Manala took some good natured ribbing about how long it took her to find me and bring me back. Shanana said she knew I was in the barn with the nice s...melling hay. Dina, Dana, Liya and Miya joined her, admitting they knew it too. Several of the others said they had an idea I was in the barn but they didn't know why. I wondered about that myself.Sunday is bar-be-que day on the ranch. Maria had set out the brisket early and it was ready for seasoning and wrapping. I washed up my hands and got to. My wife was not to be outdone so she sucked him equally low and then she bent over the table and allowed him to shove it in deep. She was almost ready to come and the k** said OK, show is over and he did a fast retreat. I walked him to the door and he seemed awfully nervous. He left and I went to my wife and asked what happened, and she said he came, that's what happened, and then she said but I didn't. One of the young guys walked up to her and complimented her on the show and said he was. It used to be called the basement door, now in her mind it was the damn door. It was solid oak, like all the doors in the house, but this one was always locked. The normal handle lock was present, but there was also a heavy deadbolt, which was driving her insane. A deadbolt for a door going from inside the house to a basement with no door outside was paranoid wasn't it?Jennifer worked in the house, forty hours a week, sometimes more, sometimes less, she was the confidential assistant to William. There was order in empire, a mild comfort to be had from the stability of ordered thought… Wasn’t that the very essence of medicine… and of the modern? Sitting behind the wing he watched as a bewildering variety of surfaces sprouted and shaped the air outside his window, slowed the huge Boeing as it settled toward rubber-streaked concrete somewhere in the mists below. He turned and looked at Tracy Tomlinson beside him, and at Judith Somerfield beside her, and he thought of a young girl wrapped.