The Oracle [antikvár]

It was late September, and the smnmer had not yet gone. All day, the normally temperate city had sweltered, and now, as darkness approached, the heat remained: a sullen, humid blanket of air, so unfairly blown north from subtropic muck. . . . In the broadcasting studio, the temperature was scarcely endurable; the air conditioning had failed unaccoimtably more than two hours before, and had not been repaired. Christopher Usher, attempting to beat the heat, had removed his clothing; for the first time in his career he was naked as he broadcast to the nation. Squares of cardboard had been hastily placed across the studio windows, shielding him from the gaze of the curious or the prurient. White and pink and intermittently hairy, he sat poised before the microphone, and as he read from the pages of his script, little globes of sweat bubbled, burst, and raced down the meaty concourse of his trunk. He was uncomfortable, but he was not unhappy, for he was talking: it was the scheduled hour of his nightly communication with his public. As he read from the script before him, he addressed the microphone with an air of personal persuasion, as if it were an agreeably unenlightened companion, as if, imder the ripe 3