Jack shifted uneasily and didn't meet his gaze, but Cookie shrugged his shoulders and said nervously, "Oh, that! We were just all of us worked up, between your mumbo-jumbo and the fighting. We'd have believed anything." "But didn't you feel your whole being change?" Sacheverell insisted. "Didn't you feel universal love and understanding burgeon?" "Universal sky-pie!" Cookie said rudely. "I didn't feel a thing that meant anything. Did you, Jackie?" The kingman didn't quite nod his head, but he certainly didn't shake it. And he didn't look at Sacheverell. The latter surveyed them both with sad wonderment. "You've already forgotten," he said. "You've made yourselves forget. But how," he asked Cookie, "do you explain the behavior of the cats? They recognized the Green One. They tendered him worship." "They just panted around after him," Cookie asserted. "He's probably an oversexed hermaphrodite mutant. And another thing--if that cat's mystical and all dripping with powers, why did he let himself be knocked out? Why didn't he feed Moe Brimstine some universal sky-pie?" "There was glass and distance between them," Sacheverell reminded him. "Besides, if Mr. Brimstine is a Beelzebite--" "What's more," Cookie went on relentlessly, "why did he let himself be knocked out by Jack in the first place? Jackie, before you stun-gunned the little brute, you didn't feel any great burgeon of universal love, did you?" Jack frowned. "I stunned him instinctively," he said slowly, his downward gazing eyes studying the upset chalice, which chose this moment to roll two inches. "I glimpsed something out of the corner of my eye and shot." He paused. "I actually thought it was a mouse." "Instinctively or not, you stun-gunned it and we hustled it into the locker as soon as we saw it was green," Cookie assured him decisively. "Which certainly proves the cat has no powers. Sash here just worked us up into thinking he had. Gave even me such an eerie feeling that if someone had come in wearing an orange sheet and Sash had said it was Mohammed, I'd have believed him." "But suppose the Green One was taken by surprise," Sacheverell argued. "All gods have limitations. Perhaps the Green One is not so much able to read thought as to join together telepathically the thoughts and feelings of mortals." Cookie made a rude noise. Jack gave Cookie a quick look that was both angry and imploring, as if to say, "You've proved your point. Lay off." Sacheverell shrugged and said, "Well, if I have to descend to your materialistic level, what is it that makes the Green One so important to Mr. Brimstine?" "How should I know?" Cookie said huffily. "Maybe he's smuggling heroin in it or secret documents for Vanadin; maybe it belongs to the current mistress of the King of South Africa. Did Moe tell you anything, Jackie?"