substantial percentage of which the public might never buy if it were not subliminally 
manipulated."
  Dawson said, "You've been working on subliminal perception up there in Connecticut for 
the last ten years?"
  "Yes."
  "Perfecting the science?"
  "That's correct."
  "The Pentagon sees a weapon in it?"
  "Definitely. Don't you see it?"
  Quietly, reverently, Dawson said, "If you've perfected the science . . . you're talking 
about total mind control. Not just behavior modification, but absolute, ironlike control."
  For a moment neither of them could speak. "Whatever you've discovered," Dawson said, 
"you apparently want to keep it from the Defense Department. They might call that 
treason."
  "I don't care what they call it," Salsbury said sharply. "With your money and my 
knowledge, we don't need the Defense Department-or anyone else. We're more powerful than 
all the world's governments combined."
  Dawson couldn't conceal his excitement. "What is it? What have you got?"
  Salsbury went to the windows and watched the snow spiraling down on the city. He felt 
as if he had taken hold of a live wire. A current buzzed through him. Shaking with it, 
almost able to imagine that the snowflakes were sparks exploding from him, feeling 
himself to be at the vortex of a God-like power, he told Dawson what he had found and 
what role Dawson could play in his scenario of conquest.
  Half an hour later, when Ogden finished, Dawson-who had never before been humble 
anywhere but in church-said, "Dear God." He stared at Salsbury as a devout Catholic might 
have gazed upon the vision at Fatima. "Ogden, the two of us are going to-inherit the 
earth?" His face was suddenly split by an utterly humorless smile.
  3
  Saturday, August 13, 1977
  IN ONE OF THE THIRD-FLOOR GUEST BEDROOMS of the Edison house, Paul Annendale arranged 
his shaving gear on top of the dresser. From left to right: a can of foam, a mug 
containing a lather brush, a straight razor in a plastic safety case, a dispenser full of 
razor blades, a styptic pencil, a bottle of skin conditioner, and a bottle of after-shave 
lotion. Those seven items had been arranged in such an orderly fashion that they looked 
as if they belonged in one of those animated cartoons in which everyday items come to 
life and march around like soldiers.
  He turned from the dresser and went to one of the two large windows. In the distance 
the mountains rose above the valley walls, majestic and green, mottled by purple shadows 
from a few passing clouds. The nearer ridges-decorated with stands of pines, scattered 
elms, and meadows-sloped gently toward the town. On the far side of Main Street, birch 
trees rustled in the breeze. Men in short-sleeved shirts and women in crisp summer 
dresses strolled along the sidewalk. The veranda roof and the sign for Edison's store 
were directly below the window.
  As his gaze moved back and back from the distant mountains, Paul became aware of his 
own reflection in the window glass. At five ten and one hundred fifty pounds, he was 
neither tall nor short, heavy nor thin. In some ways he looked older than thirty-eight, 
and in other ways he looked younger. His Crinkly, almost frizzy light brown hair was worn 
full on the
  sides but not long. It was a hair style more suited to a younger man, but it looked 
good on him. His eyes were so blue that they might have been chips of mirrors reflecting 
the sky above. The expression of pain and loss lying beneath the surface brightness of 
those eyes belonged to a much older man. His features were narrow, somewhat aristocratic; 
but a deep tan softened the sharp angles of his face and saved him from a haughty look. 
He appeared to be a man who would feel at ease both in an elegant drawing room and in a 
waterfront bar.
  He was wearing a blue workshirt, blue jeans, and black square-toed boots; however, he 
did not seem to be casually dressed. Indeed, in spite of the jeans, there was an air of 
formality about his outfit. He wore those clothes better than most men wore tuxedos. The 
sleeves of his shirt had been carefully pressed and creased. His opened collar stood up 
straight and stiff, as if it had been starched. The silvery buckle on his belt had been 
carefully polished. Like his shirt, his jeans seemed to have been tailored. His 
low-heeled boots shone almost like patent leather.
  He had always been compulsively neat. He couldn't remember a time when his friends 
hadn't kidded him about it. As a child he had kept his toy box in better order than his 
mother had kept the china closet.
  Three and a half years ago, after Annie died and left him with the children, his need 
for order and neatness had become almost neurotic. On a Wednesday afternoon, ten months 
after the funeral, when he caught himself rearranging the contents of a cabinet in his 
veterinary clinic for the seventh time in two hours, he realized that his compulsion for 
neatness could become a refuge from life and especially from grief. Alone in the clinic, 
standing before an array of instruments-forceps, syringes, scalpels-he cried for the 
first time since he learned Annie was dead. Under the misguided belief that he had to 
hide his grief from the children in order to provide them with an example of strength, he 
had never given vent to the powerful emotions that the loss of his wife had engendered. 
Now he cried, shook, and raged at the cruelty of it. He rarely used foul language, but 
now he strung together all the vile words and phrases
  that he knew, cursing God and the universe and life-and himself. After that, his 
compulsive neatness ceased to be a neurosis and became, again, just another facet of his 
character, which frustrated some people and charmed others.
  Someone knocked on the bedroom door.
  He turned away from the window. "Come in."
  Rya opened the door. "It's seven o'clock, Daddy. Suppertime."
  In faded red jeans and a short-sleeved white sweater, with her dark hair falling past 
her shoulders, she looked startlingly like her mother. She tilted her head to one side, 
just as Annie use to do, as if trying to guess what he was thinking.
  "Is Mark ready?"
  "Oh," she said, "he was ready an hour ago. He's in the kitchen, getting in Sam's way."
  "Then we'd better get down there. Knowing Mark's appetite, I'd say he has half the food 
eaten already."
  As he came toward her, she stepped back a pace. "You look absolutely marvelous, Daddy."
  He smiled at her and lightly pinched her cheek. If she had been complimenting Mark, she 
would have said that he looked "super," but she wanted him to know that she was judging 
him by grown-up standards, and she had used grown-up language.
  "You really think so?" he asked.
  "Jenny won't be able to resist you," she said.
  He made a face at her.
  "It's true," Rya said.
  "What makes you think I care whether or not Jenny can resist me?"
  Her expression said he should stop treating her as a child. "When Jenny came down to 
Boston in March, you were altogether different."