Chapter 22

July 28

The next time it was nearly much more serious than a scratch on the neck. A Lesser Morrell Island fisherman had been miles from shore when he discovered that his canoe was sinking. Someone, it seems, had drilled a series of holes, then plugged them temporarily with tree sap so the leak wouldn’t become apparent until the fisherman was well out at sea. The fisherman had tried to keep the craft afloat long enough to return to land, but it is notoriously difficult to bail and paddle at the same time, unless one is very, very skilled with one's feet. To the fisherman's dismay, he discovered that he was not.
 The canoe sank, leaving the fisherman alone to bob on the surface and await his own certain death. Or what seemed likely to be his certain death anyway. As it happened, the fisherman was rescued and carried to land on the back of a passing tuna, if his account is to be considered accurate. The fisherman theorized that the tuna must have heard about the positive press dolphins received for their occasional good deed, and figured a few tuna-centered rescue stories might convince people to switch to tasty mackerel-salad sandwiches instead. 
 The canoe--and thus the evidence--was at the bottom of the ocean, since the tuna had drawn the line at towing the man's boat. But even without evidence, Dana was certain that Sarah was behind the near disaster. Sarah's behavior had been increasingly odd ever since the genocide discussions, to the point where most agreed that she had replaced the doctor as the island's chief nut case, although the doctor remained confident that he might yet rally and make a game of it. As Sarah had drifted ever further towards the sanity-challenged end of the mental-health spectrum, the island's others activists distanced themselves from her cause. Brent had been largely unsupportive ever since it had become clear that explosives would not be necessary. Jeff maintained that he was still for the plan, but not to the extent of actually seeing it through. Tommy had found a new home among the natives, most of whom were too nice to come right out and tell him to fuck off. Even Laura decided she "had too many things on her plate," which was her nice way of saying that if Sarah wasn't going to let her be in charge, then she could go to hell. The defections left Sarah increasingly isolated, and isolation never really has been known to improve anyone's mental health. The past few nights Sarah hadn't even returned to her tent in the activists' camp to sleep. 
 "It might take days or even weeks," Dana decided when news of the canoe sinking reached the activists, "but I'm going to track Sarah down." 
Twenty minutes later, Dana found her. The search had moved along much faster than she had expected, on account of the fact that Sarah was not so much hiding as she was making loud hammering sounds.
 "What are you doing?" Dana asked.
 "Hammering," Sarah explained, without looking away from her work.
 "That much I'd gathered. But why are you hammering nails into a tree?"
 "It's called spiking. You put the nail into the tree at the level a logger would cut it down. Then when his chainsaw hits the nail, the chain snaps, whips around and slices him open. It's environmental. Cuts down on logging."
 "Yes, I've heard of tree spiking," Dana said. "But they don't even have chainsaws here. When they want to take down a tree, they use a sharpened rock."
Sarah stopped her pounding for a moment. "Still can't hurt," she decided, and went back to hammering.
 "Sarah, would you stop that for a second? I want to talk to you about the canoe sinking."
 "There's been a canoe sinking?" Sarah asked, interested. 
 "But no one was killed. He was rescued by a fish."
 "A fish? Do you mean a dolphin?"
 "No, he says it was a tuna."
 "I knew the dolphins would be smart enough to take my side," Sarah said. "Stupid tuna. Can't see the big picture."
 "So you admit you've been killing people?"
 "On the record or off the record?"
 "On the record."
 "No."
 "Okay, then off the record."
 "Still no."
 "Why did you ask 'on or off the record' if you were going to give the same answer to both?"
 "I just like the way it sounds. I'm thinking about going to law school some day."
 "Sarah, just admit you've been trying to kill people. It's not really a crime. It's a disease, like using drugs."
 "I won't admit I've done anything wrong. Hard decisions had to be made. As the political voice of the island, it was my job to make them."
 "First of all, you're not the political voice of the island. The villagers never elected you to any post. They choose their leader the same way they've chosen their leaders for generations: they pick their fattest, and thus most successful, fisherman. It's not our place to argue with their traditions."
 "You're taking the side of a despotic, phallo-centric power structure?"
 "Despotic? Their leader's only in charge of deciding when it's time to fish. And since it's time to fish whenever the sun is out, it's not as though one leader is very much different from another. As a leader all you've brought to this island is attempted murder."
 "That's not true."
 "Sure it is."
 "Well, even if it is true, it's not the truth I've decided to go with."
 "Do you even care that people are being hurt by your high-minded theories?"
 "Don't hand me that," Sarah retorted. "There's not an activist in the world who doesn't think the same way. We're all in favor of expanding the welfare system. Sure, everyone knows welfare just creates a cycle of welfare dependence for generations, but that's no excuse to be against it. We're all against big business, even though without big businesses Americans wouldn't have enough money to feed themselves, much less give to the charities that pay people like us to improve the world by being against big business. Welfare is the right thing, and being against corporate America is the right thing, just like what I'm doing here is the right thing. We're activists working for a noble cause. Consequences are irrelevant. Morality is below us."
 "Don’t try to confuse the issue. We're talking about killing, and it has to stop. One man has been badly scratched. Another nearly drowned."
 "But surely the natives understand that it's in their best interest," Sarah pleaded. "Surely they'll listen to reason."
 "You need help. Why don't you come talk to the doctor. He's not a psychiatrist, but he does have considerable personal experience with borderline insanity."
Sarah didn't argue. In fact she looked near tears.
"Come on back to the camp, it's going to be okay," Dana said. Sarah just slumped down at the base of the tree and stared at the ground. "Sarah?"
 "It's just…it's just this place," Sarah said at last. "There's no one here to protest against. And when I do protest against something, it's always something thousands of miles away that couldn't care less that I'm protesting against it. Maybe I should just go home." 
 "Don't give up so easily. Why don't you come back to the camp with me. We'll have something to eat, and then we'll try to think of a solution."
 "I have a solution."
 "A solution that doesn't involve killing."
 "Oh. I don't have one of those."
 
With the sales department squarely on his side, Gwafinn's monkey idea didn't seem likely to end very soon. This was particularly distressing to the head of the research department, H. Kensington Johnston, H. Kensington to friends, of which he had none. It was distressing because he was now more zookeeper than research director, and it was distressing because of his rather unfortunate allergy to pet hair. Some within the Johnston Brothers hierarchy were of the opinion that at least one, and possibly both, of these tweaks to H. Kensington Johnston was Gwafinn's true motivation for his monkey initiative. I wasn't so certain. But I had to concede that it very well might have been a factor in his thinking. What other explanation was there for Gwafinn's having had dog hair shipped in and glued to the monkeys when told that the monkey hair had had little effect?  
 Mostly I steered clear of the monkey debate. I had my own plan to consider. If I didn't get things rolling quickly, news of Gwafinn's monkey plan would leak and the name Gwafinn, and by extension the name Gwafin, would be anathema on Wall Street. If I wasn't a certified success by then, I'd certainly be certified the son of a certifiable head case, then promptly fired. The key to my plan was finding those previously churned investors. After giving the matter considerable thought, I decided that the best solution was to hang out in bars and try to pick up women. When the chips are on the line, you've got to go with what you know. I'd just have to find the right bars and the right women. In this case, the right bars figured to be the upscale ones around Wall Street, and the right women were those who had-just-been or knew-they-would-soon-be laid off from secretarial or administrative-assistant positions at investment banks. Fortunately, there were plenty of these around, owing to the unfortunately poor economy. Anyone in this position would be depressed and anxious to get back at their former employers. All I'd have to do is seduce them into turning over client lists. Granted, it was a somewhat sleazy plan, but I had an iron-clad defense if the SEC tried to take my license to sell securities away: I'd never gotten my license in the first place. Let's see them talk their way out of that one.
 I gave it a try that afternoon at a place I knew a block from Wall Street. The lunch crowd dispersed, heading back to their offices to spend a productive afternoon attempting to conceal their cocktail intake. I sized up the presumably unemployed figures who remained, and selected an empty bar stool next to a woman who looked just exactly like what I would have expected a depressed recently laid off Wall-Street secretary to look like. 
 "Excuse me, are you okay?" I asked.
 "I'll be all right." She didn't look up from her cocktail.
 "Please, tell me what's wrong. I want to be your friend."
 "You want to know?" At least she looked at me this time.
 "Yes, I want to know."
 "Then you're not really my friend."
 "What?"
 "A friend would offer to hear my problems because he liked me, not because he really wanted to know. In fact, a friend would listen to my problems despite the fact that he hates listening to them. If you really want to know my problems then you're just being nosey."
 "I see. So if I value the time I spend trying to help you, then I'm just prying--but if I find listening to you irritating, then I'm a friend."
 "That's right."
 "Then I've got some good news for you. The very sound of your voice bugs the hell out of me."
 "That's better," the woman said. "I'm just depressed because I just lost my job."
 "On Wall Street."
 "Uh huh, Mornall & Swain."
 "Good firm," I said, because that's what you're supposed to say when someone else mentions their employer. 
 "They're horrible," the woman corrected. It was my mistake. The rules of etiquette decree that one should reflexively complement another person's place of employment only up to the moment that person is fired. Then you should start in with the criticisms. 
 "You're right, of course, they're just terrible," I said. "When I said they were a good firm I meant they were a good firm back when you worked for them."
The woman fixed me with one of those looks that are so popular among those who want you to know that they know you're up to something. I retorted with a smile that I hoped said "I can be trusted," or at very least "Maybe I can't be trusted, but at least I floss after meals." 
 "Are you just hitting on me, or are you trying to seduce me into turning over client lists," she asked, showing considerable savvy for someone who couldn't hold a job.
 "Uh…just hitting on you," I lied.
 "Don't lie. You're an even worse liar than you are a seducer. Christ, with the kind of money on the line here, the least they could do is send someone around who's capable of a quality seduction."
 "I could try again. I'm sure I could do better."
 "No, no, I don't mean to be so critical. It's just that I've had a very bad day, what with getting fired and all. I'm sure you did your best. As it happens, I'm not very pleased about being fired, so I'll give you the client lists."
 "Oh," I said. "Okay."
 "You sound disappointed."
 "I'll be all right."
 "Don't be like that," the woman said. "You can tell me."
 "It's just that, well, I was expecting a bit more intrigue. I mean, I didn't so much seduce you out of the client lists as you just decided to give them to me."
 "There's no reason to be depressed about it. Everything worked out okay."
 "Still, shouldn't we at least sleep together first? I kind of figured that's the way this sort of thing would work."
 "Yea, I suppose you're right," the woman conceded.
So we went back to her place, and I left with a more relaxed outlook on life and a list of thirty names, a handful of whom actually bought into the no-churning pitch and signed on as my clients.
 
July 29

Reaching Spanish Guyana turned out to be more difficult than Smith had expected. Mostly this was on account of a civil war they'd decided to throw, which seemed to Smith a rather trivial reason to interfere with his important administrative mission. Eventually Smith had resigned himself to a flight into a neighboring Guyana--his choice of French Guiana or the original Guyana classic--followed by a short drive down the Inter-Guyana Highway. As it happened, Spanish Guyanian troops had taken to appropriating any vehicle faster than a donkey, a fact that greatly troubled local car rental agencies, although it was just fine with local donkey rental agencies. Smith rented himself a donkey and set off towards the Spanish Guyana war zone, only mildly concerned that the Bucklin College Travel Expense Reimbursement Voucher Forms did not specifically mention a per-diem limit for donkey rentals.
 The border crossing had been a surprisingly simple affair. With most everyone in Spanish Guyana ready to offer a bribe to get out, the guards hardly wasted a moment on the solitary man on the rented donkey heading in. Once in Spanish Guyana, Smith knew exactly what to do. Only six miles into the country he saw what he needed. It was crude in construction--and even cruder in its current state of destruction--but there was no question about it; this was the bombed-out remains of an office building. The smoking shell of a copy machine removed all doubt. Cautiously, Smith dismounted his rental donkey. Where there were office buildings there were…
 "Halt or you'll be in violation of office protocol," someone shouted in Spanish from behind a battered filing cabinet. 
…there were office administrators. 
 "Do you speak English?" Smith called back.
 "You need to sign in in the visitor's guest book in the lobby before you're allowed to enter the offices upstairs," said the voice, now in English. "It's building policy. They'll issue you a pass."
 "Where's the lobby?" Smith asked.
 "The second floor collapsed into it during the shelling. Perhaps you should look below the second floor."
Smith took a step forward, into the shattered remains of the second floor. "Halt. I won't warn you again, you can't enter the second floor until you sign in in the lobby guest book. I have a staple gun. I do not wish to use it, but these are desperate times."
Smith could not see the man behind the file cabinet, but he took the threat seriously. "But how can I get to the lobby guest book without stepping in the second floor now that the second floor is in the lobby?"
 "I, myself, cannot see how it would be possible," the voice said. 
 "Then we're at an impasse."
 "I'm afraid so."
 "Perhaps I don't need to come in. Perhaps you can answer my question while I stand out here."
 "Answering questions for passersby is not in my job description."
 "What is in your job description?"
 "Excuse me, sir, but did you not hear what I just said?"
 "Sorry. But I'm on a very important mission. You see, I'm an administrator, like yourself."
The man considered this new information. "But how can I know that?" he asked. "How can I be 100% certain, so that there's no chance of my being held accountable for the mistake if it's not true?"
 "I think you know how," Smith said. "Just shake my hand."
 "Ah, the handshake." Like Smith, this man was a member in good standing of the Worldwide Administrators' Guild. Founded in the 13th century by administrators working in the back office of the European masonry industry, the administrators' guild had grown into a global organization with strong religious overtones and plenty of social drinking. An administrator could wander anywhere on the planet and still identify other administrators through the secret Administrator's Guild handshake, which was just like a regular handshake, only limper. Members of the Guild were sworn to aid other administrators in any way they could--or at very least to schedule a block of time to help them at some point in the future, so long as doing so wasn't in violation of any written company rules. "But you cannot come in, and I cannot leave the remains of my office until my lunch hour. It is company policy. We are at least forty feet apart. Our arms could not possibly reach."
 "I understand. I will wait in the shade of my donkey until your lunch hour. When will that be?"
 "It's the usual South American lunch hour. Noon until three."
It was already eleven. Smith would not have to wait long. 
 
John Driscoll was the first of the interns to take part in this bold new venture in securities analysis. He wasn't selected at random; the chimps had shown a particular fondness for throwing their sell signals his direction. Some people just have a way with animals. Driscoll gazed into the research department from the safety of the intern room. Until the day before, the intern room had been the office of department head H. Kensington Johnston. It had been re-christened when Johnston had landed in the hospital with a severe allergic reaction, compounded by multiple monkey bites. 
 Driscoll's fellow interns stapled the stock listings to his only suit. "Be careful, that's my only suit," Driscoll cautioned. But when he thought about it, a few staples were less of a problem for a suit than the other option, a thin glaze of monkey excrement. The monkeys seemed to know that something was about to happen, Driscoll thought. They were working themselves into a frenzy. Perhaps it was the presence of the firm's board of directors behind the Plexiglas screen by the door. The monkeys could be surprisingly perceptive about office politics. 
 Driscoll was correct. The monkeys could tell that something was up. Anticipation was building in the research room. Like new employees in any field, most of the monkeys had been anxious and agitated ever since they first became research analysts that Monday morning. Chimp #8 was the exception. While his colleagues flew into a fury whenever an intern encroached on their territory, Chimp #8 saw that the interns were only there to provide them with food and fresh copies of the Wall Street Journal. Like the others he was a bit overwhelmed by his new environs, but he was willing to give them a chance. It was certainly roomier than the cage he had endured after his capture. And--thus far, at least--it was refreshingly short on lions and research scientists, two antagonists that could quickly derail the long-term plans of any monkey. Chimp #8 glanced again at the Hewlett-Packard Series 9000 Model 715/33 workstation on his desk and hoped his lack of computing experience wouldn't be held against him.
 Before he had a chance to take another stab at the database analysis program, Chimp #8 saw an intern enter the room. "He isn't here to feed us," #8 noted to himself with mild displeasure. Chimp #8 considered the situation as his co-workers registered their displeasure with the intrusion in their usual messy yet unequivocal way. No food, and no attempt to steal his soiled copy of the Journal. Now Chimp #8 was confused. At a loss for what to do, he turned his attention to the people behind the Plexiglas screen. Chimp #8 knew power when he saw it. Those were the people calling the shots. The Bald One in particular. He was the alpha male. Today The Bald One was doing something unusual. He was holding something small and shinny--something that looked very familiar to Chimp #8. The Bald One cracked open the door that led from his Plexiglas enclosure into the research room. He looked Chimp #8 right in the eye. Then he turned towards the intern, who was busy ducking and dodging airborne sell signals. The Bald One pulled his arm back and let fly with the shinny thing. 
 Driscoll the intern let loose a scream of sufficient volume to grab all the chimps' attention. The monkeys paused for a moment, unsure of the cry's meaning. It wasn't a lion. They would have noticed a lion. They were pretty good at that. Perhaps it was a research scientist, they thought. Then they noticed the silver dart protruding from the intern's backside. The chimps all knew how that felt. They'd experienced the same thing before being put in cages and shipped off to this place. Soon the intern would fall asleep, they guessed. And then he'd be locked in a small cage. Well, at least he wasn't hanging from a tree branch fifty feet off the ground when it happened. Most of the chimps retreated to the safety of their filing cabinets and desk drawers to avoid any subsequent darts.
 But not Chimp #8. Chimp #8 was trying to put the clues together. The dart--it looked so familiar. He glanced down at his desk. There they were, arranged neatly in his pencil holder. Chimp #8 picked one up and studied it. He saw The Bald One, now safely back behind his Plexiglas, looking straight at him and nodding his head. The Bald One pointed towards the intern and made a throwing motion. Chimp #8 looked at the intern. The man was trying to escape back into the office from which he had emerged from a minute before, but the other interns were holding the door shut. What the hell, Chimp #8 thought, and let fly.
 "Yes!" yelled Gwafinn. 
 "Aaugh," yelled Driscoll the intern, who had taken this one in the upper left thigh. Chimp #8 was in for a surprise as well; a banana fall onto his desk from a chute that had been installed the week before as part of the firm's new, more cost-effective, analyst bonus program. In the intern room, Gwafinn's voice was heard over the intercom. "Okay, you can let that intern out now." 
 Gwafinn remained calm. But all around him board members--the non-Johnston board members anyway--were cheering. Chimp #8 enjoyed his bonus banana, as his colleagues looked on jealously. "It wouldn't be long now," Gwafinn thought. "There's nothing that can't be accomplished once jealousy gets involved." Of those on hand for this historic event, only the interns joined the Johnstons in their displeasure. 
 The board was tempted to rush over to the intern room for a look at Chimp #8's first pick. But the smell in the intern room was almost as bad as it was in the monkey room. "Send over the page the chimp hit," Gwafinn said over an intercom. Then he thought better of accepting the stained newspaper. "Scratch that. Send over a Xerox of it. And slip it under the door. You people smell awful."
 In the intern room the mood was indeed dark. Driscoll had taken two darts, plus the usual coating of chimpanzee defecation. Juliana Hopkins, a fellow intern, claimed that the first dart had been thrown by the CEO. But then the other interns had long suspected that Juliana might be a chimp sympathizer. Driscoll was laid across a desk in the interns' room, the newspaper carefully removed and Xeroxed. The stock listing had blocked most of the monkey's assault, but Driscoll's odor was not pleasant, and it was doubtful that his shoes would ever regain their original shine. "This had better look good on my resume," Driscoll observed. 
 
For the first time in his life, Kerns was a Big Man On Campus. This, frankly, was a bit depressing, in as much as he'd spent the past 35 years of his life on campuses, and he was rather tall. But Kerns was enjoying himself far too much to dwell on his decades as a Largely Irrelevant Man On Campus. Now when he ventured into a faculty office or dining hall, professors would ask him to join them. Kerns had always wondered what it felt like to be asked to join a group, and he found it was every bit as wonderful as he had imagined. And that was just the half of it. Once he was among a group, he no longer was afraid to voice his opinions. If he had something to say, everyone would listen. Kerns still didn't open his mouth much, but now his silence was one born of superiority, not fear.
 There was only one remaining dragon to slay, and Kerns was married to it. Katherine had hardly spoken to him since her return from Cancun. True, the first week-and-a-half of that poor communication had been mainly Kerns' fault, in as much as he had spent it hiding in an attic. But the other week-and-a-half was on Katherine's shoulders, pure and simple. Kerns had been disappointed when Katherine had not commented on his new competency. He had been disturbed when she hadn't thanked him from solving the building shortage problem, which seemed the least she could do, since French Literature had been scheduled to merged with geology, and Katherine had never shown any great interest in rocks. And he had been downright depressed when she didn't so much as say goodnight before turning off the light each night, as a 'goodnight' is precious little action to ask of a partner in bed.
 There was only one rational conclusion, Kerns decided, and it was exactly the same as the irrational conclusion he already had jumped to. Katherine was having an affair, and would soon leave him. All that remained was to divide up the possessions and arrange a custody-sharing schedule for the dog. He should have known life wouldn't let him be happy. 
 
"How's the no-churning plan going?" Keller asked.
 "Great," I said "I have three new clients with half the list still to call--and I've gotten laid. It is, in many ways, the perfect plan."
 "Except that you're more-or-less required not to churn these clients once you've got 'em, so you're never going to get rich off their commissions."
 "I couldn't have churned them anyway. My high moral standards wouldn't have allowed it."
 "These the same high moral standards that allow you to prostitute yourself for client lists?"
 "Okay, I grant you that technically I might be prostituting myself. But it's a minor issue at best, since the plan would be going even better if I wasn't insisting on the sex."
 "Fair enough. But what about the ethics of cheating on your girlfriend?"
 "There's a war involved. I get an automatic dispensation."
 "How do you figure?"
 "When there's a war, the 1,000-mile, one-month limit comes into play. As long as you're at least that far apart for at least that long you get to cheat without guilt, because you might never see each other again."
 "Bullshit. You just made that rule up."
 "It's a well-established rule. Except in Europe, where you have to convert the miles to kilometers, which can get a bit tricky."
 "I'm going to stick with my earlier 'bullshit'."
 "There's more, too. If we're separated by war for more than a full year I get to father a child out of wedlock and look back on the affair with bittersweet memories even if Dana does later turn up alive." 
 "Thing is, buddy, it's your girlfriend who's in the war zone, not you. Shouldn't she be the one to get the sexual dispensation?"
 "She can't do that to me."
 "But you can do it to her?"
 "Look, we're talking about cultural customs here. Historical precedent clearly says it’s the guy that gets to cheat. Anyway whose side are you on?"
 "I'm on your side, Gwafster, I'm just yanking your chain."
 "If anyone was yanking my chain, I wouldn't have to cheat in the first place."
 "So precisely what, as you see it, is your responsibility to this girlfriend of yours on the fidelity front?"
 "I have to do my best to avoid cheating."
 "And this is your best?"
 "It's my best. Fortunately, that isn't very good."
 
"You could be against me," Dana offered over a plate of seaweed. "I wouldn't mind so much." 
 "It's nice of you to offer," said Sarah. "But I really need to be against something that gives me that warm glow of social outrage. You're far too nice."
Sarah had lapsed into a deep sleep after her return to the activists' camp, her days of intense righteousness having taken a toll. Now that she was awake, refreshed, and slightly more coherent, Dana was anxious to help her find a solution before there were any more well-intentioned potentially lethal attacks.
 "I could be meaner," Dana said. "To be honest, I've even felt like punching a few people recently."
 "But you'd punch all the right people. It wouldn't be the same."
 "Maybe I could do something damaging to the planet," Dana persisted. "As long as you promise we can undo it once you're done being outraged by it. I know. I could dig for oil. I'll go get my spoon"
 "It just wouldn't work. I've tried doing this half way, and see where it got us? I became a murderer."
 "An attempted murderer. There's a world of difference." 
 "Are you calling me ineffectual?"
 "No, no. I was trying to be understanding."
 "See? That's exactly the sort of thing that makes you so hard to dislike."
 "And let's not forget that your heart was in the right place," Dana said.
 "Well, of course my heart was in the right place. I would never have killed anyone in a bad cause. That would be wrong."
 "No one's questioning your values," Dana assured her. "Let's just get back to work coming up with something for you to be against. How about rocks? There are an awful lot of rocks on the island."
 "What am I supposed to have against rocks?"
 "Lots of things: they're uncomfortable to sit on, they don't contribute to charities, and they were used as weapons throughout prehistory."
 "Sure, in prehistory. But they seem to have reformed their ways."
 "True, no one seems to be working on any laser-guided rocks," Dana admitted. "But at least there are plenty of them here to dislike."
 "Thanks for trying to help," Sarah said. "But I'd feel silly protesting against rocks. What's the point? Everyone already knows I'm superior to rocks. What else have you got?"
 "Let's see…you can't be against animals or plants. That would be wrong. And frankly the plants, the animals, and the rocks are about all we've got to work with here on the island, aside from the natives and the activists…You're sure I can't sell you on the rocks?"
 "It's hopeless. I might as well go back to the murdering. At least it was proactive."
 "Just give me some time. A month. A few weeks at least. I'm sure I can come up with something."
 "You better make it fast. I can't go on feeling this unproductive much longer."