"My god," U.S.WW thought as she collapsed into one of the seats at the back of the theater, "Has this all just been a movie? If so, someone needs to fire the continuity people, call in Syd Field and learn a thing or two about structure..."

She sat in silence for a moment, watching the credits roll for the newest release in the "Silence" series. "Silence of the Clams," she had heard, lacked the punch of its prequel, "Silence of the Rams," and was limp, pallid even, compared to that wonderful Scots flick, "Silence of the Tams." Her companion was exasperating, she thought, fidgeting around, fishing for popcorn money. She turned to get a closer look at him in the darkness of the theater.

"Forget the damned popcorn," she said. "Ali Inkomfree might still be in the lobby. HEy, wait a minute. Weren't you just telling me something about your wife? And isn't that your hand? And isn't it on my knee?"

She paused for a moment, noticing that hand. Once again, it was oddly familiar. She looked at his face. The light from the screen -- still silent, of course. There is little silence more silent than that of clams. Even happy clams -- flickered across his face. Their eyes locked. Her heart did that funny little flipflop thingie it used to do back in Peter T's dum-dum-doobie-doobie-do thread. Why, she'd almost think it was Catspaw with his paw on her ... oh, my ... She was definitely getting a strong Mudcat vibration now. She looked again and her companion reached up to the neck of his Taliban robe. With one swift motion, he pulled an amazingly realistic mask from his face.

WyoWoman sank back in the seat with a sigh of relief and then began laughing so hard she could barely contain herself. It was him. The famous Mudcateer, her friend and companion. She hadn't seen him for such a long time... except ...

"Wait a minute," she said, peering into his face with her laser-like baby blues. He had never been able to lie when she locked those tractor beam eyes on his. "That mask you just pulled off... did you just happen to have another of those on recently? Did you just happen to be posing as, maybe, a GUARD in the Taliban HQ? Have I been HAD???"

He said nothing. Just smiled mysteriously as he pulled a tiny piece of straw from the neck of his robe. His hand moved ever so slightly up, up ...

On the silvery, silent screen, the clams just smiled and smiled.