"Yes," said Riggs. "What is it?"
"Later on," Stanford managed to say, "much later on, toward the very end, there is a certain factor that we must supply. The one thing that he will need the most and the one thing that he cannot think about, even in advance. All the rest can be stage setting and he can still go on toward the time when it becomes reality. All the rest may be make-believe, but one thing must come as genuine or the entire effort will collapse in failure."
Riggs nodded. "Of course. That's something we'll have to work out carefully."
"If we can," Stanford said.
The yellow button over here and the red one over there and the green one doesn't fit, so I'll throw it on the floor and just for the fun of it, I'll put the pink one in my mouth and someone will find me with it and they'll raise a ruckus because they will be afraid that I will swallow it.
And there's nothing, absolutely nothing, that I love better than a full-blown ruckus. Especially if it is over me.
"Ug," said Andrew Young, and he swallowed the button.
He sat stiff and straight in the towering high chair and then, in a fury, swept the oversized muffin tin and its freight of buttons crashing to the floor.