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bit.”
    â€œOK.”
    â€œI lived in England, two years. Southend. Brits all think it’s like some great vacation town, like Vegas . . . I dunno. Live there, though, and it’s a hole. I’m telling you. A fucking hole.
    â€œI’d had—­well, I suppose I’d had some problems. Youthful rebellion, all that kind of thing. Public intox. I mean, my dad squashed all the charges, straight out. But . . . family was worried. I was smoking too much pot, and even I could see the crew that I was hanging with were losers, plain and simple. Solution? Pack me off to Auntie Millie in Southend. Christ, I was just growing up, that’s all. It’s normal, right? So they send me to this school, this crammer, right, supposed to put me somewhere. Hated it. The Brits all called me Yank. Home on vacation, and I get, ‘Ooh, listen, he’s gone Brit.’ It was shitty. Then finally, I’m out of it. Amherst wasn’t great. But after that . . . New York. I’m there, I’m training for the Registry. All my life I’ve been pushed around, one place to the next, no one gives a damn. And here I am, I’m in the greatest city in the world, got money, got connections . . . I walk into a club, a party—­­people know me. For the first time in my life, I am the person that I want to be. Imagine how that feels? At that age? It’s like, rock star, man! Then all at once . . .”
    â€œField Ops.”
    â€œYeah. Yeah. You get it, don’t you? You understand. You’d feel the same.”
    I had a drink instead of a response.
    â€œThese days, of course—­it’s policy, and I’d support it. Course I would. But then—­”
    He shrugged. He smiled. He had the look of somebody who knows he’ll be forgiven; or that everyone will tell him he’s forgiven, because nobody would dare do otherwise. And that’s just as good.
    â€œUnprofessional. I know, I know.” He put his hands up, open palms, fending off a comment that I wasn’t even going to voice. He pressed a knuckle to his nose and sniffed. “Here’s the problem, see. That episode, that whole thing . . . We’ve got fallout. I mean, none of it was meant. Accident, OK? Or pretty much. But now, there’s repercussions. For the Registry. But most of all, for us. For you and me.”
    I sipped my drink. So this is how it feels to be blackmailed, I was thinking.
    â€œLet me stress now. Let me stress. There is nothing, nothing right now that links us with what’s happened. But in the interests—­the interests of humanity—­it seemed to me the Registry should offer up its ser­vices. Out of goodwill, see? Remember that. And if I’m going to send someone, who else can I trust? Who else?”
    He was looking straight at me. I had an urge to get up, move aside, avoid that arrow stare.
    We are the cleaners of the world. We drain its sumps, siphon its spills, empty out its cisterns, and recycle what we find. We are priests without a faith. Exorcists with neither cross nor holy water, bell nor book nor candle. We are the ones who must exist, here in a world that worships far too much.
    Or look at it another way: we’re pest control. We’re sanitation. That’s what I was taught. That’s how we see ourselves.
    We solve problems, and the problems that we solve we put to solving other problems. That’s all. The world, which once throve on religion, now thrives upon electric power.
    That much, at least, of Shailer’s long and stirring public speech was right.
    The rest was bullshit. Not “spin,” not “propaganda,” not even just “slanting the truth.” Bullshit, nothing more.
    A phrase came to my mind: “The man who lies convincingly can rule the world.” Did I read that somewhere? Hear it in a play or some political commentary?
    It’s what I thought of when I