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“No.”

“HA ha ha. Hey Mouthbreather! I knew you wouldn’t be able to the first time I saw it.”

“So who were those guys anyway?” Frank asked again.

“Who the fuck knows? We never saw them again.”

“Lucky for you.”

“No lie.”

“You guys could use a phone. Whip it out and 911 in situations like that.”

“Yeah right!”

“So that being the case, I brought you all application cards so you can get into FOG, the zoo group.”

“No way.”

“They tell me the park is going to be regulated this summer, so you’ll need to be a member to be able to stay in the park.”

“You think the cops will act any different just because we got some card on us?”

“Yes, I do. Plus, they give you a cell phone if you’re a member. It’s a little party line, but it works.”

“Oh good I always wanted one of those!”

“Shut up and fill out the form here. Come on—I bet you can put down any name you want. Besides, it can’t possibly break any parole agreements. They’re not going to throw you in jail for joining the Friends of the National Zoo for God’s sake.”

“Ha ha! Who you saying is on parole?”

“Yeah who you saying is on parole? At least we got noses.”

“Ha ha. Just fill out the form.”

Coming up to their little closet, Frank heard someone in there talking to Rudra, and came up to the door curious to see who it was, as the old man seemed somewhat neglected in the house. But no one else was in there. Rudra started at the sight of Frank, stared up at him with an addled look, as if he had forgotten who Frank was.

“Sorry,” Frank said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I am happy you did.”

“Talking to yourself, were you?”

“Don’t think so.”

“I thought I heard somebody.”

“Interesting. Sometimes I, what say . . . I sing to myself. One kind of Tibetan singing makes two sounds from one voice. Head note? Overtone?” He opened his mouth and emitted a bass note lower than Frank would have expected from such a slight body; and at the same time there was a scratchy harmonic floating in the room.

“Very nice,” Frank said. “It reminds me of Louis Armstrong.”

Rudra nodded. “Very fine singer.” He opened his mouth again, sang deeply, “The odds, were a hundred to one against us,” like Louis played at two-thirds normal speed, slower and deeper.

“That’s right, very good! So you like him?”

“Very fine singer. Head tone undeveloped, but very strong.”

“Interesting.” Frank unrolled his groundpad, laid himself out with a small groan.

“Go to park?”

“Yes.”

“Find your friends?”

“Some of them.” Frank began to describe them and the situation out there—the bros, the fregans, his own project. He lay down on his back and left the laptop off, and talked about the paleolithic, and how the brain had evolved to feel good because of certain stimuli caused by behaviors performed repeatedly in the two-million-year run-up to humanity; and how they should be able to feel good now by living a life that conformed as closely to these early behaviors as possible. Which was what he had been trying to do, in his life out in the park.

“Good idea!” Rudra said. “Original mind. This is Buddhism also.”

“Yes? Well, I guess I’m not surprised. It seemed to me that you were talking about something like that when you spoke at NSF last year.”

Rudra didn’t appear to remember this talk, which had been such a shattering experience for Frank—a real paradigm buster, as Edgardo would say. Frank did not press the matter, feeling shy at admitting to the old man what a profound effect he had created, with what had apparently been an offhand comment. Instead he described to Rudra the ways in which he felt that prisoner’s dilemma and Snowdrift modeled ethics in a scientific way, how the games were scored and the strategies judged, and how, at the start of the winter, he had come to the tentative conclusion that it made best adaptive sense to pursue the strategy called always generous.

“Good idea,” Rudra said. “But what are these points? Why play for points?”

Frank was still pondering this when Sucandra and Padma clomped upstairs to see how the