a three-layer interrogation relay

Hal's word for it is exact: "interviews." The whole call is intelligence flowing up a chain — Steeply, as "Helen," runs "half-dozen or so very complex and far-ranging and in-depth conversations" on Orin; Orin, unable to answer, relays her questions to Hal ("I was rhetorically invited by the Subject to entertain the picture..."); and Hal, naked with his foot in a bucket, performs sober geopolitical depth for a professional spy he will never knowingly meet. Three men, three layers, one operation: the operative's questions reach the family's best mind by passing through the family's vainest, and travel back the same way as "considered-sounding responses" Orin can "ladle on." Steeply interrogates two Incandenzas at once and neither can see the shape of it.