Meanwhile, in the most populous city in the world, sporadic gunfire and occasional explosions could be heard as scattered battles took place between d...efenders of the old regime and the vanguard of the new. The revolutionaries had taken over most of the radio and television stations in the city by dusk, and mutinous soldiers had control of the armories; therefore the revolutionaries controlled much of the communications network and the heavy weaponry of the old government. No flights had. She nodded toward the wooden case and Rachel took out the other one. “These must be worth like a bazillion dollars,” Rachel mused as she carefully turned her lamp, letting it catch the light. Amber sighed. “I wish we could keep them. They’re so perfect. We’d probably get arrested, though.” Rachel bit her lower lip, an idea having apparently come to her. She held up the lamp that she’d been looking at, rubbed it, and said, “I wish that I had a girly-lust detector that could tell me who thinks. “Interesting.” “But don’t go thinking that I want…” “Not at all. There’s no hidden agenda here.” He noticed that Susie hadn’t asked to be untied. She was sitting looking at herself in the mirror. “Paul? What else do people do when they use ropes like this? I mean, surely there’s more to it than this?” He weighed his words carefully as he answered. “You said the ropes felt nice, comforting and soothing. Well, to some extent that’s where the pleasure lies. . Charity explained (again in that strange, passionless way) that the soldiers had come to the clinic and killed her husband. They probably would have added her to the casualty list, but she had denied she was Mwanza's wife and instead insisted was Evelyn's maid. The lies had most likely saved her life, but now Evelyn was in a quandary: she could tell the Army medics the truth, which would be passed on to the Major in charge of the area, and so in all likelihood sentencing Charity to death, or,.