Where were Secretaries James and Foster and Senator Joseph, those dear daft numina who’d mothered over Oedipa’s so temperate youth? In another world. Along another pattern of track, another string of decisions taken, switches closed, the faceless pointsmen who’d thrown them now all transferred, deserted, in stir, fleeing the skip-tracers, out of their skull, on horse, alcoholic, fanatic, under aliases, dead, impossible to find ever again. Among them they had managed to turn the young Oedipa into a rare creature indeed, unfit perhaps for marches and sit-ins, but just a whiz at pursuing strange
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