"Miss McCall: It's exciting and mysterious. Nothing like Washington. The boss of Taft Bank appears to be a man named Dink Gerding. He's six feet tall and slim, his hair is clipped short as a dachshund's, and he walks like an Olympic skier. The other men at the bank bow when they meet him, and some of them get all the way down onto the floor when he's angry. Do you suppose this means something? "J-12: Everything means something. "Miss McCall: He said that. Dink did. For everything in the universe, he said, there's an explanation. "J-12: Not so. I mean that everything that people do in banks is explainable. Not all the universe is logical--the tax-structure, for instance, or the ways of women. "Miss McCall: I'm not required to put up with male chauvinism from a pillow, Mister, no banns having been published between us. "J-12: Sorry, beautiful. Here are instructions from the Chief. He wants to know why some members of the Taft Bank staff wear earmuffs, and he wants details of what goes on upstairs. He wants you to get to know this Dink Gerding better. Over. "Miss McCall: Roger, Wilco, and Aye-Aye. Meanwhile, get philologists working on this. The sentence, _Wanji e-Kal, Datto. Dink ger-Dink d'summa_, means, more or less, 'This is Wanji. I'd like to speak to Dink Gerding.' This message was received by me at Taft Bank this morning, evidently by accident. Check also possible meaning of the phrase, 'Escudo green is pale.' "J-12: Will do. "Miss McCall: Good night, then; wherever you are. "J-12: Good night, beautiful. Out." _Report of Treasury Intelligence on six words of presumed foreign-language message_: "_Datto_ may be Tagalog _chief_. _Summa_ is Latin _sum_. Total message is nonsense in fifty languages. The clear message, _Escudo green is pale_ probably a code. Escudo is Portuguese currency presently equal to U.S. $0.348. End of Report." _Confidential report_ (on scratchboard) _of Elder Compassion to H.R.H. Dink ger-Dink, Prince Porphyrogenite of Empire, Heir-Apparent to the Throne, Scion of the Triple Crown, Count of the Northern Marches, Admiralissimo of the Conquest Forces of Empire, Captain-Commander of the XLIIth Subversion-and-Conquest Task Force (Sol III)_: "She whispered to her pillow, local time 2 A.M., 'I love him.'" * * * * * Orison hadn't gone to sleep easily. She'd suppressed information from J-12, saying nothing to him about the Microfabridae, surely the most striking objective discovery of her two days' spying within the Taft Bank. More central in her thoughts than her disloyalty to the Treasury Department, though, was Dink Gerding. He'd told her that she was half in love with him. He was half wrong, she thought. "I love him entirely," she whispered, not knowing that J-12--in carelessness, not subterfuge--had left the receiver-switch open to the pillow she'd made her confidante.