and in
the worship halls of obscure, rigidly fanatic offshoot sects.

Her consuming passion was to be an opera prima donna.

Lonnie never tried to understand why Moglaut sat fascinated through
endless sin-busting sermons and lachrymose requiems. To hurry
afterwards, with the jerky motions, the glazed eyes of a zombie, to
subsequent rendezvous with the soprano at his suburban apartment. It was
entirely sufficient in Lonnie's philosophy that Moglaut did.

The soprano's continuing suburban cooperation was insured by Lonnie's
judicious doling out of exactly the cash to keep a tenth-rate opera
company barely functioning in a lesser quarter of Government City.
Oddly, he found it pleased him and from that grew his wide patronizing
of the Arts.

The immediate result of the situation he created and controlled so
deftly was Moglaut's production of a closed-plenum grid suit.

None of Gov-Pol, Gov-Mil or Gov-Econ labs found out about it; much less
Pol-Anx or Government itself. Moglaut did all the work in the tiny
complete lab Lonnie set up in the suburbs.

Lonnie didn't care what electronic witchery took place in the minute
spatial interstices between the finely-woven mesh of flexible tantalum.
Sufficient for him, the silvery white suit once donned and triple-zipped
through hood and glove-endings, he was immune to ordinary Earthly
phenomena; free to move about, do what he wished, untraceably. In it,
his words were not vulnerable to the sono-beam's eavesdropping.
Photo-electric and magneto-photonic watchdogs ignored him. Even the most
delicately sensitive thermo-couples continued their dreams of freezing
flame undisturbed. Jason's quantum analyzer couldn't pick up the
leavings of a glance--all that the suit permitted out into the physical
world.

The suit had its limitations, of course. Lonnie could see out, but the
suit could also be seen. That required sometimes intricate advance
planning to offset. Also, occasionally, manipulating the field of the
grid to permit mechanical contact with the physical world was a trifle
cumbersome but never annoyingly so. All it took was a modicum of
step-by-step thought and some care not to leave a personal trace for the
quantum analyzer to pick up. No actual trouble. And, finally, Moglaut
had warned that the compact power unit pocketed on the left breast had a
half-life of only thirteen years.

That left Lonnie placid. He took the suit for granted and used it for
what it let him do.

W