Later that night JSN looked up to see his barn disintegrating on an overhead monitor. "Holy shit," he said.

LNR leaned backward to look. "The devos?"

JSN nodded. "And I think DNS is on board. Or fried to a cinder."

"Oh well. Good riddance to the lot of them. Any more amps on this thing?"

JSN twisted the dial all the way up to ten.

JSN was shooting a fashion layout in one of his disused pastures when the devos found him. The director had just finished draping him erotically in yards of raw fiberglass when she noticed that her lead camera had dropped off-line. She called for the backup and found the power switch had jammed in the OFF position. "Okay," she said. "Let's take a break."

"What about me?" JSN asked. He could barely move. "You," the director said, "look luscious. Just stay put." At that point the shuttle dropped out of the sky with a paralyzing roar. The film crew scattered but JSN, barely able to hop, couldn't get away. Two of the male devos grabbed him and carried him into the reeking bowels of the ship.

"Very good," said a familiar voice as JSN was hustled through the control room. "Lock him in a cabin and I'll get to him later."

"DNS, you bastard!" JSN shouted. "What are you doing?"

"Don't be obsolete!" DNS shouted back. "We're all bastards these days, remember?"

They shut JSN in a tiny cabin with a video screen that filled all of one wall. After a few seconds it lit up and showed a large 21. The number slowly dissolved into a scene of the white-haired man, Johnny Carson, dressed in a circus costume and performing a trick riding act. He had one foot on a donkey and the other on a small horse, and he grinned foolishly as the two animals cantered down a dusty path littered with palm fronds.

Crowds lined both sides of the road and the camera panned them, picking up bits of conversation. "Who is this?" "This is the prophet Johnny from The Tonight Show."

Johnny rode through the high, mud-brick gateway of the city and up to the doors of the temple. There he jumped down and staggered around for a few seconds in mock drunkeness, sending the crowd into hysterical laughter. Then he walked boldly inside.

Both sides of the huge hall were lined with tables, and on the tables were stacks of videos and stereos and home computers and various kinds of brightly colored boxes. Shiny new automobiles were parked in the aisles next to large enameled appliances.

Johnny walked past all the tables, all the way to the far end of the room, turned, and spread his arms wide. He looked up and down the temple until he had everyone's attention. "And now," he said, "a word from our sponsor."

JSN sat on the floor and switched all of his available systems over to standby.