Del, Pel, Bal, Gel, and Lol, also a younger contingent with names like

Tristan and Benedict when they weren't called Burt or Mel or Harrison,

and then some rather older guys with names like Clint and Yul and Marlon, and then some guys about Richard's age with names like Dave and Steve and Chris, and yet older guys (blemished, sidelined) with namesnosing it, getting wind of it. And the other half (this was copromode) he thought it all made perfect sense: that if you looked like shit, and felt like shit and behaved like shit, then pretty soon you were going to smell like shit. For Richard knew he was going to hell: it was just a question of which circle. Christ, he knew that. Just as he knew that smoking was bad for his health. Even the packet said that it killed you … Having gone nuts in the nose, he wondered what to do about it, but not for long. His doctor had died five years ago and Richard hadn't looked for a new one. He couldn't see himself sitting in Casualty with the Friday-night crowd, where, anyway, to gain admission, you needed an axe in your head. Nor did he expect to pay a visit to some suburban superclinic the size of a dormitory town or a major airport where you had to get into lane at least a mile or two back up the road: Richard, in the Maestro, flinching as the signs sliced by him, looking for the one that said NUTS IN THE NOSE. In the kitchen he sidled experimentally up to Gina, waiting for her to pull back with a 'Yuck' or a 'Phwaw.' And nothing happened. The point was that he didn 't smell of shit. So who cared?

This Saturday morning, easing himself deeper into a bath almost Mediterranean in its oil-mantle and unguent prisms (and shit smells: would it soon aspire to the plastic 7-Up bottles, the belly-up jellyfish?), Richard thought briskly but proudly of all the bits of him that weren't nuts-or not nuts yet. People were nuts in the eyes and the ears. And Richard wasn't. People were nuts in the guts and the glands. Not Richard. The complacent roll call of organs that he was not yet nuts in might have continued-but then Marius knocked.

'Daddy. Quick.'

'Jesus. Go upstairs.'

'I'm desperate.'

He rose, and turned the difficult doorknob. On the wall the mirror held him in its steam. After the usual pause Marius wandered inward. He lowered his track-suit bottoms and underpants a few inches but made no move for the bowl. As Richard dried himself his chest was suddenly remoistened by the thought that he was-and had long been-nuts in the Johnson. If going nuts was an internal treachery (all counter- suggestibility and finesse), then he had long been nuts in the Johnson. Oh yeah. And nuts in the brain.

Marius was now seated.

Just what I need, thought Richard: more shit.

The child's gaze was leveled at him. Marius said, declaratively, 'You've got a big willy, Daddy.'

'Well it's very nice of you to say so, Marius.?

this was how it went. This was what you did. What you did was: you took an individual and seized upon some obvious and invariably unfortunate characteristic-and talked about it the whole time, at every opportunity, all the hours there were, day in, day out. Whatever it might be: Bal was bald, Mai maladroit, Del delinquent, Gel gelatinous; Pel was plump; Hal sported an ill-advised and much-regretted tattoo on his throat (CUT HERE along the dotted line); Lol had had his right ear ripped off in an argument about zonal marking. With Richard, they really didn't know where to start or where to stop, so they called him Red Eye and Jethro and Scarecrow and Walking Dictionary and Mr. Pastry and Lord Byron . . . Often, in such quandaries, a TV tie-in can grant clarity; and usually, nowadays, they called him Cedric-after the affected old slob who presented an afternoon quiz show about words. Richard felt that he had a lot in common with the working classes (he understood hourly disaster), but he liked them better twenty years ago, when they looked worse. There was another nickname they had for him. He didn't know about it yet.

'All the way, Cedric. All the way.'

And Richard was off. On the Knowledge, the questions recurred, so you needed memory. Richard had memory, a real memory, many magnitudes greater than what the million hobble by with, calling it their memory. It was open to doubt, at the Warlock, whether knowledge-the mind-counted for anything at all. But on the Knowledge, knowledge really seemed to matter, punctually rewarded by hot coins and an electric jingle. Sometimes, as now, the guys fell silent as Richard worked the machine, his face proud and nervous and aslant, giving glosses and derivations, sneering at the screen's bad grammar (for this oracle was only semi- literate, prone to danglers and pause-for-breath commas, confounded by all apostrophes) and smacking out the answers before anyone had time to read the questions. What is the collective noun given to crows? Set. Covey. Murder. 'Yes, murder. They're weird, collective nouns. Always go-' What would an orologist study? Birds. Mountains. Metals. 'Oros. Mountain. Always go for the really fanciful one. The precious one. An unkindness of ravens. A business of ferrets. 'How many years ago was the last Ice Age? 10,000. 100,000. 1,000,000. 'Not as long ago as you'd think. An exaltation of larks. They must have given collective nouns to some chick poet to do. Trecbeor: a cheat. Christ, look at that it's. 1968. Red shift.

One t, two /s. Don't ask me to spell. You can't spell. Randir. to gallop. Sk.

Mars. Jesus.' And on he would go, 10p, 20p, 50p-until he was tripped up by some dead comic's catchphrase or rock star's cock size, and by thenlike Albert, Roger, and Bob. They turned, and greeted Gwyn, and Richard felt their humorous censure.

Pel said, 'Quick. Here he is.'

'Here he is,' said Del. 'Here's Cedric.'

The Knowledge posed questions, offering multiple-choice answers (buttons A, B, and C), for modest cash prizes, depending on how far you traveled along learning's trail. To do well, to advance, you needed a good-sized crew round the Knowledge, all the smatterings you could get of history, geography, etymology, mythology, astronomy, chemistry, politics, popular music-and TV. Most crucially TV: TV down through the ages. It was in TV form that the other stuff was meant to be propagated anyway; and the newer knowledge machines, Richard had noticed, in the pubs he hung out in, actually were TVs: they fled the written, and embraced the audiovisual. The machine at the Warlock was trade-named Wise Money, and Richard, in his head, sometimes referred to it as the Profundity Requital, or the Aleph; but everyone else called it the Knowledge.

'Here, Cedric. What's . . . 'infra dig'?'

Richard squeezed up to the screen, which said:

Q. If a task was 'infra dig,' you would perform it

A. Quickly

B. Slowly

C. Unwillingly

'Complete non sequitur,' brayed Richard, slapping the C. 'You'd be just as likely to do it quickly or slowly. Beneath one's dignity. Infra dignitatem.'

'That's Cedric,' said Bal.

Now the screen said:

Q: D. H. Lawrence was a well-known writer. What does 'D. H.' stand for?

A. Donald Henley

B. David Herbert

C. Darren Henry

'Darren's good,' said Richard. 'Or what about Duane? Duane Lawrence.'

'Do it, Cedric,' said Lol. 'Go for it, Cedric.'

Cedric? When it came to interpersonal humor, here at the Warlock,true. He might have tried to laugh in your face. In any event he wouldn't have managed it. Out on court he felt he had forgotten how to play, but his body, with its sick nose, its damaged eye, seemed to remember the way it went. His body remembered. The low sun, the sun of