J R

— In conjunction with certain amendments to the state law relating to highway construction standards, just say standards in highway construction.

— I talked to him about it on the way over this morning, motivating this cultural drive and seeing it pay off in mass consumers, mass distribution…

— No, standards. I said standards, standards, with a d…

— Like automobiles and bathing suits.

— Law! They can’t pull that law on him tell him, it wasn’t even passed till after he wasn’t reelected… Goodbye, call me if there’s any snag.

— On her Ring, yes and, and doing a very fine job…

— He helps some, rehearsing and all that stuff and junk but he hasn’t got much personality for it… here, gimme one of those, will you? She swooped at Mister diCephalis quietly disposing of a cigarette package in the wastebasket.

— No, I… they’re candy, he blurted. — The children’s. I picked them up by mistake, they look just like mine, the package…

She laughed at him.

The telephone rang.

— Hel… oh, what? Now? They’re here from the Foundation? They can’t be, this isn’t Friday. Well try and stall them…

— Gimme the phone, my…

— My boy’s in this thing of hers, Hyde dropped to Pecci, — quite the little musician. No piano or violin, nothing pansy. Trumpet.

— My wife’s taping something this morning, Mister diCephalis got in abruptly. — A resource program…

— Let’s just turn on the tube and see what we’ve got to show them.

— Taping? what, said Miss Flesch over the rim of the telephone.

— A resource program. On silkworms, she has her own Kashmiri records…

— If your Ring isn’t ready, your Wagner, what is there?

— My Mozart. She hung up the telephone and dialed again. — No answer, I’ll call and see if my visuals are ready… and she found her bun, washed in another bite with cold coffee and chewed into the mouthpiece, listening.

— gross profit on a business was sixty-five hundred dollars a year. He finds his expenses were twenty-two and one half percent of this profit. First, can you find the net profit?

— What’s that? demanded Hyde, transfixed by unseeing eyes challenging the vacant confine just over his head.

— Sixth grade math. That’s Glancy.

— percent this would be of the entire sales, if the sales were seventy thousand dol…

— Sixth? That?

— Glancy. They’re doing percents.

— merchant, and this merchant sold a coat marked fifty dollars at ten percent discount…

— Glancy reading cue cards. You can tell.

— Don’t show them that, just Glancy writing on a blackboard.

— that this merchant still made a twenty percent profit, let’s find the cost of the original…

— Try switching to thirty-eight.

— original cost of the… combustion in these thousands of little cylinders in our muscle engines. Like all engines, these tiny combustion engines need a constant supply of fuel, and we call the fuel that this machine uses, food. We measure its value…

— Even if the Rhinegold is ready it’s Wagner, isn’t it? But if the Mozart is scheduled the classroom teachers, they’re ready with the followup material from their study guides on the Mozart. They can’t just switch to the Wagner.

— the value of the fuel for this engine the same way, by measuring how much heat we get when it’s burned…

— That’s a cute model, it gets the idea right across. Whose voice?

— Vogel. He made it himself out of old parts.

— Whose.

— Parts?

— Some of them might never even have heard of Wagner yet. — No, the voice. — That’s Vogel, the coach.

— that we call energy. Doing a regular day’s work, this human machine needs enough fuel equal to about two pounds of sugar…

— If they thought it was Mozart’s Rhinegold and get them all mixed up, so you can’t really switch.

— He put it together himself out of used parts.

— fuel in a regular gasoline engine, and converts about twelve percent into the same amount of real work.

— To forty-two, try forty-two.

— that the engine has an alimentary system just like the human machine. When you pull up at the gas pump and ask for ten gallons the fuel is poured through an opening, or mouth, and goes into the gas tank, the engine’s stomach… who earns a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month pays four percent of it to the Social Security…

— I said forty-two, try forty-two. I think Mrs Joubert has something.

— how much he’s paid to the Social Security Board at the end of ten years, and… American Civil War, that was fought to free the slaves, and… in the carburetor, where the fuel is digested and…

— Omigosh! Miss Flesch erupted into the mouthpiece. Her free hand dug for a tissue — they’re what? Over at the temple? Not the Rhinegold, the Wagner no, the… No m, m like Mary. O. Yeah like zebra… she wiped her mouth, — What do you mean will I play the piano the only prop I’ve got is a… no a book, a book… A book yeah so it looks like I’m reading from this book and don’t forget the music for my singalong, I always sign off with a singalong…

— Go back to whatever that was about the Civil War, I think that’s history…

— that we wouldn’t like the taste of gasoline but luckily our car engine…

— Or Social Studies.