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lifelong position of prestige and security. Like women, they were dressed in high-necked, long-sleeved blouses and ankle-length skirts.
    Behind them walked the man known as John Barleycorn. Stagg didn’t know his real name; “John Barleycorn” was evidently a title. Nor did Stagg know Barleycorn’s exact position in the government of Deecee. He lived in the White House, on the third floor, and seemed to have much to do with the administration of the country. His function was probably similar to that of the Prime Minister of ancient Great Britain.
    The Sunheroes, like the monarch of that country, were more figureheads, binders of loyalty and tradition, than actual rulers. Or so it seemed to Stagg, who had been forced to guess at the meaning of most of the phenomena that flashed and buzzed by him during his imprisonment.
    John Barleycorn was a very tall and very thin man of about thirty-five. His long hair was dyed a bright green, and he wore green spectacles. His long ski-slope nose and his face were covered with broken red veins. He wore a tall green plug hat. Around his neck hung a string of ears of corn. His torso was bare. His kilt was green, and the sporran hanging from his belt was made of stiff cloth shaped like the leaves of corn. His sandals were yellow.
    In his right hand he carried his emblem of office, a large bottle of white lightning.
    “Hail, man and myth!” he said to Stagg. “Greetings to the Sunhero! Greetings to the ramping, snorting stag of the Elk totem! Greetings to the Father of His Country and the Child and Lover of the Great White Mother!”
    He took a long swig from the bottle, smacked his lips, and passed it to Stagg.
    “I need that,” said the captain, and swallowed a mouthful. A minute later, after choking, gasping, and weeping great tears, he returned the bottle.
    Barleycorn was elated. “You gave a splendid performance, Noble Elk! You must have been visited by the special potency of Columbia Herself to be so stricken by the white lightning. Indeed, you are divine! Now take me, I am only a poor mortal, and when I first drank white lightning, I was affected. Still, I must confess that when I first assumed office as a lad I was able to feel the holy presence of the Goddess in the bottle and to be affected as much as yourself. But a man may become hardened even to divinity, may She pardon my saying so. Have I ever told you the story of how Columbia first liquified a lightning bolt and then bottled it? And how She gave it to the first man, none other than Washington himself? And how disgracefully he behaved and thereby incurred the wrath of the Goddess?
    “I have? Well, to business, then. I am preceding the Chief Priestess herself to give you a message. To whit and to-whooooo! Tomorrow is the birthday of the Son of the Great White Mother. And you, the child of Columbia, will be born tomorrow. And then what has been will be.”
    He took another drink, bowed to Stagg, almost fell on his face, recovered, and staggered out of the room.
    Stagg called him back. “Just a minute! I want to know what has happened to my crew!”
    Barleycorn blinked. “I told you that they were in a building on the campus of Georgetown University.”
    “I want to know where they are now—at this moment!”
    “They are being treated very well. Anything they want they may have, except their freedom. And they will get that day after tomorrow.”
    “Why then?”
    “Because you, too, will be released. Of course, you won’t be able to see them then. You’ll be on the Great Route.”
    “What is that?”
    “It will be revealed.”
    Barleycorn turned to leave, but Stagg said, “Tell me, why is that girl being kept in a cage? You know, the one with the sign that says: ‘Mascot, Captured in a Raid on Caseyland.’”
    “That, too, will be revealed, Sunhero. Meanwhile, I suggest that it is unbecoming in a man of your importance to lower himself by asking questions. The Great White Mother will explain everything in