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Chapter 1

I have never liked funerals I can appreciate the advantages of conventionalizing one’s relationship with Death, but this appreciation has never advanced beyond the level of pure theory I do not like to view the televised funerals of assassinees, nor do I enjoy attending the last rites of friends and relatives When I aorize hi necrophiliac I realize this is an unfair generalization I don’t care

As far as I was concerned, this particular funeral was the worst of a bad lot And this for purely subjective reasons: I had to get to the funeral parlor early and stay until the bitter end I was going toelse, the poor son of a bitch in the rosewood casket was the one person on earth I cared most for All of this, added to my personal distaste for such ceremonies, made me sincerely wish I was miles from there

But that was out of the question They couldn’t have the shoithout athered together in Klaus Hastown, the capital city of Modonoland, for the last rites and burial of Evan Michael Tanner And I’m him, or he’s me Or what you will

Eccchhh

"We will bury you," Arian Jeho had transplanted hio Since then he had both flourished and withered, growing ever fatter in the trunk and ever thinner in the ars and neck "We will bury you," he had said, eyes twinkling in his wizened face, and the phrase was neither asnor as metaphorical as it had been when Nikita said it

"There are things to be considerated," he explained He was speaking English, and had this sort of trouble with suffixes He was fluent in French and Fleood in Dutch and Hebrew, and we could have talked in any of these, but there were others in that basee cos to be considerated "To continue You are under house arrest You are identificated with the Moveitate trouble And you must removalize yourself from this house, which is my house-"

"Which is that our house is your house, Evan," Karp’s wife said

"This goes without statement, Evan You know this But facts must be faced You stown altogether, and from there you have activation of your own to be done upon So what is to be done upon? We will bury you, obviously, and then ill dig you up again, and then you will go on your ht announce the death this evening," Dawson Dowling said He was very tall and very black and either an industrial chemist or a che out so like chemistical industrialization, so there was no way to be certain "The burial ht take place on Friday"

"Uh," I said

"Of course Hammacher would do the service," Eyck said He was Dutch and did soes," soe? The coffin will be returned to hiery, no-"

"Uh," I said "I just thought of so"

They looked at athered in that dae crates, sars Half of them were black and half of them hite and one of them was Plum, and they represented the hard core of the MMM, which in Griggstown had nothing to do with Scotch tape and everything to do with revolution, and they wanted to bury ht of," I told the the whole burial process, that is I could just removalize ious – "and, uh, get out of town Just like that"

"But you are under house arrest, Evan"

"We’re all under house arrest," I said "All but what? Two or three of us? Yet you all ht Forup against a pal at the front door every few hours But nobody’s watching the back door, and-"

I broke off No one was saying anything, but they were all looking at me very sadly

Plum said, "You do not understand, Evan"

"What don’t I understand?"

"About house arrest" Plum was fifteen years old, slim-hipped and wide-eyed and the color of blond motel furniture Her father had been a Welsh soldier of fortune and her stown, and Pelham "Plum" Jenkins was a product of their ephe didn’t happen in Modonoland, where everything was black and white and there were no shades of yellow Plum was nevertheless about as sane as anyone in the MMM

I asked her to explain

"We are all under house arrest," she said, "and we all snuck out But we can all sneak back in again and no one will know the difference, or if they do they won’t be too shirty about it But if you snuck out, you wouldn’t come back and they would all know about it And also you are a foreigner and there is talk about you being a spy and a secret agent and all sorts of things, and this would bother theht for you, but ould be in trouble"