ANCIENT PAPYRUS SPEAKS

Tommy Fast's connection with various revolutionary groups which had sprung up all over the world was more or less accidental. He rarely made inquiries about others in the same line of work. This complemented his desire for security and an anxious need to maintain secret operations. He did not even bother keeping up with news since he found the habit of reading the daily papers strangely treacherous to his motivation.

He'd once been told by an ancient gentleman who, it was rumored, had been part of a group of pre-revolutionary Russian anarchists, that the greatest danger to a revolutionary consisted in the ease by which various distractions could slow the momentum of revolutionary ambition. Distractions inevitably led to the commission of small errors of detail -- errors which the police would capitalize on swiftly and without mercy. Tommy found news distracting.

He made certain thorough calculations in a small pocket notebook kept for the purpose. He noted the time it had taken him to cross the ridge which marked the beginning of the valley and the farthest edge of the farm which bordered on the station. Fifteen minutes to descend to a small clearing in a slanting meadow just below the tree line. He drew a quick sketch of this distance with arrows marking the line of descent. From the meadow to the tracks there was not more than another twenty yards.

DISTRACTIONS

Dateline Moscow: Authorities announced, in response to what are termed "rising Zionist demands," that 10,000 Jews daily will be allowed to emigrate to Israel -- on condition they are shipped in simple pinewood boxes. When asked if there are any other conditions that might have remained unsaid, a government spokesman claimed: "None whatsover. They need only apply."

Dateline Paris: Preparing for an official state visit by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, ventriloquist dummies poured out of CRS vans in search of "undesirables" on order of the Russian Embassy. French spokesmen described their internment on Corsica as "a paid vacation." Brezhnev arrived aboard a prototype Concorde in the glare of Orly Airport kleiglights in time to see them off: "Bon voyage."

Dateline Vienna: A group of happeners freaked out local cops by smearing ox brains mixed with cat shit on their genitals. At private showings, valkerie amazons sucked them off and puked stillborn rabbits. They were all marched off to a nuthouse under police surveillance, but not without a final act of defiance: They went, singing "Nuthin' could be finer than to be in Carolina in the maw-aw-awh-ning ..."

Dateline New York: American painter Andrew Wyeth was commissioned to do the unofficial Nixon portrait. At a press conference, the painter was quoted as saying: "I think he is a handsome president. The man has very fine features."