Very large television sets hang from the ceilings in the departure lounge, showing the Airport Channel, which is a parade of news-bits even more punishingly flimsy than normal television news, mixed in with a great deal of weather and stock quotes. Randy is struck, but not precisely surprised, to see footage of black-hatted Secret Admirers exercising their Second Amendment rights in the streets of Los Altos, and of Ordo’s barricade avalanching towards the camera, and the police storming over it weapons drawn. Paul Comstock is shown—pausing, as he climbs into a limousine to say something, looking hale and smug. The conventional wisdom about TV news is that the image is everything and if that is the case then this is a big win for Ordo, which looks like the victim of jackbooted thugs. Which gets Epiphyte nowhere, since Ordo is, or ought to be, nothing more than a bystander. This is supposed to be a private conflict between the Dentist and Epiphyte and now it’s become a public one between Comstock and Ordo, and this makes Randy irritated and confused.