Below them people churned bewilderedly in the streets like a rising and falling tide. A faint thread of dawn touched the horizon just as the last explosion shuddered across the land.
"Iss all," the Leader mourned soddenly. "All iss gone. You haf made me a tired old man."
"That's all you ever were," Toffee said almost kindly. "You were foolish to try to be anything else." She patted him on the head with groggy sympathy. "I've got a feeling I've got to be running along now. But there's just one more thing before I go...."
"Iss all. Iss all," the Leader moaned. "Iss no more."
"No, not that. All I want to know is what does helpovitch mean?"
The old man lolled his head to one side and looked at her lopsidedly from the corner of his eye. "Iss native slang vord meaning 'democracy.' Iss very dorty vord."
And then, as his beautiful tormentor vanished into thin air, he toppled from his perch on the wall and sprawled flat on his back.
The enemy, a bottle cradled protectively in his arms, had fallen....
Marc had fought the battle against sleep to the last ditch, and there had tripped and fallen squarely into the waiting arms of Morpheus. The sounds, the drone and buzz of Congress, swirled away into limbo and mercifully died. Marc was no longer among those present at the ridiculous investigation.