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The light turned green, and Spike swung right onto the coast highway, and Benny said, “Missions? What missions?”

“There are ever fewer nice people,” the giant said. “Millions are falling into one mass-formation psychosis or another. The world desperately needs nice, sane people. When a nice person is too nice for his own good, like you—”

“I’m nice, but I’m not allthatnice,” Benny protested, as if he’d just been called a Goody Two-Shoes.

“—and when that super nice person, humble and naive, is shat on by one of the many psychodoodles out there—”

“I haven’t been shat on.”

“—has been shat on in an attempt to destroy him or her, but thinks it’s all a big misunderstanding, then a craggle is assigned to the case so that the very nice person will have support and won’t sink into despair and become one of them.”

“Psychodoodles?” Benny said.

“We take our work seriously,” Spike said, “but we don’t take ourselves seriously.”

Glancing at the computer screen, Benny realized the navigation system was engaged without the audio assist. The selected address was the home of Handy Duroc. They were really going to subject Handy to shock and awe.

“I don’t feel right about this,” Benny said.

“Of course you don’t, being the way you are.”

“It isn’t my niceness making me doubt.”

“Of course it is.”

“It’s what Handy will do after we leave. Why won’t he call the cops on me?”

“He won’t remember we were ever there. He won’t remember us or what information we wrung out of him.”

“You have the power to make people forget encounters with you?”

Spike shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I?”

After a silence, Harper said, “This is all so great, so cool, so life changing. I don’t want to forget you.”

“You might not,” Spike said. “You could be a special case. We’ll know as the night unfolds.”

“What special case?” she asked.

“For me to know and you to find out.”

For someone who apparently spent significant amounts of time in a box, and in spite of being crammed into a seat that was about as accommodating to him as a child’s high chair to a full-grown bear, Spike was a superb driver. Evening traffic on Pacific Coast Highway was heavy, complicated by the fact that maybe 15 percent of the motorists were undocumented aliens with forged driver’s licenses and no firm understanding of the motor-vehicle laws of California, while another 15 percent were well-documented drunks and drug addicts who either had contempt for the motor-vehicle laws of California or thought they were on a yellow-brick road in Oz. Spike wove from lane to lane, always finding an opening in the flow when he needed one, progressing swiftly and smoothly, never delayed at an intersection by a red traffic light, while all around them grid-sapping four-thousand-pound Teslas and lighter-weight gas hogs moved through the night like weary red corpuscles shuddering through arteries clogged with cholesterol.

Benny said, “Why don’t you just origami time-fold us to Handy’s place?”

“I like to drive. It relaxes me. I used that other trick just to slide past all the jabbering and get us on the road.”

“Jabbering?”

“You and the little lady are such question monkeys, we might never have gotten out of the house. It saves time to do the Q and A on the road. No offense intended.”

From the backseat shadows, Harper said, “None taken, big guy.”

“When this is all done, this mission of yours,” Benny said, “will I forget you and all that’s happened?”

“No, no, of course not. Your enemies will forget how they’ve been handled. And any bystanders who witness them being handled will forget. Only they, not you, will be mystified by how you routinely defeat their nefarious schemes.”

“I’m no damn bystander,” Harper asserted quietly but firmly.