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. SUDDENLY, through the sonorous lilt and tear of his projecting voice, the Senator was distracted. Grasping the dimly lit lectern and concentrating on the faces of colleagues seated below him behind circular, history-stained desks, his eyes had been attracted by a turbulence centering around the rich emblazonry of the Great Seal. High across the chamber and affixed midpoint the curving sweep of the distant visitors' gallery, the national coat of arms had ripped from its moorings and was hurtling down toward him with the transparent unsubstantiality of a cinematic image that had somehow gone out of control.
Increasing alarmingly in size while maintaining the martial posture of tradition, the heraldic eagle with which the Great Seal was charged seemed to fly free of its base, zooming forward and flaring luminously as it halted, oscillating a few arm's lengths before the Senator's confounded head. There, pulsating with the hallucinatory vividness of an eidetic image, the rampant eagle aroused swift olfactory memories of dried blood and dusty feathers and stirred within him, as by the motion of swift silent wings, fragmentary images of warfare tinged with conflicting details of heroism and betrayal. .