I tried for more than an hour, but my brain wouldn't cooperate. Sleep? Null program, cobber. I would just start to get that warm, floating feeling when some image of Lolly would flash into my brain-a smile, a turn of phrase, or something more intimate-and I'd be awake again, lying there tingling. The worst moments were when I saw the shadowy stranger with my face raising the gun and pressing it against little Lolly's forehead . . . I gave it about ninety minutes before I conceded and reached for the bottle of synthahol. Only that eventually managed to push Lolly, and everything else, out of my brain, so that finally I slept.