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WHEN CASSIUS CROON noticed the words MARIE-CELESTE airsprayed on the side of the Paris-Frankfurt-Berlin express train at Paddington Station, the brother had some cause to be alarmed. Croon was on his way to Germany, and the brother was already spooked enough by the goofy wierdness of the whole Storm Thorgarten mission. He didn't buy Catheter's claims about pro-Israeli propaganda for a second. As for the paucity of background information on his elfin granddaughter -- well, that was lightyears beyond a joke. You couldn't walk five yards/exhale five breaths/snort five lines in this age without having your personal effects scattered across the Infosphere by any number of security cameras, automated bank tellers, vending machines, telephone receivers (and their cronies, too numerous to mention), robotic reconnitors of the Paranoid Panopticon -- shit, even toasters were wired to the Net these days! Big Brother was everywhere, and everyone was Big Brother -- that's why Croon was so astounded that Babel Thorgarten's intelligence file amounted to a few flimsy photographs and some outdated work records. What was she, a fucking ghost? Nobody was invisible.
Obviously Catheter was messing with him -- that so much was obvious. The question was, why? Testing his skills, no doubt, seeing if he still possessed that bloodhound nose (nosehound blood?) -- Croon's form had been slipping lately, and there had been talk of a demotion. So, the brother was on trial, and possibly the entire world was watching.
What a fucking nightmare!
