PROLOGUE

The shipper gives me a curt nod as his authorization board flashes its green recognition of my thumbprint.

The assembly line rattles noisily to life. I watch nervously as the pulpboard cartons of pills lurch forward, then depart one by one into the black maw of the waiting transport. Another cargo of bottled death, released for sale to the all-night druggists and licensed suicide merchants around the globe. I sigh. They're going to be in for quite a surprise this time. Quite a surprise, indeed.

The man climbs into the cab of his massive vehicle. One of our guys swings shut the wide metal doors, drops the rusted restraining bar into its berth with a clank. The transport belches a putrid-smelling fog of exhaust, eases away from the dock and rumbles out of sight. My shoulders sag with relief.

It is done. The future is rewritten.

I wait, almost fearfully, for some telltale sign of the change--perhaps a wave of temporal energy that rolls over me like damp heat from the mouth of a sauna. Nothing happens.

Which is probably just as well. I have no patience for such theatrics.

I glance furtively at my watch. It is time to make good my escape. No easy feat, considering the number of workers that wander aimlessly about the loading area. I idle in a corner until the last of them drifts toward the cafeteria for lunch. When I am finally alone, I retrieve the Shiv from my pocket

And spot him.

I catch my breath. Dodge behind a wide supporting girder. Peer cautiously around it for a better look.

I cannot hear what he is saying to that busty brunette. But he is certainly acting the fool for her benefit. Trying no doubt to impress her with his high-sounding words and mindless sophistry. All the while his eyes never leaving her more-than-ample chest. The idiot.

I snort to myself. For a moment I entertain an almost uncontrollable urge to march over and whack him across the skull, maybe knock some sense into that thick head of his. I don't, though. It is against the rules. My rules.

Besides, he is dead. A ghost. A shadow of things past.

I remind myself of a phrase I would hear many years from now, spoken by a person who might never be, in an era that almost was:

Time has a funny way of making us strangers to ourselves.

Words to live by. I silently wish this stranger a less-than-fond farewell. Then turn away, leaving him to his own destruction

CHAPTER ONE

I

My horizontal blinds clicked open. The morning "sun" spread its fans of light upon the dust-thickened air.

I forced my sleep-encrusted eyelids apart, and immediately felt an ice-cold meat hook swing into the top of my head. Shocked by the sudden violence of the pain, I scrambled to shield my face with the crook of my right arm.

"Gert!" I shrieked to my computer. "Close the blinds! Close the fucking blinds!"

There was a hum that in my condition sounded like a mosquito the size of a football, and the room once again grew dark. A few centimeters of meat hook withdrew from my squirming brain.

"That's better," I gasped. "Much better. Thank you."

I twice inhaled deeply--one of the relaxation techniques I learned at a stress management seminar--and winced as my temples tried to keep pace with my wildly beating heart.

I have to get that damned thing fixed, I thought belatedly.

I had programmed my window's integrated Virtual Environment System, when I purchased it four years ago, to select glorious and not-so-glorious daytime scenics at random. The idea was to lend an element of surprise to the synthetic compost of an environment that actually awaited me once I stepped outside my air lock.

It worked with relative success, too. But a few months later I lost the remote, and then accidentally fused the manual control panel shut when I spilled a bottle of oozy lubricant on it during an all-night, X-rated holofest. Now the damned VES was stuck on that one setting; and more often than not it favored hard-core sunshine on mornings when I suffered my nastiest hangovers.

This most recent hangover was the product of yet another Super Nova Thursday--an event that is named very appropriately after a drink and the night on which I consume too much of it.

The Thursday part needs very little explanation. It's just one of those mindless rituals in which most plant workers participate every second Thursday of the month--or Credit Day, as it's called. As for the Super Nova well, if you haven't tried one, no description of its effects will ever do it justice.

I have never learned its toxic constituents, partly because every bartender I know keeps it a trade secret, and mostly because the concoction is so mind-alteringly noxious that it is considered an illicit substance on Earth and five of our seven orbiting colonies. Despite the law, Super Novas are easy enough to find if you're stupid enough to look for one. And personal stupidity is probably the only reason why the authorities have not bothered to clamp down on purveyors of this nerve-bending elixir.

Needless to say, a Super Nova resembles a bursting sun. Which is a foreshadowing of what it does to you once it has been unleashed inside your unsuspecting bloodstream. Literally, it's a blob of some orange-red, napalm-like gel suspended in Khalua. The Khalua, I think, serves not only as a metaphor for the space that the blob, or "super nova," is supposed to inhabit, but also counteracts the nasty flavor of the gel, which tastes the way a used condom smells.

When consumed--and I swear this actually occurs--you hear a little pop inside your head. After that, there's not much to tell. You wind up in a public toilet making fish-kiss sounds with your lips. Or if you have a designated sentient in the group, you wake in your own bed, usually sporting an erection, and with your VES playing self-righteous little mind games on your window.

Fortunately, I was spared the erection. A Super Nova hard-on is a tricky thing to get rid of. The drink has a paralytic after-effect that brings on a kind of rigor mortis of the nether regions which is not easy to hide, especially when you consider today's skin-tight fashions. (Obviously, this is a problem reserved exclusively for men. I have been told the drink makes women's vaginas ooze an unpleasant and rather sticky secretion, not unlike the discharge experienced during the later stages of pregnancy.)

These observations come easily now, as I write this. But at the time I was in pure, unadulterated agony. The only observation I made then--if I can recall it correctly--was that my brain had melted, and this was probably not a good thing on a work day.

I checked my wristwatch. Late again.

"Great. Just great," I rasped. "Gert, let me down. Gently."

Suddenly I was on the floor, the wind knocked from me.

My stasis bed, of course, was on the fritz: a thirty-thousand credit repair job that I couldn't afford. My designated sentient did not know this, or she would have deposited me in the sleeping bag I kept rolled up in one corner of my small compartment.

I sat up slowly and rocked back and forth on my buttocks, nursing my aching head with my hands.

"Gert," I moaned loudly. "Coffee, very hot and very black. And three--no, six--aspirins."

Again the mutant mosquito buzzed beside my ear. A cup of coffee materialized on a saucer by my left foot. The aspirins were arranged in a decorative pattern next to it on the floor.

At least the matter processor was working today. I counted myself lucky. There were times when my meals appeared somewhere else altogether. I was not unaccustomed to knocking on my neighbors' doors at seven in the morning in search of breakfast.

I scooped the aspirins frantically into my mouth and chewed them quickly, ignoring the acidic splinters as they spiked into my tongue. The coffee, which was unusually superb, washed the evil-tasting mess away, leaving that wonderful nasal flavor you enjoy only from the blackest of black coffee. I savored the next swallow. Gradually, the booming sound inside my head eased to a gentle brushing of a snare drum. Light jazz. Very relaxing. I sipped at the hot liquid and leaned back against the wall.

"Weather," I instructed Gert.

"Rain in the afternoon," a gentle female voice said from all around me. "Acid content: seventy percent. Recommend class three rain gear. Pollution index: nine. Recommend air filter. UV index: six point three. No sun block recommended until five thirty-four this evening."

"Not bad. Traffic?"

A three-dimensional, holographic grid map popped open before me in mid-air.

"All expressways are non-moving due to multiple-vehicle collisions, here, here, here, here, and here." Points of light flared up inside the grid to illustrate the locations of the accidents.

I winced. "Casualties?"

"Three hundred and forty-seven," the computer intoned.

"Anybody I know directly?"

"No."

"Indirectly?"

"Alain Roy, Vice President of Operations, R-MegaDawn."

"Tough break," I said, but not without recognizing the opportunity that presented itself to me. Alain was a respected member of the plant's management team. A somber bouquet of spurious lilies delivered to the widow, with the appropriate expression of condolences, would go a long way at salary review time. I instructed Gert to make the necessary arrangements with the woman's local florist.

"Now, show me the least obstructed path in to work," I said.

A thin red line sprouted on the grid from the location of my compartment complex, and angled its way to R-MegaDawn's corporate headquarters in the industrial sector.

"Hard copy."

A blue infodisk materialized beside my empty coffee cup. I used my poorly-trimmed fingernails to pick the wafer-thin square off the floor and place it delicately in the breast pocket of my jumpsuit. I got unsteadily to my feet.

"Spray," I told the computer. "Full duration." It had been a long night, and I was smelling pretty high.

The room of my compartment filled with an aromatic mist, and I felt the pores of my skin empty themselves of the previous day's filth. Refreshed, if only slightly, I went to my closet, donned my class three slicker and an air filter, and examined myself in the full-length mirror on the closet door.

The slicker had been manufactured from a huge swatch of acid-resistant plastic, and was the most unappealing shade of grayish green.

Not unlike the color of my skin, I mused.

Combined with my air filter and its many intake valves and hoses, I looked something like a technologically advanced whoopee cushion. Trés chic.

I stepped up to my compartment air lock and performed the usual incantation (I had programmed the thing to run through its short list of preparatory sterilizing procedures on the command "open sesame"). There was a loud clank followed by a great rush of foul air--foul, even through the filter--and the metal door retracted itself like a camera shutter.

I took a deep breath of sulfurous filtered oxygen, held it, and stepped into a yellow cloud of humid morning smog.

II

A chime sounded three times.

"Thank you for choosing the Montreal Urban Community Transit Corporation," the car welcomed me, using the same voice as my computer. "Please insert your credit card in the reader located on the left-hand corner of the dashboard. A thirty-credit deduction will be made from your account."

I did as I was told.

"Thank you," the voice said pleasantly. "Please insert your destination infodisk into drive A. Press the Go key to proceed."

I dug underneath my rain slicker to retrieve the infodisk I had placed in the pocket of my jumpsuit. I was still trembling from the aftershocks of my hangover, and it took me three attempts before I successfully inserted my wafer into the drive slot next to the card reader. I punched the Go key on the dash, and settled back into the padded seat as the car moved noiselessly away from the curb.

Peace at last.

I instructed the car to play something pleasant, and a string arrangement swelled up around me. I closed my eyes and let the music infiltrate my soul.

You had to hand it to the MUCTC. Their Public Fleet experiment was almost worth the excessive taxes we were forced to pay for its introduction and upkeep.

The concept of Public Fleet was ingeniously simple, which made me doubt its authenticity as a true invention of the municipal assembly. Traffic congestion and car theft had been a problem in Montreal for more than one hundred and sixty years, but both had been increasing at an alarming rate for almost two decades. Despite the MUCTC's best efforts to publicize the practicality of its Metro system, Montrealers refused to abandon the luxury and relative safety of their cars for the Spartan and gang-infested tunnels of the subway.

In response--more to public pressure than through the goodness of its heart--the Corporation flooded the city with thousands of programmable short-lease vehicles. All you had to do was pick up a car wherever you found it, drive it wherever you had to go, and leave it for someone else to ride. Needless to say, the bottom immediately dropped out of the stolen automobile market (not to mention the taxi cab industry). Which meant our elected representatives could concentrate exclusively on the problem of traffic congestion, and other more effective methods of mismanaging the municipal treasury.

The benefits of Public Fleet have been enjoyed by most every citizen since the project's inception three years ago. The treasury is now mismanaged better than ever, and following the statistics of the rush hour carnage has replaced hockey as Québec's national pastime.

With that last thought, it suddenly occurred to me that I was not watching where I was going. I snapped open my eyes and glanced through the windshield into the yellow smog thick as cigar smoke rushing past the car. Fortunately for me, traffic had thinned out. I had missed the mad rush by maybe fifteen minutes.

The car had an automatic pilot, but could be transferred instantly to manual by placing your hands on the steering wheel. This feature of Public Fleet, it was widely known, accounted for the high death tolls in the early morning and at dinner time. Many people believed the automatic pilot to be infallible. But the cars' sensors extended only two meters in all directions; and considering the speed at which most Montrealers liked to travel, two meters was indeed a very narrow margin for error.

Naturally, there were multilingual warnings posted inside the cockpit of every vehicle. But no Montrealer worth his salt pays heed to official recommendations of any kind, unless it serves his most immediate best interests. The possibility of a fatal crash is such a remote and abstract concept to most citizens that it does not enter their consciousnesses until it is too late--and then, during that last split second before the impact, it is not difficult to imagine them cursing the government that had not thought enough of its tax-paying voters to tattoo the warnings on the insides of their eyelids.

I arrived at R-MegaDawn without so much as a near miss with another vehicle, and left the car in a parking cluster on the side of the street. Rain was beginning to spit down from the low, heavy clouds, making little hissing sounds as it collided with the hot pavement. The air was particularly noxious in the industrial sector, and I hurried, gagging inside my filter, for the front air lock of the plant.

There was a person in the oxygen booth by the sidewalk, and I glanced at him as I quickly passed. It struck me that there was something vaguely familiar about the man, but his back was to me pressed against the glass of the booth, and I was feeling too sick to stop for a closer look.

Once inside the air lock I tore off my filter, gasping, while the sterilization aerosols spritzed me from all directions. A red light signaled that the procedure was complete. I ran through the usual security clearance routine, waited for the door to retract, then stepped through it into the brightly lighted lobby of R-MegaDawn.

III

"You're late," Jenny said in her usual monotone; then added: "Again."

She glared at me from across the boomerang-shaped, phony marble reception desk. All I could see, however, was the top half of her head.

She was very short, even when perched on her high office stool. Every time I saw her peeking over her desk with her two hands grasping at its upper ledge, I had to fight the urge to call her Kilroy.

This deliberate allusion probably wouldn't have amounted to much, even if I tried explaining it to her. Kilroy definitely was not here, or anywhere for that matter. He, like so much else that made up what is now known as the First Order, had slipped into oblivion--banished by three generations of technocrats who distastefully regarded the past as someone's idea of a poor joke.

"Sorry, darling," I said with mock sincerity. "I was a bad boy last night."

"That's not going to cut it with Quigley. He's like royally pissed."

Quigley--Terrance Quigley--was CEO of R-MegaDawn, a position he was granted by the shareholders of the corporation for his many profitable breakthrough inventions, particularly the Painless Suicide Pill. I had very few dealings with him, since I was one of his minions and he was patron saint of the Western Trading Bloc's pharmaceutical industry. Still, I had heard that taking a handful of his PSPs was preferable to a personal confrontation; and the very fact that he was after my blood filled me with fear and loathing. The genuine article, too. I hadn't had that sinking feeling in my gut since my grade school days, when I was called upon in class to read the essay I had invariably forgotten to write.

I shifted uncomfortably on my feet and looked to Jenny for support. She offered none. In fact, she was visibly enjoying herself. Her mouth was set at that peculiar slant which suggested a self-satisfied sneer more than a smile. And if Jenny was having a grand old time, that meant serious trouble was afoot. I proceeded with caution.

"Quigley's pissed?" I said nonchalantly. I wasn't about to give her the added pleasure of watching me squirm.

"I'll say," the girl said maliciously. "He's only been paging you for like the last hour."

"What about?" I inquired.

"That you'll have to find out for yourself."

Which meant she knew everything and was attempting to prolong her enjoyment of my suffering.

"Well, Quigley can go stuff himself," I huffed defiantly. "I'll be in my office if the old fart really wants to see me."

That, of course, was my undoing. I noticed Jenny's eyes skip from my ghastly face to a point directly over my shoulder, and I knew instantly that Quigley was standing behind me, and that he had heard every word I said.

Sure enough:

"Excuse me, Mr. Erdogan. The old fart really wants to see you right now."

I held my breath and glanced at Jenny. I think she was negotiating her soul with the Devil for a chance to overhear Quigley firing me in his office.

I leaned over to her and whispered, "I'll send you a transcript," then turned to face my employer. The old man had his fists plunged into the fatty cushions of his hips, and was staring angrily at me with his deep blue eyes suspended in the puffy flesh of his skull like two fake gems stuffed into the bloated belly buttons of overweight exotic dancers.

"We'll talk in my office, Mr. Erdogan," he said evenly.

"Sure," I croaked.

I stumbled past him, and he followed me down the long hall to the great oaken door with Terrance Quigley, Chief Executive Officer stenciled in black letters on the frosted glass. I could not help but be reminded of my many excursions in grade school to the principal's office. The experience was exactly the same--except I was no ten-year-old; and this was my livelihood at stake, not some career as a third-rate student.

My mind quickly sorted through the trash can of my workweek, searching desperately for some scrap of evidence that would help me identify whatever indiscretion I had committed. Quality Control, the department for which I was responsible, was not exactly fraught with perilous acts of decision-making. All I did, in essence, was walk the production line and periodically prod my inspectors into action if I saw they were falling asleep at the switch.

Perhaps it was some sort of sexual harassment claim. You had to be careful who you glanced at these days; and Glenda Watson had caught me peeking at her enormous breasts on more than one occasion. I'd never actually leered at them, though. Or had I? An admiring appraisal could always be mistaken for a libidinous glimmer in the eye of the beheld. Perhaps that was it. I began to prepare my defense.

I pushed through the great oaken door into Quigley's office. I had never entered this most holy of the corporation's many shrines, and I was fairly impressed by the luxurious decor and the fine quality of artistic debris that was scattered everywhere around the room. Quigley's desk, a whopping and irregularly proportioned chunk of granite and maple suspended at groin-level by anti-gravs, floated serenely before a bank of wide plate glass windows, each displaying its own breathtaking VES scenic. There was one of a snow-capped peak, down which a tiny figure plummeted on skis. Another depicted a glorious sunset over a stunning seascape, terns crying as they dove for food along the shoreline. Yet another consisted of a vast aquarium alive with glinting tropical fish and a monstrous octopus emptying and filling its bladders with a liquid that was more pure than any water I'd seen.

On the wall opposite Quigley's desk there hung a formidable canvas weighted down with heavy crusts of vibrantly-colored paint. The signature in the bottom corner proclaimed the artist to be Riopelle, but only Quigley knew if the work was original or fake. A handsome though obviously phony Roman bust (with the nose missing, of course) stared vacantly at me from a suspended coffee table in the center of the room. Around the table were several ornately carved wooden chairs. I selected one and sat delicately in it, not wanting to damage it in any way. The going rate for such a piece of furniture was more than six months of my current salary.

"Listen, sir," I started, "about that little comment of mine--"

"Yes, yes," Quigley snapped, impatiently waving me to silence. He closed the door behind him and padded softly to his desk.

In that brief moment, I had time to contemplate the new career I would be embarking on by noon today. What could I do? I wondered. I always had a flair for history. But who needed an historian in a society with no official past? Geologist? On a planet that had already been picked clean of everything it had to offer, including its rocks? How about an unemployed bum? That field of endeavor certainly seemed to have no limits in terms of job openings. Yes, there was room for me to grow as a bum. In a few years I might make Head Vagrant. The impoverished aristocrat. I could see it now. Holovision interviews. Reading tours. The works.

"As you know," Quigley suddenly blurted, interrupting my rampant self-pity, "R-MegaDawn is a name, and a company, that people have come to trust over the years. They depend on R-MegaDawn to deliver them from their miseries, to help them find peace in a chaotic universe, to release them from the burdens of their existences."

I nodded vaguely. It sounded as if he were reading his speech from a sales brochure.

The old man clasped his pudgy fingers together and continued. "Our PSP program represents the most successful endeavor in this company's history. The investment in its development--and I'm talking research, testing, production, marketing, distribution; the whole ball of wax--has been quite significant. Your very means of existence, and mine, depend almost entirely on this one product. Do you see what I'm driving at?"

No. "Yes."

"No, you don't. But you will, eventually. Let me cut to the heart of the matter. It has come to my attention that several shipments of PSP have been tampered with. My sources tell me that the tampering does not occur after the shipments leave these premises."

I blinked. "Tampering? How? In what way?"

Quigley leaned back in his chair. He picked up a stylus and tapped it on the surface of his desk. "Apparently, the formula is being diluted somehow. The damned pills are being rendered harmless as aspirin. I tell you, the reputation of the company may be irreparably damaged if this continues. When people think of R-MegaDawn, they think of lethal doses, not placebos."

He picked a pink infodisk from his shirt pocket and waved it in the air.

"Do you see this? It's a letter from yet another agitated customer. Apparently, the old girl was expecting--and quite rightly so--to shuffle off this mortal coil late last Wednesday after her bingo game. Instead, we cured her arthritis. I won't stand for this kind of humiliation any longer. We're in the business of terminating people, not healing them."

"I, I understand, sir," I stammered. "But I don't see how I fit into this."

"You're head of QC down at the plant, are you not?" Jabbing the stylus in my direction.

"Yes."

"And the shipping authorization forms require a biometric reading of your own thumbprint?"

I nodded bleakly.

"Well, the way I see it, either someone isn't doing his job"--he let this sink in for a moment--"or we have a well-organized ring of saboteurs operating directly under our noses. At some point in the production process the PSP mixture is being rendered inert, and an accomplice in QC is passing this garbage through inspection."

He lapsed into silence, allowing me time to chew over what I had just been told. I shook my head.

"I can't believe it," I said. "My crew is tops. Why would any of them even attempt to do such a thing?"

Quigley shrugged his meaty shoulders. "Believe it or not, there are people out there who think what we do for a living is wrong. Nuts, right-wing organ-grinders I call them. What can I tell you? I've always been of the opinion that people should have a right to choose the circumstances of their departures from this world. We represent a time-honored tradition of pro choice advocates. We've always operated well within the law. I honestly don't understand it. I thought perhaps you could enlighten me."

There it was. He suspected me. But it infuriated me that he would not come right out with an accusation.

"I have no opinion on the matter," I assured him tersely. "I've always done my job to the best of my ability. I'm proud of my service to the corporation. And part of being a professional is leaving your personal feelings by the door when you come to work every morning. As far as I'm concerned the PSP is a product, like nasal spray or sanitary napkins. Nothing more."

Quigley scrutinized me for several seconds. I stared back unflinchingly.

Finally, he smiled.

"Good. That's what I wanted to hear. Now, do you think you can get to the bottom of this matter before it leaks to the press? Or shall I call in corporate security to perform the investigation? It's entirely up to you."

"I'd like to handle it," I said, getting to my feet. "If there's a saboteur on my team, then it's my responsibility."

"Excellent." The old man grunted as he hauled his huge frame out of the chair. He extended a well-upholstered hand, and we shook. "I look forward to your report. You have thirty days to complete your assignment."

"Thirty days," I acknowledged. "I won't let you down."

I turned for the door.

"I hope not," he said to my back. "Otherwise, you'll find your job listed on the employment channel in one month."

The huge door closed heavily as this last projectile struck me squarely between the shoulder blades.

IV

Sabotage! I could hardly believe it. My gang was as regular a bunch of guys as you could find. Joey and his wife had three kids to support, and a sizable mortgage on a two-room compartment to pay off. Certainly he would not take a chance with his job by pulling a stunt like this. Serge was single and living in a rental unit. Still, his idea of political involvement was to cast a vote every four years in the federal elections, and only when he was inclined to make the effort. Glenda was surely a stunning piece of work, but dumb as a post. Which left me--and I knew where I stood on the issue of self-annihilation, having practiced it slowly over a number of years through various forms of substance abuse.

The Public Fleet car I purchased for the ride home zipped at nose-bleed speed through dense traffic jams and around grisly pile-ups scattered messily along the Décarie expressway. I had handed control of the car over to the automatic pilot--a foolish thing to do, but I was literally beside myself, and far too consumed by the mystery of the QC saboteur's identity to risk my safety on my own driving skills, which were less than reliable at the best of times.

I had spent much of my day devising some sort of interrogation procedure that I would put into practice very subtly over the course of the next workweek. While the plan looked pretty good on paper, I nevertheless doubted my ability to implement it. I was no actor, and quite incapable of hiding my real intent behind a veil of seemingly innocuous, friendly inquiries. When I lied, my hands did strange things that I could not conceal. They fluttered nervously, darted in and out of my pockets, picked lint off my clothes and the clothes of others. Also, I tended to develop an uncontrollable twitch of my left eyelid that would absolutely betray me at the worst of times, especially when the lie expanded beyond my capacity to confine its perimeters.

Jesus, maybe I should have let Quigley assign corporate security to the case. As a sleuth, I left much to be desired. I could not fool myself into believing otherwise.

And then there was the matter of punishment. Once the QC-based saboteur had been singled out, did Quigley expect me to execute the appropriate punitive measures? Perhaps he would, as a test of my loyalty to the firm. In which case, was a simple termination sufficient, or would I have to notify the police? Was this type of subversion even a criminal offense? After all, the saboteurs were merely diluting a lethal dose of barbiturates and other toxic substances. They were actually preserving life, and not participating in its demolition.

The thing, I think, that bothered me the most about this whole affair was that someone in my team, whom I trusted implicitly, had suddenly cast me in the role of Bad Guy. The authority figure. The boss. I was not comfortable in these new shoes, and I was being forced to fill them. My management style, such as it was, placed me on an equal footing with my workers. I preferred things that way. I did not like the idea of conversations coming to an abrupt halt whenever I entered the fold. I did not like the probability of being referred to behind my back as The Asshole, or worse. Most of all, I did not like the fact that my people should feel they had to fear me. I know what I thought of my own superior--one of the most officious little pricks to draw breath--and he was the complete antithesis to the image I had cultivated for myself as an easygoing, down-to-earth sort of fellow.

At any rate, I consoled myself, I still have my job. At least for the next thirty days. Tonight I would relax, purge my nervous system of the day's accumulation of stress. I decided on dinner and a little hanky-panky with a virtual companion. An exorbitant treat, but one that I felt was necessary to my mental health, given the current circumstances.

The car pulled up to the curb outside the gray cement block that was my compartment complex. The yellow smog had noticeably lifted, and the barren landscape of my neighborhood welcomed me as I stepped onto the sidewalk.

Huddled to one side of my compartment building was a dilapidated depanneur with an armed sentry posted at its metal-plated door. I knew him, though not by name, and he waved at me stiffly in his bullet-proof body armor. To the other side was a burnt-out shell that had once housed a pizzeria, but which had been torched by the owner when his business went sour. The local street gang, to whom I paid a healthy allotment of protection money every month, now used the place as its center of operations.

The topography of my street continued in both directions in very much the same fashion, interrupted on occasion by a sizable crater left over from a car-bomb assassination.

Although my neighborhood depressed me for years as I witnessed its decline, I no longer grieved for it. Every residential section in the city looked just like mine. Except of course for wealthy, well-patrolled, well-tended Westmount, where people like Quigley slept soundly in the fortresses they called their homes.

Once inside the open-air common of my complex and tiredly climbing the stairs to my digs, I resolved to sample the delights of the virtual companions listed in Menu 36DD, who were slightly more expensive than the companions listed in the lower menus, but who were intended for breast fetishists such as myself. There was one I had noticed last month on one of my window shopping expeditions--a hot-looking redhead with a rack you could chin yourself on. She would do very nicely.

"Open sesame," I said to my door, and was promptly squirted with an odorless sterilant. The door retracted, and I stepped through it into the dark of my home.

"Gert," I barked, pulling the air filter from my sweaty face, "display virtual compa--"

The light suddenly snapped on.

In the instant I had for my eyes to adjust, I noticed with shock that I was seated across from me in my favorite chair pointing a weapon of some sort directly at my chest. Before I could catch my breath there was a bright burst of color, and I felt a strange electric jolt shiver through my body.

All I remember is my collision with the floor, and my consciousness slipping into the silent black.

CHAPTER TWO

I

I am six years old and running by myself through a field of long waving grass, the grass waving in the cool breeze that dries the sweat from my face. I laugh as I run. There are no worries, no intrigues, no deadlines to meet. Only the long, bright summer days and evenings of unimaginably wonderful sunsets widening themselves before me without end. The town cemetery, with its perfectly chiseled monuments and its immaculately tended lawns, graces a tree-crowded knoll to my left. To my right is a pond fed by clean, cold spring water, its surface sprinkled by new fish jumping, their arched backs glinting in the late afternoon sun.

My father, whose seamed face I will eventually grow into as if it were a mold, is now behind me running.

I'm going to get you, he calls.

I shriek with delight and pump my small legs as fast as they will go, feeling the long grass whip at my smooth brown calves.

Here I come, he says and lowers his arms to scoop me kicking high into the air. Here I come.

But before he can catch me an old tree root, twisted like the tentacle of an octopus, winds itself around my foot and sends me tumbling to the earth. My head strikes dully against a rock hidden in the long dry grass. There is no pain, but I cannot get up. I lie on my back, the blue sky wheeling over me, my father's face filling the whole sky above me, the mouth saying, Are you all right? Are you okay? Say something. Neil?

II

"That's a boy. Try to sit up. You'll be fine. It'll wear off in a little while."

I opened my eyes and focused fuzzily on a face that appeared to be mine exactly, except for the hollow cheeks and the gray around the temples.

"Dad?" I heard myself say. Every portion of my body tingled, and my thoughts scrambled over themselves in anarchy. It did not occur to me then that my father had been dead for some time.

"Not exactly," the face replied and chuckled. "Jeez, I didn't think I could do that. Come on, sit up. Here, let me help you."

I felt big, rough hands slide under my armpits, and I was hoisted up onto my buttocks and propped gently against a wall. My arms and legs twitched uncontrollably, and my head lolled without energy, my mouth gaping.

"Christ, aren't you a sight?" the face said and laughed. "I must say, this whole thing is a hell of a lot more unnerving than I first anticipated. I can only imagine what you must be thinking right about now. No, that's not exactly true. Still, I at least have an element of prescience on my side. But you, you're taking all of this in for the first time. Jesus, this is weird. Am I ranting? Sorry. I'll let you come to your senses a bit more before we continue. Can I get you anything? A glass of water? No? Fine. I'll be over here."

The figure stood up. I watched him through a thick fog as he stepped across the room and seated himself in my favorite chair. My eyelids fluttered, and I faded out of consciousness for an indeterminate length of time.

Eventually, after I had come around and the tingling in my arms and legs had subsided, I was able to keep my eyes open long enough to receive a relatively clear picture of some of the closer objects in my compartment. When my strength returned in part, I arranged myself in a more comfortable sitting position against the wall.

"Feeling better?" the figure asked with concern.

"Sort of," I mumbled.

"How's the vision? Coming back yet?"

"More or less."

"Good. Would you like anything to drink? It usually helps to have something cold."

"No."

"Fine."

We stared silently at each other for several seconds. Then the figure leaned over to me in my chair and asked, "Aren't you the least bit curious as to what's going on?"

I considered this question as carefully as I could. What exactly was going on? The only evidence which presented itself to me--within the confines of the information that my short-circuited brain was willing to process--was that I had somehow shot myself, and that I was now hallucinating. Another possibility was that the toxins I had consumed for decades had finally reached critical mass, and I was experiencing an odd kind of intellectual meltdown. I had been expecting such an event for several years. But now that it had arrived, I was genuinely surprised by my clarity of thought, and by my ability to negotiate the madness.

"Something odd is happening to me," was all I could manage. It was the only thing I knew with absolute certainty. "Have I been shot?"

"Stunned, actually," the figure corrected me. "With this."

He held up something which looked fuzzily like the weapon that had been discharged earlier, when the lights came on.

"It has three settings. I'm afraid the one I selected may have been a bit too powerful. I didn't know what it would take to subdue you."

"Subdue?"

"Unfortunately, yes. Standard procedure. A little Draconian, I find. But it's much more humane than a hypodart. The aftereffects are certainly less severe, at any rate."

"Oh. Thanks."

"For what?"

"For not using the hypo. I can't imagine how I could feel worse than this."

"Oh, stop whining. It's not that bad. You'll be back on your feet in another ten or fifteen minutes. Then we have to get moving."

I nodded.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that I was being too damned agreeable with--well, with this whole situation, whatever it was. I remembered watching those old Star Trek episodes during a PBS funding marathon one evening, and recalled Mr. Spock saying there was always danger without sufficient facts.

Was I in any danger? I struggled to compile the facts as I knew them. I was now fully awake and in relative control of my faculties. Therefore, I was not hallucinating. Or, at least, I was not hallucinating in the manner to which I had grown accustomed. I had indeed been shot--stunned, rather. Therefore, I was not experiencing an intellectual meltdown. Of course, I could have shot myself while having a meltdown, but with what? I didn't own a stun gun.

Why had I been stunned? Insufficient data. Who had stunned me? Insufficient data. Why was it that my assailant looked like me in almost every detail? Insufficient data. Where was my assailant taking me? Insufficient data.

Yes, I concluded. I'm in danger, all right.

I wondered what Spock would do at this point in the story. Kirk would certainly deal his captor a debilitating karate chop to the neck and escape. But my karate skills were worse than my driving, and I had never bothered to learn the Vulcan nerve pinch. Thus, I resolved to attempt logic. And the most logical thing to do at this moment would be to ask some pretty direct questions.

"Where are you taking me?" I demanded.

My assailant started when I spoke. Then he laughed nervously.

"Sorry," he said. "I was watching you think. I didn't realize I look like that when I do it. Do you know your mouth hangs open? You even started to drool."

I automatically stuck out my tongue to retrieve the errant saliva.

"Here," he pointed to the left corner of his mouth. My tongue obediently followed his directions. "Yuh. Got it."

"Thanks."

"Anyway," he went on pleasantly, "to answer your question, I'm taking you to visit your own future."

I looked at him blankly.

"Oh, come on," he prodded. "You're a relatively intelligent person. Do I have to spell it out for you?"

I looked at him blankly.

"I'm you." He said it slowly, as if he were talking to a child. "Fifteen years from now. Pretty neat, eh?"

"I, I don't believe it," I stammered.

"Yeah," the other me said in return. "That's what they all say."

III

How to adequately describe the minutes that followed this revelation? Words fail me, even now. Perhaps there is no satisfactory way to tell you, or anyone, what it's like to come face to face with yourself.

Sure, there are those half-witted soul-gophers out there who will say that you confront yourself every day, in one manner or another. But they are only speaking figuratively--at least, one would like to think so. You can certainly come to grips with yourself when you realize that you have failed miserably at your own existence. Or that you're a wife-beater, or an alcoholic, or a born-again Christian. But the truth is, no one ever really encounters himself physically, not even identical twins. And yet here I was, chatting away with another me as though he were a favorite uncle whom I hadn't seen for years. I had to think of him in those terms, because it boggled my mind to cogitate the weird facts of my situation.

Finally, I shook my head to see if I were truly awake.

The other me watched as I did this and smiled.

"I realize this is probably quite overwhelming for you," he said kindly. "Is there anything I can do to help you adjust to my presence?"

"I don't know. I feel like I'm in a bad postmodern novel," I joked.

The other me laughed out loud. It felt good to see someone else enjoying my historical allusions. If I let one of them slip out at work, my intended victim would usually stare at me as if my eyeballs had unexpectedly popped from their sockets. The general perception among my cohorts at the plant was not that I was without a funny bone, but simply that I failed to grasp the subtleties of their cherished pie-in-the-face variety of humor. Irony was indeed a dead art these days. I hoped the future had a more tolerant attitude toward practitioners of the craft.

"You're doing it again," the other me pointed out.

I blinked. "Doing what?"

"Thinking."

I snapped my jaw shut and wiped the back of my hand across my mouth.

"Sorry," I said. I was beginning to feel quite self-conscious under my visitor's unyielding scrutiny. (Self-consciousness. There was a concept that was taking on new meaning for me.) "You've absolutely engaged my imagination. I was wondering a little about my future, I guess."

"Why wonder?" the other me said heartily. He clapped his knees with the palms of his hands and stood up. "Why don't we go check it out for ourselves?"

"Why not, indeed?" I said and grinned.

His high spirit was certainly infectious. But I balked. What was I getting myself into? Just because this person said he was me didn't mean I had to trust him implicitly. What if I were some sort of incredibly important person in the future, and he was an evil cyborg sent back to do me in? After all, I had seen all seven of those ancient Terminator video disks. Of course, that whole scenario was a little far-fetched, even for the movies. Given the circumstances, however, I was willing to believe almost anything.

"On second thought, I'm not so sure about this," I said warily. "I'm still not one hundred percent certain that you are who you say you are."

"Fair enough," the other me said. "Go ahead, ask me anything. Do you want to know who won the World Series in '92? No, that's no good. We've never been much on baseball. What can I do to prove myself? Just ask."

I thought for a moment. Then it came to me. "Let me feel your scalp."

A look of total comprehension washed across my visitor's face. "Ah, yes. The true acid test. Feel away."

He bent over so that a swatch of his thin, oily hair flipped across his eyes. I reached up and groped with my fingers around the crown of his head. It took a little while, but I found it. I knew the lump well enough--a band of scar tissue that stretched from the crown halfway down the part in my hair, where I had beaned myself on a rock as a child. Whenever I bothered to use a comb, which was not very often, one or two of the teeth on the damned thing would invariably bite into the lump, drawing both blood and obscenities in equal measures.

The other me straightened up. "Satisfied?"

"Totally. I must say, I'm completely flabbergasted."

"You ain't seen nothing yet," the other me said. "Can you stand?"

"I think so. Lend me a hand."

He reached for my left arm and lifted me, grunting, to my feet. I wobbled a bit until my balance returned. He kept his hand on my arm.

"Ready?" he asked enthusiastically.

"Sure," I said. "So how exactly does one travel through time? Do we go on some sort of a ship?"

"Nothing so theatrical." He was digging through the deep pockets in his loose-fitting robes. "Ah, here it is."

He extracted a small metal box with a single red button in its center.

"What's that?"

"It's a Temporal Displacement Field Projector, more commonly known as the Shiv. It stabs a small hole in the fabric of time and space and keeps it open long enough for someone to step through."

"You're joking."

"I'm perfectly serious."

I gaped at the box. The thing did not even look sophisticated enough to function as a remote control unit for my holovision.

"Can I see it?"

He handed me the device.

"Don't press the button," he cautioned.

I flipped the box over in my palm. It was lightweight, and the casing was fashioned from a material with which I was not familiar. Other than the red button, it had no surface features. There was not even a little hatch to conceal the batteries. Assuming the thing ran on batteries.

"How does it work?" I asked.

The other me shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."

I looked at him. "I thought you guys from the future were all supposed to be expert technicians."

"You've been watching too many science fiction disks," he said. "Do you know how to fix your VES? Or your stasis bed? What about your matter processor? Been going out for dinner a lot lately?"

"Okay, okay. Your point is taken." I handed the box back to him.

"Like you, we have people to service these things when they break down. But don't worry. This one's brand new. It'll certainly get us where we want to go. Are you sure you're up to it?"

"I'm as ready as I'll ever be, I guess."

"Good. Now, hang on."

I took hold of his left hand.

"You're going to feel a mild electric shock when I turn this thing on. It's the temporal displacement field. Mind you don't touch any of its edges. You'll think the stun gun was a holiday in the sun by comparison. Ready? On three."

I prepared myself for for what? I didn't really know what to expect.

The other me raised the box to as far as he could comfortably stretch his arm, counted to three, and depressed the red button with the pad of his thumb.

At first, nothing happened. Then there was a loud pop, as when a cap blows off a bottle of poorly made homebrew; and I felt a slight jolt all over my skin and inside me at the same time.

Suddenly, a black gap with blue-white electricity at its edges widened out before us in the air.

"Quickly," he said and pulled me after him.

Before I could change my mind, I stepped foot first into the sizzling hole.

IV

In that instant when I passed through the temporal rip, I imagined the experience would not be unlike an attraction at Spielberg Land: that is, I would be sucked into a kind of vortex and sent on a gravity coaster ride through time and space until I was deposited somewhere in the future. You can imagine my astonishment when I stepped out of the hole and into my own living room.

I immediately glanced behind me. The field was gone.

"What happened?" I asked, thinking perhaps the device had not worked as promised.

"We're here," the other me said. He tossed the Shiv onto my brocade chair and went about the business of removing his many robes. A complicated task, given the number of layers he wore.

I looked around. If this were indeed my destiny, then not much had changed for me over the years. My guest--no, my host now--glanced in my direction and immediately recognized the expression on my face.

"Don't worry," he said. "There's more to a man's future than the quality of his interior decor."

"I hope so," I replied with distaste.

He frowned. "Great movements of mind rise like tides across the planet and no one notices, if they come gradually. Whole environments are washed away and replaced with the silt of something new. I believe a person's home should be a levee against these changing waters."

"Then we do not share everything," I said, adopting the heightened philosophical manner in which he was speaking. "I believe a person's home should be a reflection of his environment, if he is to present himself as someone who changes with the times."

"That's the corporate drone in you talking. No offense."

Offense taken.

"Anyway," he said, shrugging off my indignant pout, "this whole experience may change you more than your choice of upholstery can convey. Now, if you will excuse me for a moment."

He turned his back to me and stepped over to the wall unit to use the holophone.

While he was busy, I wandered about the cramped quarters of my compartment, examining the bric-a-brac for some evidence that my tastes had, in fact, matured over the years. Sadly, I noticed that my bowling trophy, awarded to me for an exemplary game at the plant playoffs, was still collecting dust in the conspicuous space it inhabited on my book shelf. I couldn't believe I prized the pathetic thing to this day. I had always detested contests of any sort--I was far too competitive to participate in such activities as a good sportsman--and I could not bear to be reminded of the obsessive manner in which I set out to annihilate my opponents. Nevertheless, I had kept it, and would keep it for several years longer, if this experience were truly an indication of what the future held for me.

The other me switched off the holophone and turned.

"Did you get any of that?" he asked, gesturing to the device as if his conversation were still going on.

"Not a bit," I said.

Truthfully, I had not heard a word he had spoken. In my time the planet's urban areas were so densely populated, and personal space was purchased at such a high premium, that most everyone had grown used to minding their own businesses in public. The sight of a couple having sex on a park bench was not uncommon; nor would it be uncommon, I surmised, in this future present that I was visiting. Unless, of course, inhibition had made a fashionable comeback. Which I doubted.

"Essentially," he said, "I have associates who are anxious to meet with you. I have arranged for a little get-together tomorrow at noon across town."

"Why?"

"I can't tell you right now. All will be made clear tomorrow, I promise. In the meantime, let's sit and chat. It's not every day that you can have a heart-to-heart discussion with yourself, and not be locked up in the nut house."

Talk? Surely he couldn't be serious! The guy knocked me unconscious and brought me fifteen years into my own future for a pajama party? The absurdity of his proposition made me laugh out loud.

"You must be joking!" I snorted incredulously.

"Why do you keep saying that?"

"For obvious reasons. I want a tour right away," I demanded. "I think I've been pretty well behaved so far; but now I must insist. I've seen enough of this lousy little room to last me a lifetime."

The other me shook his head. "I'm afraid that's totally out of the question."

"Why?"

"It just isn't safe to go out at this time of night."

"Hey, you forget who you're talking to. We've been living in this neighborhood for years."

"No!" He grasped both my arms to calm me. "I mean it really isn't safe. Now sit, relax. I'll get us a couple of stiff drinks. I have much to tell you."

I was unexpectedly awash with nausea. Recent events made me forget the hangover I woke up to that morning; and the prospect of further alcohol consumption was unwelcome, to say the least.

"I think I'll pass on the booze," I said, fighting back my rising gorge.

My host looked at me, perplexed. Then he realized my predicament.

"Ah, yes. It was Super Nova Thursday last night, wasn't it? You did look a little green around the gills this morning at the office."

This morning?

"When--" I started.

"I was watching you from the oxygen booth," he cut in. "I must say, I didn't envy you one bit."

I sat down hard in the brocade chair and massaged my temples with the tips of my fingers.

"It's been a hell of a day," I laughed. "And it just keeps getting weirder. Maybe I'll have that drink after all."

"Ah, the hair of the dog. That's the spirit."

"What have you got?"

"Rum."

"I'll take one with cola."

"Coming up. Gert, two rums with cola and ice."

There was a hum, and the glasses materialized on my wall unit's slide-out bar. The other me went to retrieve our drinks.

"As you can see, I had the matter processor repaired." He handed me a tumbler pearled with condensation, and lifted his into the air. "To our health."

"Hear, hear."

He watched me as I sipped from my drink, then lowered himself to a cross-legged sitting position on the carpeted floor.

"Now, tell me about your day."

I rolled my eyes in disgust. "Jesus, do you really want to know? Notwithstanding the hangover, I received the most disheartening news that one of my underlings is a saboteur. I have one month to reveal his identity to Quigley, or it's the axe for sure."

The other me nodded pensively.

"Say," I brightened, "maybe you can tell me how this whole thing comes out."

"Actually, I'm wondering about that myself," he said.

"I don't understand."

"Well, it's kind of hard to explain. You might not get all of it."

"Try me."

He sighed, not without some measure of dismay, and looked as if he were carefully sorting his thoughts into their various Out baskets before speaking.

"Okay," he said at last, "it goes like this. Time is not a fixed sort of thing, as you might believe. While it is true that certain life-changing episodes must always take place, no matter how many times you go through them, it is the events leading up to those episodes that are in a constant state of flux. Let me give you an example. From around the moment you are born, there is a person somewhere in the world or in the colonies who is destined to be your mate, if in fact you are destined to have a mate. Right?"

I shrugged. I did not believe in fate.

"Take my word for it. Anyway, the two of you will inevitably meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after, or get divorced. That cannot change. However, the circumstances of your meeting and your life together will always vary. That is the one truth we have discovered from time travel."

"I thought time couldn't be altered in any fashion," I said. While I had never before given the matter much thought, I was now truly fascinated by the ramifications of what I had just been told.

"That's what Ray Bradbury and his contemporaries would have us believe," the other me said. "But it just isn't so."

"Then what happens to me as a result of my investigation into the sabotage at the plant?"

"I don't know about you, but I lost my job."

My heart sank.

"Well, there's nothing like being pronounced a failure before you've even had a chance to begin the task," I said dejectedly.

"I could be wrong," the other me offered. "Who's to say this investigation is one of those life-changing episodes I was talking about? It may be just another variable on the way to some other inevitability. How did Robert Frost put it? The road less traveled? Well, most times, these things don't make all the difference."

"You have a point," I said, my mood lifting. "Then you'll have me back in time for work on Monday, so I can make the attempt?"

He waved his hand as if to chase away any apprehensions I might still be entertaining about my visit.

"It will be as though you never left. Think of this as a kind of holiday. Better still, you'll have the rest of your weekend to enjoy when you get back."

"Yes." I smiled broadly. "Yes, I like that idea quite a bit. I could use a vacation, let me tell you."

I raised my glass in a celebratory manner and drained it in two huge swallows. I was about to ask for another, but I suddenly felt quite fatigued. Small wonder, I thought, considering all I had been through.

"A holiday. It certainly couldn't come at a better time," I said flatly. I had to fight to keep my head up.

"You look exhausted," the other me said quietly. He was watching me with care. "Perhaps you should sleep."

"No, I still think I'd like to go out for a " My eyes were sliding shut. I felt myself sinking quickly away.

"That's right," I heard the other me soothe. The glass was lifted out of my hand as my arm went limp. "Off we go. Nighty-night."

CHAPTER THREE

I

In my sleep I had a most curious dream about being some sort of mythological beast with two heads, both of which could speak independently from the other, and they were in argument over contradictory philosophical beliefs. I do not recall the exact conversation, but it had something to do with the optimum size of a man's dink.

Stranger still was the fact that I could observe this scene as if from another individual's perspective. I remember musing, from this peculiar vantage point, that in the end all philosophy boils down to the problem of penis envy. The dream concluded with us participating in an unusual tribal fertility dance, accompanied by a covey of bare-breasted porn stars. I awoke with my right hand clutching at my balls.

My other self was hovering over me with a small tumbler of freshly synthesized orange juice.

"Here." He offered me the glass. "This'll get rid of the funny taste in your mouth."

I yawned and swallowed the saliva that had pooled under my tongue. To my horror, it tasted like raw sewage. Revolted, I tossed back the juice, swilled it around in my mouth, and spat it back into the glass.

"My God!" I choked.

"Sorry about that," the other me said. "It's a side effect of the drug I programmed Gert to slip into your drink."

I looked at him and blinked. He stared back at me with an expression on his face that I wanted to wipe off with a sound, solid-fisted punch.

"Why the hell did you do that?" I demanded furiously.

"Didn't want you taking any unauthorized excursions while I was sleeping," he explained. "Besides, it's not as if you haven't drunk yourself into a stupor before."

He had me there.

"That's different," I grumbled.

"No, it's exactly the same, so stop bitching. Are you hungry?"

I indignantly crossed my arms and refused to answer.

"Are you hungry?" Louder this time.

I said nothing. The other me shrugged.

"Suit yourself. I've already eaten. I suppose we should leave for that meeting I spoke of last night." He glanced at his wristwatch. "We're already late. It's almost thirteen-hundred hours. I figured you might be wiped out, so I let you sleep. I don't suppose they'll start without us, but you never know. It's best that we get moving."

"Why should I go anywhere with you?" I asked angrily. I was getting tired of being ordered around like a child; and I was especially sick of my host's flippant attitude towards knocking me out every time it suited his purpose. "I'm staying put until you tell me what this whole thing is about."

"We've already been through this. All will be revealed at the meeting, like I said."

"That's not good enough," I insisted stubbornly. "I mean, a man simply does not travel through time to fetch an earlier version of himself unless it's for something important. Jesus, I don't believe I just said that. At any rate, I want to know what that something is."

"We really have to be leaving," the other me prodded.

"Not until I get some answers."

My older self looked at me for a moment, then hunkered down as if he were addressing a youngster.

"You lead a pretty bullshit life, am I right?" he asked.

"Flattery will get you nowhere," I said sardonically.

He ignored the cliché and continued. "You live in a crappy little flat. You have a bullshit job in a factory that specializes in producing suicide pills. You don't have a wife, or a girlfriend, or friends of any kind. At night, you sit up here by yourself and beat off in front of the holovision or pickle your liver with illegal booze. And all around you the body of the world is moldering in its cosmic grave. You fancy yourself an intellectual, yet you do nothing with all your so-called knowledge to improve your condition, or the conditions of the people who inhabit the fringes of your miserable existence. Now tell me, why is that?"

Wounded, I stared at my hands fidgeting helplessly in my lap.

"There's nothing to be done about it, I suppose," I said.

My other self allowed me time to contemplate my answer. Truly, it was the stock response that comes all too easily when you are abruptly confronted by your own lack of personal initiative.

I thought of the dreams I had entertained as an eager literature student and an ambitious young poet; how I was going to leave my mark on the world with my writing; how, when people spoke of me, they would use the word the. And how, with each rejected poem and each unread published poem, and with my settling into the near-death experience of corporate culture, I had slowly become what A.M. Klein had called an X, a Mr. Smith in a hotel register.

"There's too much to fight," I said at last. "What can one man do?"

The other me smiled gently and took my hand in his.

"That's what you're here to find out."

II

He told me to prepare myself. But I do not think anything could have readied me for the horrors I was to witness once I stepped outside the perimeter of our compartment complex.

Both I and my host bundled ourselves into full environment suits. The suits, I was told, were hermetically sealed, acid resistant, and had the ability to convert ultraviolet radiation into enough energy to run the life support units strapped to our backs. We left the air lock, looking like a couple of space colonists en route to an off-world transport shuttle, and were immediately met by an armed sentry who escorted us to the complex exit. The massive door slid to one side with a loud metallic clank. The sentry took up a firing position from inside a bullet-proof booth next to the door. We walked awkwardly out onto the open street.

To my astonishment, I was instantly enveloped by a thick cloud of smog the color of tobacco juice. I saw nothing. I held out my arms, took a few steps, and tripped over a large object that lay directly in my path.

The ground came up quite suddenly--I could not see it--and knocked the breath from me. I huffed two or three times, then got clumsily to my hands and knees and felt around blindly for the thing that had caught my foot.

Even through the thick gloves that protected my hands, I knew when I found it that I had stumbled over a human corpse.

I screamed and scrambled backward, brushing something along the way that felt like it could have been another body.

"Oh, Christ!" I shouted, panicking. "Help! Help!"

Someone grabbed at my arm. I swung around wildly and landed a heavy blow against a solid object behind me. The grip on my arm loosened. I wriggled free and began kicking in all directions.

"Stop it! Hey, stop it!" my own voice crackled next to my left ear.

"Neil," I yelled. "Neil, where are you? I can't see a fucking thing. I just wiped out on dead man, for God's sake! Where the hell are you?"

"I'm right here. Stop kicking for a moment. Jesus, you almost broke my life support pack."

I stood up and instantly doubled over, gasping heavily inside my helmet, my hands grasping my knees. I had always been a bit claustrophobic. Even as an adult, I could never pull the bed sheets up over my face without experiencing a twinge of panic. Now, surrounded by dead and trapped inside this humid, clinging suit, I felt as if I were suffocating. It was worse than a nightmare, because I could not escape it.

"I, I can't catch, catch my breath," I wheezed.

"Calm down," my voice said firmly in my ear. "You're hyperventilating. The suit will adjust your carbon dioxide intake to compensate. Don't move. I'm coming to get you."

I waited in the brown smog, panting frantically. There was a hiss, presumably from the suit as it released the carbon dioxide, and I regained my breath in a moment. I felt a hand once again on my arm. I turned, reached out, found my other self and grabbed at his suit, hugging him to me as a child clings to its parent when frightened in the dark.

"Christ, I don't know what happened," I rasped.

"Sorry, old man," my voice said in my ear. "I neglected to tell you about the suit's sonar. Here."

I felt a push against the back of my helmet, and a glowing green contour display of my surroundings snapped up against the plastic visor in front of my face. I could see the contour of my other self in his suit, and the sidewalk and street behind him, and the contours of three Public Fleet vehicles in a parking cluster on the street. I turned around, and the visor display adjusted as I moved, revealing several human contours lying, motionless, on the ground.

The bodies were all around me. I was standing in the middle of a massacre.

"Jesus," I whispered. My speaking voice had abandoned me. All I could do was turn in circles and hiss, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus-fucking-Christ."

"Mortuary workers are on strike," my voice said dryly over the radio. "Stiffs'll just keep piling up until the contract's settled."

I turned back to the contour of my other self.

"What in God's name has happened here?" Thinking that a fierce street war had just been fought.

"Take a good look around," my other self said. "This, I'm extremely sorry to say, is some of our own handiwork. Now get into a car. We're late enough as it is."

III

We rode together in silence for some time, our helmets removed and resting on our laps. The car swished fluidly through the tobacco juice, never creating a wake in the smog, but simply displacing the stuff as it pitched and rolled at top speed.

I could not see where we were going. The car did not have a head-up contour display as did the environment suits. I surmised that the vehicle sensors had been greatly improved over the years, since my other self seemed entirely unconcerned about the proximity of oncoming traffic.

Despite the fact that there were no landmarks from which I could get my bearings, I guessed that we were still within the inner city. I had noticed huge, monolithic smog-shadows looming all around us as we zipped effortlessly between them, and thought perhaps the shadows were skyscrapers. From what I knew of the city in my own time, the high-rises were bunched together in massive development strips along Ste-Catherine Street, René Levesque Boulevard, and the Jacques Parizeau International Trade Exchanges. My suspicions were confirmed when we passed the spaceport next to the Vendôme Metro station, and I was shaken by the bone-jarring roar of a transport shuttle overhead. We were in the west end of Montreal.

I turned to my other self. He was staring into the tobacco juice, lost in thought. (I could tell: a thin line of drool hung from his lower lip.)

"Listen," I said and startled him. He looked at me quickly and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. "What exactly did you mean about those corpses being our handiwork? I had nothing to do with that."

"Inadvertently, you did," he said. "Those were suicides. We get roughly two or three hundred every day. They take a PSP and then walk out onto the street where the mortuary crews will find them and pick them up. Of course, I'm not sure what kills them first, the smog or the pill. I suppose it doesn't really matter." He trailed off thoughtfully, and looked again out the car window.

"Three hundred? A day?" I gaped.

"On a good day, yes. Sometimes more."

"But, but--"

"Why?" He glared at me severely. "Look around you. What kind of a life do you think we have? It's shit. It's worse than shit. It's a living nightmare. Hell on Earth." He laughed bitterly. "Christ, I've even thought of doing it myself, taking the pill and putting an end to it all. But I don't. I've spent enough time in hell to know that I don't want to be transferred there eternally. Besides, there's always some small hope."

I thought, What hope could there be? Everything I had seen so far was the absolute essence of hopelessness.

"Why can't you move to one of the colonies?"

"Immigration has been cut off. There's no room, and no money to build more colonies, and not enough raw materials even if we had the money to build. And the countryside is no better. The atmosphere on Earth is completely inhospitable to life. Everything is dead, except the people. But that's just a technicality. We have no culture, no art, music, or literature. We might as well be dead, for all the good we're accomplishing. If you don't mind, I'd prefer to not talk about it now."

He turned away and would say no more.

I glanced out the window. At that moment I resolved to book passage to a colony as soon as I was returned to my own time. At least I would be settled there before the crunch came. To hell with Quigley and his goddamned PSP. To hell with the investigation. To hell with my crummy little flat and the pathetic bowling trophy.

I was going to run for my life.

IV

The car pulled up to a low, wide smog-shadow that, when we entered it, turned out to be a dilapidated Victorian graystone house. The woodwork, though it must have been luxuriously oiled and polished decades ago, was now rotting and dropping in pieces to the crumbling marble floor of the vestibule. The inner door was a retractable air lock. Obviously, the house had been environmentally sealed. Without an artificial atmosphere, no one would have survived in the place for long.

We suffered a fifteen-minute sterilizing procedure, part of which involved an unannounced flash burn that practically blinded me, and were admitted into the air lock and then into the sealed habitat.

A middle-aged woman, with her green hair done up in the most ghastly style I had ever seen, came to greet us as we doffed our suits and hung them on pegs in a nearby closet.

"Neil," she smiled broadly, welcoming my older self with outstretched arms as though he were a new arrival at a cocktail party.

"Mrs. Dibbs," he said, and bowed in a curious admixture of gratitude and respect. "An honor, as always."

"How very nice of you to come," the woman declared. "And you brought your other self at last. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

She greatly exaggerated the pronunciation of her words and the volume of her speech when she addressed me. Apparently, she considered me to be some manner of tourist who did not understand English, but who would inevitably get her meaning if she said things slowly and loudly enough. Her attitude irritated me. I nodded tersely in her direction.

"Come, gentlemen," she said, sweeping us along in the wake of her well-practiced social skills. "We have been awaiting your arrival with great anticipation. The meeting will begin shortly."

We followed her down a well-maintained hallway that widened out into a vast double salon boldly furnished with a variety of objects from many different and incompatible eras. I noted a substantial collection of bulb, phosphor and lava lamps; both anti-grav and four-legged chairs; neon paintings alive behind their glass frontispieces and displayed alongside impressive reproductions of Group of Seven landscapes; an astonishing number of both marble (Beethoven) and plastic (Elvis) busts--in short, the kind of flotsam and jetsam that washes up in any kitschy downtown antique store.

As we entered the room, I was surprised to see perhaps twenty people and their younger counterparts milling about with drinks in their hands. The younger selves seemed completely out of their element, and quietly followed their older selves around like loyal puppies. If the circumstances were not so bizarre, I would have thought that this was some kind of highbrow charity fund-raiser to which I had been invited.

Everyone turned as my other self and I joined the fold. A glass of white wine (the real thing, too--a genuine rarity, though a tad too fruity for my taste) was placed in my hand, and many of the older people came by to slap me on the shoulder and welcome me to their time. After the experience with the dead, and the disheartening conversation I had had with myself on the way over here, their uninhibited friendliness literally set my head to spinning. At this point, I didn't know what was going on. So I just went with the flow, which wasn't too difficult with genuine alcohol seeping through my veins.

As I was at the bar helping myself to a third glass of wine, there came a loud pop from behind me which made me jump and spill some of my precious yellow nectar. I turned in time to watch with astonishment as a temporal displacement field opened up at the other end of the salon, and two versions of Glenda Watson stepped out of it.

The older Glenda--still ravishing though her hair had silvered and the lines around her eyes had deepened--was greeted expansively by our hostess. The Shiv she carried was taken from her and gingerly placed on the mantle above the fake plastic fireplace. The younger Glenda, her eyes wide with shock, glanced about the salon like a frightened rabbit.

I did not stop to wonder why she had been brought here. I was simply overjoyed to find in this time a familiar face that was not my own. Carefully setting down my glass, I hurried over to Glenda's younger self--the one with whom I related on a daily basis--and steered her by the elbow into the empty hall. When we were alone, she turned to me with a look of total confusion and worry on her face.

"Neil," she whispered, "what's going on? What are you doing here? Where am I?"

"Didn't your other self explain?" I asked.

"Explain what? I got in the door of my compartment, and the next thing I know I was being shot by someone who says she's me. Then I'm here, don't ask me how. But she can't be me. I'm me. Where is this, anyway?"

Good old Glenda. Always grammatical.

I gave her a quick précis of everything that had happened to me, up to the point where she had appeared. She seemed to have a very hard time believing most of my story, which did not surprise me. But eventually she accepted the indisputable facts of our strange predicament.

"What do you think this is all about?" she asked when I was finished.

"Haven't a clue." I glanced into the salon where the duplicates were chatting amiably amongst themselves. "It has to be something spectacular, though. Otherwise they wouldn't have gone to the trouble of getting us here. Then again, it could as easily be some historical society's get-together with the past. Who knows? My other self was pretty enigmatic about the whole affair. At any rate, it's good to see you."

"You too," she said and gave my hand a squeeze. My presence must have reassured her. She had never wanted to be in my vicinity before this odd twist of fate had forced us together. "So what should we do?"

"Nothing for now; but I'm working on a plan," I lied. (My eyelid began to flutter. I glanced down at my feet.) "Just follow my lead when the time comes, okay?"

Glenda stared at me, visibly processing this information, then nodded. We went back into the salon as Mrs. Dibbs swept to the center of the room and tapped her wine glass with a long, silver dessert spoon. The chatter subsided as everyone turned their attention to her.

"Preservation Society members, honored guests," she said with a certain false flair. "We have gathered here today for a very important and solemn purpose. As you know, and as our visitors are beginning to discover, ours is a species on the brink of self-annihilation."

There were murmurs and grave nods of agreement from the older selves. Their younger duplicates remained silent.

"As usual, and to our eternal shame," she continued, "we have deposited our fate in the hands of the politicians, believing their supposedly sincere pledges to improve the condition of life on this planet. As it turns out, they have done nothing, and it is now too late to rectify the problem. Although we have received no official government endorsement, our affiliated ecological task force has concluded in several unpublished but widely distributed documents that the earth can no longer sustain life of any kind, nor is it capable of sustaining life in the future. The task force's findings are incontrovertible."

Strangely, there were no cries of shock or dismay from the older selves; they grimly acknowledged these truths to be self-evident. I guessed that our hostess was merely regurgitating her facts for the benefit of those of us who had been plucked from the past to attend the meeting.

"We have therefore resolved to alleviate this crisis ourselves, without the knowledge of the government, and on behalf of the human race. As you know, Dr. Andersson has graciously manufactured and donated several copies of his highly experimental Temporal Displacement Field Projector to assist us in our endeavor."

The older selves applauded heartily as a stooped, white-haired man--the only person other than Mrs. Dibbs who did not have a younger counterpart at his side--rose unsteadily from his chair and performed a slight, arthritic bow. He was helped back into a sitting position by the man behind him.

"With his assistance," said the green-haired woman, "you have traveled back in time to retrieve earlier versions of yourselves to perform very special and risky missions. You have been selected because you work--or, should I say, used to work--in critical industries within the economy that have contributed, over the many years leading up to this crisis, to the desolation of the planet and the devaluation of human life. If you succeed, you will put right some of what has gone wrong, and perhaps secure for everyone a future that is markedly improved over the one you see about you today. If you fail, we are condemned to a slow, certain extinction. Each Preservation Society member will be provided with a dossier containing the specifics of his or her guest's assignment. If you would, please convene with your guest in private for a debriefing. We shall reassemble in this room in one half-hour."

The woman turned to a thin stack of infodisks that rested on a floating, turn-of-the-century coffee table, and began handing them out to the older Preservation Society members. With the disk in hand, each member and his younger counterpart filed out of the salon to find secluded corners for themselves throughout the house.

I left Glenda to her own devices and followed my other self into one of the small bedrooms off the main hallway. We closed the door behind us. I sat in an uncomfortable lounge chair.

"Jesus," I sneered. "Where did you dig up that pompous, old crone?"

The other me whirled around.

"Watch your mouth!" he snapped. "That's Mrs. Dibbs. She founded the Preservation Society."

I shrugged. "So?"

"So the woman's a goddamn visionary! You're not even worthy enough to stand in her garbage!"

"Hey, hey," I said, startled by the savagery of his attack. "Take it easy, chum! There's no need to get your knickers in a twist!"

The other me raised a finger to punctuate something he was about to say, then stopped. He shook his head.

"You're right." He gave a curt bow by way of an apology. "I shouldn't have exploded so easily. It's just that she helped me through a pretty rough time in my life."

I glanced up at him, and he acknowledged the expression on my face.

"I know," he said, "that sounds weak. We've always been more or less self-sufficient. But I was literally on the brink. I had a PSP and a glass of scotch to wash it down. I was just waiting for the right moment--or perhaps I was working up my nerve. Whatever. At any rate, she contacted me before that moment came. She said I was precisely the person she was looking for, because of who I was and what I had done. She said I had an opportunity to set right some of the bad I had contributed to."

He paused to clear his throat; his voice had suddenly become clotted with emotion.

"She gave me hope again, Neil," he said at last. "I feel quite strongly about her. So, please, show a little respect. She deserves that much."

"You have my apologies," I offered. "Still, I find it interesting that you refer to her as Mrs. Dibbs."

"What do you mean?"

"Well," I ventured slowly, "the woman is your age. Yet you bestow upon her this title, as if she's somehow your better. It has a certain submissive quality to it, wouldn't you agree?"

He stared at me for a moment, his nostrils flaring. Then, coldly: "Shall we get on with the debriefing?"

I sat back in my chair with a cagey smile on my face. Evidently, I had struck a nerve. Several nerves, in fact--a whole ganglia of them. It felt good to finally have the upper hand, though I cannot say why. If you really thought about it (and I did then), I was literally in competition with myself for mastery of the moment. I decided to retract my claws. A little.

He stepped over to the opposite wall and slipped the infodisk he carried into a computer access panel drive slot. Immediately, a holographic 3D floating sphere chart popped up in mid-air. He coughed, then circled the colorful illustration, using an index finger to indicate the ascending line of glowing orbs.

"This chart represents the number of recorded suicides from the latter portion of the First Order to the present day. See how the numbers remain relatively unchanged at this point here, and the twenty-three percent jump here?"

I nodded.

"That coincides with the legalization of doctor-assisted suicides for terminally ill patients, and the subsequent release of the PSP. Again, the numbers remain unchanged for some time after these events. Now, look at this six hundred percent increase seventeen years ago. That's when the PSP was made available over the counter at pharmacies. As you can see, things just get worse from then on."

"So, what does this have to do with me, or the incredibly sensitive mission that we're on?" I asked tiredly. Everyone I had met so far in this time was accomplished at delivering speeches, but not at getting to the heart of the matter. All I wanted was someone to clearly explain my role in this affair.

"I'll get to that in a minute," said my other self, much to my irritation. "What you need to understand, and what cannot be quantified on any chart, is how the increasing ease with which we terminate human life has led directly to a devaluation of life in general; and also to humanity's disenfranchisement with its own social constructs, and the environment in which it thrives. In other words, if you believe that you have no redeeming value whatsoever, but exist merely as a replaceable economic consumer unit, then what value are you willing to place on, say, a tree or a bird? When the trees are harvested to extinction, who is there to mourn their loss? And when the birds die off because their habitat is gone, does anyone care? No. And when the conversion of hydrocarbon gases to oxygen all but stops because there are no trees, we simply adapt by manufacturing portable atmospheres. Right? Who gives a damn about anything, so long as we remain alive? Except it isn't life. Now it's survival. Everything that made it a life is gone. So what's the point of existing, creating, procreating? There is no point. There's just survival, or the PSP."

"I get the message," I muttered without energy. "And I'll say it once again: what does this have to do--"

My other self interrupted. "Your mission--and you have no choice but to accept it--is to go back to before the time when you were interviewed by Mr. Quigley and release a massive shipment of tainted PSP to the R-MegaDawn distribution channel."

I rose from my seat in disbelief.

How could this be true? Was I one of the mysterious saboteurs whose identity I was supposed to uncover? Suddenly, all of the strange and apparently disconnected events of the last two days clicked easily into place. Everything, I understood at once, made perfect sense. In fact, it surprised me that I had not guessed earlier.

My other self stood alongside the holographic chart and smirked knowingly as I came to my moment of realization.

"So, you see," he said, "there is much that one man can do to effect change."

"I, I, I don't get it," I stammered. "I mean, if I've already been interviewed about the sabotage, then it has already occurred. So why hasn't there been a noticeable change in this time?"

The other me massaged the back of his neck with one hand.

"This is where things get a little tricky to explain," he sighed. "Technically, you haven't yet performed the deed. I made a bit of a miscalculation in time when I went back to get you. In other words, I arrived a little late. I was supposed to pick you up before the interview. So in your time line, the act of sabotage had taken place when you spoke to Quigley. In reality, however, you still have to release the shipment. If you had already done it, then you would have a recollection of the event. Understand?"

"Barely."

"Well, I can't make it any more plain than that. What it all boils down to, though, is that I screwed up. You see, the other part of your mission was to admit a full confession, both to Quigley and later to the press. You were supposed to claim moral and political justification for your actions. I even prepared the speech you would deliver. We'll have to rework that part to accommodate my mistake."

"What?"

"Well, we can't very well send you back to do the whole interview over again. That'd mean there would be two of you wandering around for the rest of your life, or something like that. According to Dr. Andersson, who understands these things much better than I, we have to return you to the exact moment when you left your time. Then, you'll just have to call a press conference and turn yourself over to the authorities. We'll work out the details later, after the meeting."

"Wait a minute!" I interjected. "You don't expect me to simply offer myself up like some sacrificial lamb, do you? That's absolutely absurd!"

"Hardly," the other me scoffed. "We've already enlisted the services of three people who are part of the manufacturing process at the plant. When you get back, they will have completed their mission by tainting the PSP. They are entirely prepared to suffer whatever legal action is brought against them. And they agreed to our terms without whining or carrying on. These people, Neil, are able to commit themselves to a cause that is more important than their own physical needs or desires. The question is, can you do the same?"

"Well, you're the fanatic," I sputtered. "Why don't you do it? What do you need me for?"

He held out his hands as if her were imploring me to use some of my God-given common sense.

"Look at me, Neil," he said. "I'm fifty bloody years old. Do you honestly think the R-MegaDawn shippers are going to believe I'm you, the young pup they see every bloody day?"

"I suppose not," I admitted quietly.

I looked at the ascending line of spheres that floated in front of my face. This was ridiculous. The scheme was so far out, so fantastically improbable, that it could never work. There was no way that a batch of placebos was going to cure all of the world's ills. These people were insane.

And that's when it hit me.

Perhaps these people were insane. That was a possibility. Maybe the pressure of living in such a disgusting environment had sent them all, collectively, around the bend. I mean, coalitions of crazy people were not uncommon; there were many precedents in history. The Nazis, for instance, or the NRA. Certainly my hypothesis deserved a measure of closer scrutiny.

But I could not consider it now. Not here, surrounded by these lunatics. I needed time. Time to think. Time

Yes! I thought. Time. I had my plan.

Carefully, so as not to arouse suspicion, I assented to the wishes of my host.

"You're right," I said. "I've been too selfish. There's more at stake here than my personal well-being. Tell me what I need to do."

We seated ourselves and my host explained his scheme.

I was to be sent back to the plant two weeks before my interview with Quigley. There, during the noon hour break and while an earlier version of myself and my crew were lunching in the cafeteria, I would receive the bogus shipment of PSPs from the shop floor. There would be two thousand, three hundred and thirty cases barcoded with unregistered serial/lot numbers so they could not be traced through the distribution channel. I would authorize the shipment for transport, then make a hasty retreat to my compartment where my older self would be waiting to take me to my own time. Upon my return, I would publicly confess my guilt and make some sort of an impassioned plea for the dignity and value of human life, according to whatever directives I was to receive after the meeting.

"And above all else," the other me warned, "don't go bumping into yourself while you're there. That could ruin everything."

"Needless to say."

"Do you have any questions? Have I described things clearly enough?"

"All except Glenda," I pointed out. "What has she to do with this mission?"

My other self smiled knowingly, and I did not like it.

"She has her own assignment," he replied ambiguously. "You just concentrate on yours, and don't worry about anyone else."

"The less I know, the better. Right?"

My older self nodded.

"Got it," I said. Then, innocuously changing the subject: "Listen, where's the crapper in this place? I've been holding it in all afternoon."

My other self pointed to the ceiling, as if that would help me to navigate my foreign surroundings.

"Upstairs, second door on the left," he said. "It's an old LaserFlush, so make sure you're not sitting on it when it goes into vapor mode. The damned thing took all the hair off my ass the first time I used it."

"I'll be careful," I laughed, then rose from my chair and reached for the door knob.

"Neil," my other self called after me.

I turned.

"I'm glad you came around." He smiled warmly. "You've made me very proud."

I paused a moment, then stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind me.

Yeah, right, I thought. What a commendation.

I swore to myself that I would not let this future come about. But I did not intend to go through with the Preservation Society's mission. It was too flaky, too ill-conceived. Rather, I would make the kind of change that I knew, with absolute certainty, would have a pronounced and immediate effect. I would go to the colonies. Nothing my other self just told me had softened my resolve. If anything, it had become more rigid. I did not want to turn into a dogma-spewing crank with suicidal tendencies. I liked the way I was. And if that was a sin, then it was a sin with which I was prepared to live.

Most of all, I wanted to determine my own destiny, and not have it decided for me. The world was already gone to hell. Even in my own time it was slightly better than unbearable. Therefore it could not be saved, and I did not want to make the attempt. I would save myself instead.

Hastily, I knocked on each door down the long hallway, excusing myself when someone other than Glenda came to answer. I quickly determined that she was not on the first floor.

Taking the stairs two at a time, I found her in the bedroom next to the toilet. Her older self answered the door, and I asked if I could speak to the younger Glenda for a moment about the details of our assignment. The older Glenda agreed, smiling with embarrassment--a reaction that puzzled me for some time--and left the two of us alone on the landing.

"Come on," I said when the door closed. I grabbed her hand and pulled her clumsily down the stairs.

"Neil, what are you doing?" she demanded, resisting me.

"I've got my plan," I told her. "Just be quiet, and we'll be out of here in no time."

"Where are we going?"

"I don't know yet. Home, I guess. I just want to get home."

"Neil, this isn't right. We--"

I shushed her into silence. We were standing at the foot of the stairs, just outside the salon. I peeked around the corner. No one was in the room. I could hear our green-haired hostess humming flatly to herself in the kitchen down the hall.

"Follow me," I whispered.

"We really shouldn't," Glenda said. "We have kind of a duty to like help these people. You know?"

I ignored her and tip-toed over to the plastic fireplace. The older Glenda's Shiv was still on the mantle. I picked it up and turned it over in my hand.

"Jesus, Neil," she hissed. "Don't go touching that thing! You don't have any idea how it works."

"Don't worry," I said.

"I wouldn't if I was you."

"Well, you're not me."

I turned to her, brandishing the Shiv, and she backed away. Obviously the device frightened her. Or perhaps I was frightening her.

"Listen," I said quickly, "I'm getting out of this mad house. These people are crazy. All of them, even my other self. Absolutely nuts. Perhaps even dangerous. Of course I can't be certain of that, but I'm not willing to wait around to find out. I'm giving you the option of coming with me. You can stay, if that's what you want. It's your choice. I'm not a kidnapper."

Glenda remained silent for a moment, mulling things over. Then, to my surprise, she agreed to join me, though she did not seem keen at the prospect.

"Are you ready?" I asked her.

She nodded, almost sadly.

I held my breath and thought: home.

And I pressed the red button.

CHAPTER FOUR

I

As I suspected, we popped out of the displacement field and into my cramped compartment.

I let out a shuddering sigh, and counted myself lucky that my guess had been a good one. We could as easily have been consigned to oblivion (or worse: Toronto). But I did not reveal my relief to Glenda. More than anything, I needed her trust. I could not afford the luxury of her questioning my decisions. There wasn't enough time. They would come looking for us, and soon.

Glenda, happily, seemed amazed that we were anywhere at all. She looked about the room of my compartment with utter astonishment.

"How'd you do that?" she asked with an admiring tone that I was not accustomed to hearing in her voice.

I shrugged nonchalantly, as if I were in firm control of the circumstances surrounding our escape.

"My other self let me in on a few of the Shiv's secrets," I lied.

Actually, I had quickly (and accurately, it seemed) formed my hypothesis on the use of the Temporal Displacement Field Projector from an article I had once read in an interactive science journal concerning the subject of time, space and thought. According to the physicist who wrote the article, a Dr. Franz Calvert of Hawking University, these elements were theoretically one and the same, and could be manipulated in such a way that they would render conventional space exploration obsolete. Rather than send out legions of unmanned, automated probes to prepare for the colonization of the solar system--and wait decades or even centuries for this task to be accomplished--Calvert's theory prophesied that human beings would one day literally wish themselves to whatever planet they wanted to terraform, and fulfill these duties without the aid of their inefficient robot counterparts. He envisioned a renascence of human accomplishment, unparalleled since the construction of the great pyramids, which would follow the invention of a thought-activated device that could manipulate time and space. The roar of the technological revolution would diminish to a slight mosquito buzz as humanity realized its full creative potential beyond that which was obtained only through the use of machines. The device would mark a new era, a golden age, an evolutionary step forward.

Of course, I did not buy into Calvert's wide-eyed, optimistic crap about the resuscitation of the human spirit. But current events were certainly shoring up the foundation of his thesis. The idea struck me now as being a little less far-fetched as it had seemed when I encountered it in my dentist's office.

"So you see," I added confidently, "there was never really anything to worry about."

"Wow!" Glenda gushed, and I felt every hormone in my body rush directly to my groin. This man-of-action stuff was really turning her on.

But I caught myself before my little soldier could stage a successful coup on my brain. There was no time for such pointless shenanigans. We had to leave. Now.

"Gert," I barked. "Show me the best route to Glenda Watson's residence."

The computer responded immediately: "The MUCTC Sensor Net is temporarily off-line due to a malfunction of the central processing unit. Existing atmospheric conditions have made unassisted navigation of a Public Fleet vehicle a direct violation of the federal highway code, section three, subsection four-thirteen. Any attempt to manually pilot such a vehicle will result in criminal prosecution and possible incarceration."

I looked at Glenda, and she shrugged.

This was new. I did not know of any MUCTC Sensor Net; and to the best of my recollection there had never been an occasion when unassisted navigation of a Public Fleet vehicle was impossible.

Unless of course I had miscalculated

I glanced over to the corner where I kept my sleeping bag and pillow. They were gone.

"Shit!" I growled. "Shit shit shit shit shit!"

"What's up?" Glenda asked. She had been examining my bowling trophy.

"We're in the wrong time!" I struggled to get a grip on myself; a twinge of panic had quivered my voice. "We've done nothing but change locations."

"I thought you said you knew how to work that thing," Glenda shot back sharply.

"I did," I stammered. "I mean, I do."

"Then why aren't we where we want to be?"

I thought about this. There was only one answer.

"I got the where part right," I explained. "I just didn't think of when we wanted to be."

"Terrific!" Glenda said angrily. "This is the first place they'll look for us."

"Not necessarily," I answered slowly. "Actually, my screw-up may be a good thing. This is the first place they would look for us, yes. But not in this time. Don't you see? Eventually, they'll discover that we took one of their Shivs. They'll probably go back to the point where they hijacked us, and sit around waiting until we pop up."

"You think so?"

"Well, I would if I were me. No, that didn't come out right. What I mean to say is--"

"Never mind," Glenda interjected. "I get the picture. So, seeing as we got all this time on our hands, what do we do next?"

I went to my closet and slid open the door. "I don't know about you, but I'm going to one of the colonies. Columbus, I think. Columbus would be nice. It has none of those archaic Sin Laws, like the others."

"What about your job? And your stuff? Are you just going to leave all your stuff behind?"

"Screw it," I countered. "That's nothing, compared to what we've seen. I'm getting as far away from this rotten future as I can."

Glenda was quiet.

I dug around and found a duffel bag hidden behind several stacked boxes of D Cup Magazine disks. (Interestingly, my other self had kept up the subscription.) I pulled out the bag and flopped it open on the floor.

"I'll be heading back to our time after I pack," I told Glenda over my shoulder. "You can come with me once we get there, if you like, or make your own plans. Whatever."

Of course, I did not expect an immediate answer. But, strangely, she said she would prefer to come with me.

II

We were waiting for the MUCTC Sensor Net to come back on-line so we could take a Public Fleet car to Glenda's place; that is, until I realized we had no way of getting to the street. The smog outside was noxious beyond description, and the environment suits that belonged to my older self were still over at the Preservation Society meeting. Instead, we decided to use the Shiv.

Ironically, Calvert's grand theories were better put into practice as a solution to the more mundane problems of public transportation. I was beginning to enjoy the convenience of instant teleportation, and I suspected there might be a huge market for Temporal Displacement Field Projectors if it were possible to mass-produce them. Indeed, the device would not yet have been invented in my time. With the help of a skilled technologist, I could reverse-engineer the damned thing to find out how it worked, and then make a killing with my "discovery."

It did not surprise me to find, when we arrived there, that Glenda's compartment was identical to my own. Low-cost housing came with a minimum of frills, and architectural variety was not counted among them. Nevertheless, she had taken great pains to decorate her place in a warm and inviting manner. I was impressed. She had quite the eye for interior design--a talent I had never mastered, and that I envied in others.

The walls were painted brick red, which made the room seem smaller than it really was; yet she had offset the dark tones with a selection of tan-colored furniture items tastefully arranged around a marvelous tan, green and salmon dhurri. Artificial plants hung from the ceiling in macramé holders, and there were several paintings to compliment the color scheme. I was genuinely taken aback by the sophistication of her decor. I had always imagined Glenda's compartment to be more like a little girl's room, filled to overflowing with stuffed animals, and tackily appointed with ceramic unicorns and airbrushed prints of French mimes with huge, wistful eyes.

"I like your place."

"Thanks." Glenda looked quickly around the room. "I guess I repainted. My walls were green before. And most of this furniture is new. Did the other you change a lot in your place?"

I glanced at my wristwatch.

"What do you think Columbus is like?" she said as she searched for, then found (in her closet), an expensive-looking travel bag.

"I'm not sure," I answered. "I've seen pictures on the holovision, though. It looks to be quite nice. At least, it is in our time. You don't have to wear an air filter or an acid slicker, ever, and there's lots of room for everyone. The only problem, if you can call it a problem, is that you have to get used to living in a huge test tube. Other than that, it's paradise."

"Mm, sounds nice."

"It makes me wonder why I never thought of going before," I mused.

I took a seat on her sofa, and sank deeply into it. It was as comfortable as it looked.

"Do you think I'll need to bring this?" She slid a long, black coat from the closet and showed it to me.

I shook my head. "The temperature's maintained at a constant 25 degrees. You won't even need long pants."

"Then I'll wear shorts."

She stepped over to a dresser, rummaged through one of the drawers, and extracted a pair of dainty little bum-huggers. She held them up for my inspection.

"What do you think?"

Christ, this was going to be better than I had imagined.

"Fine," I gulped. "Fine. Perfect. You'll be very comfortable."

"Good. The other me's got nice clothes. It's good to see I still got good taste."

She finished her packing, then laid a blue multi-layered robe out on an arm chair.

"I'll need to change," she hinted.

"Certainly," I said.

Being the perfect gentleman (an Herculean effort, I can assure you), I got up from the sofa and stepped over to the far end of the room to study one of her paintings. I heard her move around behind me. Then she said, "Damn. I'm stuck. Could you lend me a hand?"

"Sure." Trying not to sound too excited.

I turned to examine her malfunctioning article of clothing. She wore a one-piece jumpsuit, much like my own. The zipper started under her chin and extended down through the lush valley of her bosom to just above the voluptuous swelling of her crotch. I took hold of the tab, becoming extremely sensitive to the scent of her perfume, and yanked gently. When it did not yield I gave it a firm but cautious pull, which did the trick.

"There you go," I said.

My hands started to fidget. I hid them behind my back.

She looked down at the tab, and then she glanced up at me and smiled bashfully.

"I think it could go a bit lower," she said.

I looked at the zipper with incomprehension. "But it's not stuck any more."

"That's not what I mean, stupid."

And before I was fully aware of her real intent, she took hold of the tab and undid herself completely. The material of her jumpsuit--a springy, synthetic substance--recoiled as the zipper released it, and her wonderfully firm breasts tumbled out.

There comes a time in everyone's life, I believe, when you are confronted by such beauty that all aspects of its moment are instantly and indelibly imprinted on your memory. For some it is music; for others it is great art or perhaps an unforgettable sunset; maybe even something as insignificant as an aroma encountered on the way past a bakery. For me--well, need I say it?

Many have mocked my obsession with breasts, and understandably so. It is a ridiculous fixation, I admit, when coldly considered outside its proper context. And yet, I cannot escape the lure of a piece of fabric pulled taut across the chest of a well-endowed woman. There is no other ultimate thrill for me, nothing that so stirs my soul.

I remember the circular perfection of her aureolae; that they were mottled neither by goose pimples nor by bad pigmentation, but instead were smooth and pure. I remember the nipples, erect, perhaps troubled by their brush with the material of her jumpsuit, or excited by a rush of sexual need. I remember the porcelain whiteness of her skin, without blemishes, and the translucence of it; how I could detect only slightly the thin blue veins that lay just beneath it. And the size of them! O how I remember the size!

Especially, I remember how difficult it was for me to turn away.

Glenda was stunned.

"What it is? What's wrong?" she spluttered behind me.

"Now is not the proper time," I mumbled while mentally cursing the sweet irony of the situation. "Your other self is likely to arrive soon. We should leave."

"But I thought you said they wouldn't come looking for us in this time."

"It's still too risky."

Which was not exclusively the reason for my rejection of Glenda's most generous offer. I could not put my finger on it, but something was amiss. And despite a vigorous protest from my loins, I could not bring myself to feast upon her luscious flesh until I had cleared my head of doubt. (I had never before suffered from such twinges of altruism, if that's what it was. But something in me made me stop. I cannot explain.)

Glenda was quiet. I heard her zip herself back up.

"Rain check?" she asked. I felt her hand on my shoulder.

"Perhaps," I mused. "Perhaps."

III

We used the Shiv to travel back sixteen months before our normal time, to reserve two seats aboard the colonist transport shuttle and allow the requisite paperwork to make its way through to the Columbus immigration co-op. We also took the opportunity, while we were there, to browse through the employment channel and place our names on the electronic resumé queues that were downloaded weekly to the colony's industrial net. If we were going to be allowed into Columbus society, we would obviously need jobs. The pickings on the channel were dismally slim, and Glenda grumbled something about the availability and quality of off-world work; that is, until I reminded her that we were lucky to find anything at all.

The Columbus economy, such as it was, was mostly agrarian. Indeed, the original purpose of the orbiting settlements was to farm and export various crops that were too fragile to be grown in Earth's dying soil. Nevertheless, several manufacturing facilities were later constructed to produce bizarre chemical compounds and delicate, subdermal biomechanical gizmos which could only be assembled in Columbus' null gravity zone at the spin center. Needless to say, with the industries came the workers, and with the workers came the bars, cyberstrips, whore houses, mescaline pits, scarification studios, and all the other ugly establishments that make civilized life so much more intriguing.

When we were satisfied that our affairs were in order, we stepped into the day before our departure to complete our prelaunch registration. This was not a complicated process and did not take an excessive amount of our time. But we decided to wait for our early-morning departure the old-fashioned way, and elected to put up in a ratty inner-city hotel.

Glenda wondered why we didn't "Shiv straight to Columbus," as she put it. But I argued that some things required due process. The colonies were planned societies, and we couldn't just pop out of mid-air and claim ancestral birthright to one of the homesteads.

Staying at the hotel was an annoying experience, even though we were there for only a night. We could not afford two rooms. In fact, we could barely afford the tiny room we had rented, since we arranged to pay the gross fee for the shuttle trip (less the fifteen percent reservation deposit) on the day of the launch. So I was forced to endure the remarkable sight of Glenda prancing around in the nude before bed; and I had a very uncomfortable night's sleep in an armchair that could easily have doubled as a Medieval torture device. (Glenda offered the space next to her on the mattress, but again I turned her down.)

I suppose it was the chair, or my frustrated libido, that made me irritable throughout my first and only voyage into space. I had often fantasized with excitement about a trip on the shuttle. But instead of being giddy as a five-year-old on Christmas day, I was sullen and uncommunicative. I barked at one of the baggage handlers when my duffel bag accidentally slipped from the mountain of luggage on her cart; and as we were checking through security on the way to the boarding zone, I made some snotty remark after a customs officer asked if I was carrying any undetectable "explosive or incendiary devices" on my person. Of course, he was referring to microbiotic plastique, which is carried in the bloodstream; though at the time I thought he was asking me if I had a stick of dynamite up my ass. (I also inquired as to how many dangerous interspatial terrorists he had actually thwarted with that question, and received no reply.) My mood only blackened when the artificial gravity momentarily cut out shortly after takeoff, and I flew up and cracked my skull on the overhead baggage compartment.

Glenda, who had been patiently enduring my rotten behavior until I started to swear out loud, hissed that I was acting like a big poop and refused to say another word to me for the remainder of our flight.

I finally brightened around the time that we docked. My curiosity, I suppose, had overcome my childishness. I say this because the transport had no windows on the passengers' section of the fuselage. Therefore I could not watch our approach to Columbus, and was forced to wonder at the true nature of its magnitude.

I had seen pictures on holovision. It resembled an immense aluminum cigar tube, approximately the length and width of Prince Edward Island, and set to spinning at its center. But pictures are a poor cousin to experience, and I regretted not having been able to examine the jaw-dropping construction firsthand.

Suddenly there came the final jolt as the Columbus moorings clamped onto the transport's outer hull. I was immediately nauseated by a rush of adrenaline.

By god, we were here! It was very real, and very final! Even the Shiv would not help us now. We could not return to Earth, for we were being hunted. And we could go no further out into space. Columbus was the last station on the way to the moon; the moon was primarily a refueling stopover on the long voyage to the martian research colonies; and those were populated only by machines and their human caregivers.

I reached over and squeezed Glenda's hand.

"This is it!" I all but squealed.

Glenda managed a feeble smile.

"Is this extraordinary, or what?" I said with exhilaration. "If anyone had told me on Thursday that I would become a time traveler, a space traveler and a colonist over the weekend, I would have said that they had had one too many Super Novas."

"It's pretty amazing, all right," Glenda replied without enthusiasm.

I turned in my seat to face her, and saw in her expression something that resembled sadness.

"Look, I'm sorry for all this," I said. I meant it, too. Without thinking carefully about her feelings on the subject--in fact, without thinking of her feelings at all--I had yanked her out of the only life she had ever known; and, like it or not, she and I were going to be together for a long time. I tried to reassure her.

"It won't be so bad," I told her. "I'm not such a rotten person, really. I know, back at the plant, that I always regarded you as something akin to an interactive holoform. You're a very attractive woman. It's hard not to notice. But I promise to be good. You don't have to keep up this seduction routine if you don't want to. Naturally, I'm flattered. But I'll demand nothing from you in that regard. I'll respect whatever boundaries you define. Okay?"

Glenda smiled at me and gave my hand a squeeze, but said nothing.

And I don't know which disturbed me more--her brave face, or her silence.

CHAPTER FIVE

I

The Columbus spaceport immigration office was disproportionately large for the number of civil servants it had on staff. When Glenda and I walked through the wide sliding door, I was immediately reminded of the gymnasium at my old high school: it had that same enormously empty, institutional, floorwax-scented quality to it. At the far end of the cavernous facility two immigration officers stood behind a simple formica counter, interviewing a couple I had noticed three rows ahead of us on the transport shuttle. Over their heads was a video sign with the blue and white flag of Columbus waving demurely; bands of scrolling text informed us in multiple languages that we should have our papers ready for presentation to any official who asked for them. Facing the counter were several ranks of uncomfortable-looking benches. Filled to capacity, they could easily have supported two hundred individual backsides. There were only six other people sitting there now.

I handed Glenda my travel bag and said, "You find a seat and relax. This will probably take a while. I'm going to get a number so we don't lose our place in line."

"Okay. I see a Coke machine over there. Can you get me a drink?"

"Sure."

She carried our luggage over to the waiting area and sat down. I stepped up to the red, wall-mounted dispenser and pulled from it two small plastic tabs. Nine and ten, respectively. I looked down the counter at the immigration officers leisurely filling out their many forms. At the rate they were going, I estimated we would be here for most of the day. And, unfortunately, there was no way we could get back out to the spaceport shopping mall; the door we came through allowed entry but not egress. I chided myself for having forgotten to pack a lunch.

There was a free literature display case next to the counter. What the hell, I mused. Reading government propaganda was better than doing nothing at all. I helped myself to some of the co-op's public service information wafers and a portable disk reader (Glenda was using mine to peruse a fashion magazine she had purchased at a spaceport kiosk). Then I bought soft drinks for the both of us and returned to the waiting area.

"Here."

She glanced up from her magazine. I passed her a cold soda.

"Thanks," she said and smiled distantly. I sat down next to her and opened my frosty canister with a hiss.

"How are you doing?" I inquired solicitously. I was trying to show my concern in a way she would recognize. She had said nothing to me since we disembarked, and appeared as if she were still in a bit of a funk. I wanted to see if I could brighten her mood. Or perhaps I wanted to alleviate my guilt for having dragged her here; if it wasn't against her will, it certainly seemed now to be against her better judgment.

"I'm okay." She sighed and pulled a strand of blonde hair away from her pretty eyes. "I'm just, you know, a little overwhelmed by it all. Everything's happening so quick. And I'm tired. It's been a long week."

"Tell me about it!" I took a sip from my drink and released a small burp. "I'm just happy to be back in our own time. I don't know how often I had to reset my watch to accommodate the jumps we made. I wonder if there's such a thing as time-travel lag."

Glenda giggled--a welcome relief from the cheerless silence we had suffered between us.

"Who knows?" she said. "But if there is, then we discovered it first, that's for sure. I can't even remember what day this is."

"It's Thursday. I think."

Glenda turned away from me and nodded pensively.

"Thursday," she murmured. "Thursday. It doesn't feel like a Thursday." And then her tone changed. "I wonder what they did with our jobs back at the plant."

"Beats me," I shrugged. But I knew they were listed on the employment channel by now. That was standard operating procedure if a worker was absent without notice for more than three days. "Frankly, I'm glad to be away from that hell-hole. I needed a change of pace."

"Yeah, I guess so. But I can't help feeling bad about just up and leaving like that. We didn't even close our bank accounts or sublet our compartments or anything. My landlord's going to be pissed."

"Mine too, but ç'est la vie," I replied evenly. "Are you regretting your decision?"

Glenda thought about this. "No, not really. But do you suppose we did the right thing? I mean, those Society people are going to come looking for us here, aren't they?"

I paused. That was a good question. And when I considered my response, it did not come without some clumsy mental calisthenics.

Back on the shuttle, I had casually assumed we were safe because we had moved off-world. But from what little I knew of this time travel business, we had changed the directions of our lives by physically emigrating to Columbus. So that meant our future selves would know exactly where to look for us, now that our present--this moment--was in their past. Still, as my older self told me, every decision had a thousand possible effects. How had he put it? Variables on the way to an inevitability? Perhaps this was one of those variables. After all, he had made a miscalculation in time when he came back to get me; I obviously was not where (or when) he expected me to be. A perfect example of how unanticipated waves can rock the vessel of predetermination, setting its course slightly awry.

But that did not explain one niggling, little detail. The sabotage at the plant had already occurred, and yet I had done nothing to precipitate it, nor did I have plans for doing so in the future. Which meant even the inevitabilities were not things that could be cast in stone. Or were they? Had I unwittingly created a--what was it called?--a paradox? All good science fiction buffs knew about paradoxes. The fact that the sabotage transpired, and I had denied the circumstances that made it possible well, if that wasn't a classic paradox, then I didn't know what was. On the other hand, my older self said there had been no noticeable change in the future, which signified that the conditions required to generate a true paradox had not yet been met.

But if you looked at the whole confusing mess from yet another perspective

I stopped myself short. Christ, you could turn your brain inside out thinking about stuff like this!

"No," I told her at last. "They won't come looking for us."

Which seemed to assuage her fears; she nodded and went back to her magazine. And it occurred to me that I could have said as much without giving myself such a headache.

II

I was glazing over a disk entitled Agriculture: the Backbone of Economic Prosperity on Columbus when I heard the immigration office door whisk open, and a child's reed-like voice whining, "Daddy, I gotta pee."

"Hon, can you take him? My hands are full," came a man's rumbling baritone.

"Okay. Come on sweetie," said a woman.

I started to reread the same boring paragraph for what seemed the hundredth time as footfalls echoed about the vast, empty hall. Then the man's voice, booming from above: "Pardon me, mister. Is this seat taken?"

I looked up from my disk. He was tall, barrel-chested, and in his late thirties, but already showing more than a touch of gray at the temples and mustache. There were three heavy bags slung over his beefy shoulders, and he pulled two huge travel trunks on wheels behind him. I glanced around quickly at the many unoccupied benches surrounding us, and decided he must be a pack animal--never entirely comfortable in isolation. I did not like pack animals.

"I suppose not," I grumbled.

"Thanks," he said jovially and hefted the baggage he carried onto the floor. He sat down next to me, grunting. My skin prickled at this unwelcome violation of my personal space. I shifted away from him.

"My name's Ed Schlesinger." He extended a callused, well-padded hand. "And you are?"

"Reading." I pretended to find something of great interest on my disk's viewing screen; it was a lavish description of the colony's potato museum, the only one of its kind in outer space. Which wasn't much of a surprise.

Glenda gave my arm a solid punch and peered around me, smiling. "I'm Glenda Watson. Nice to meet you."

"Likewise, ma'am."

They shook. Glenda put a hand on my shoulder. "And this rude, old grump is Neil. He's very tired from the trip. Say hello, Neil."

"Hello Neil," I said moodily.

The man laughed out loud and clapped me soundly on the back, knocking the wind from me. I glared at him.

"Shit, that's okay, Neil," he thundered merrily. "Space travel ain't for everyone. Hell, I wouldn't have done it myself if it weren't for that damn transfer. But, as Helen always tells me, you go where you're needed. Is she right, or what?"

I shrugged contemptuously. Why was it strangers insisted on speaking to you as if you were privy to every aspect of their personal lives?

I was reminded of a dimwitted receptionist who worked for a few short weeks at R-MegaDawn. When I met her for the first time in the employee cafeteria, she did not tell me her name but instead related to me a detailed anecdote concerning some fellow named Martin. Apparently, Martin was painting her parents' home when he fell off a ladder and broke his wrist. Initially, I assumed he was just a clumsy oaf of a contract worker; that is, until she described how he had set the bone himself and then fashioned a cast for his arm out of Plaster of Paris and strips torn from an unused drop cloth. As it turned out, Martin was not only a doctor but the receptionist's fiancee as well.

What irritated me most about this encounter--and the many other unwelcome, one-sided conversations I had with this unmitigated pea-brain--was that she automatically assumed: A) I knew all the background trivialities beforehand; and B) I gave a damn. This Schlesinger person rankled me in precisely the same manner.

"You were transferred?" Glenda asked, much to my displeasure. I wondered if she was just being friendly, or if she was genuinely interested in this jerk's story. Either way, she was needlessly prolonging an essentially irrelevant conversation.

"Yes, ma'am," he replied with gusto. "From Montreal. Came up on the last shuttle."

"We were on that shuttle," Glenda pointed out.

"Don't I know it!" he beamed. "Hard not to notice a pretty little slip of a thing like you, ma'am."

Glenda grinned bashfully. Schlesinger turned to me.

"You took a nasty bump to the noggin on the ride up, mister."

I grimaced, remembering.

"Neil undid his seatbelt before he was supposed to." Glenda tattled reprovingly.

"I'll say! Had to cover my boy's ears, the way he was cussing."

"Yes, we apologize for that."

Glenda shot me a black look, then returned her attention to the stranger.

"You don't sound like you're from Montreal, Mr. Schlesinger," she observed.

"Call me Ed." The man fished a pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his jumpsuit. "And you're right on that count," he said, lighting up. "Born and bred in Texas. But, hell, in my line of work you move around a lot."

He exhaled a thin shroud of smoke. It swirled lazily in the still air. He glanced over at the doors of the public restrooms and said, "Ah, here's Helen now."

A big-boned woman with her black hair done up in a massive beehive scurried over to us, a dark-haired boy of about seven trailing from her left hand. The man hoisted himself onto his feet.

"Helen," he said ceremoniously. "This here's Glenda and Neil. They're moving to Columbus, too. Folks, meet my wife, Helen." He ruffled the boy's hair with a big paw. "And this is Robbie. Feel better, son?"

The boy nodded cautiously, not taking his eyes from me. He edged himself over to a safe spot behind his mother's enormous bum.

"I was just telling them how I got transferred up here," the man continued to his wife. They took their seats next to us. Robbie stood quietly, looking at the floor, his hands in the pockets of his trousers.

"Yes, that's right," Helen said with her long southern drawl. She smiled widely; and I swear she had millions of yellow teeth crammed into her mouth. "Eddie here was promoted to chief of Columbus corporate security, weren't you Eddie?"

"Uh-huh."

"Wait a minute," I interjected. (I figured there was no way out of this insipid conversation, so I might as well participate.) "I thought all of the colony's administrative and public services departments were governed by democratically elected cooperative councils."

"Well, sure," said Schlesinger. "But that's public security. I look after the big boys who run this whole place."

What? "I wasn't aware Columbus had an executive ruling committee."

"Yup. Columbus and four of the other orbiting settlements--let's see, now: Magellan, Cabot, Cartier and uh oh hell, I can't remember the other one--anyway, they're all owned by the Gecko Syndicate. See?"

He pointed to a little pin he wore on the breast of his jumpsuit, over the bulge the pack of cigarettes made in his pocket. There was a stylized, green lizard hologram stamped on it. I did not recognize the logo.

"How appropriate," I remarked acidly.

Schlesinger ignored me, or he simply wasn't listening.

"Some of the chief executives have their summer homes here," he said to Glenda. "So I'm supposed to provide security when they're vacationing." He leaned over and whispered confidentially: "And let me tell you, these guys are worth trillions!"

"Wow!" Glenda gushed.

Helen glowed with such pride for her husband that I thought she might burst. The little woman, faithfully at her man's side. I felt sick.

"That must be pretty scary," Glenda went on, "watching out for those guys and all. I mean, what if there's an attack or something?"

Schlesinger waved a meaty paw. "Nah. This job's gonna be a cake walk. You've seen the weapons detectors at spaceport customs. A terrorist couldn't get a piece of rigged 'coon shit within a hundred meters of those things." He clasped his hands behind his head as if he were relaxing at the beach, and puffed at the cigarette clamped between his teeth. "Yep. All I'm gonna do all day is sip margaritas and make sure they have their shoes tied so they don't trip and hurt themselves. A cake walk, I tell you."

I grunted with disgust. Helen exuberantly clapped her pudgy little palms together.

"Oh, we're so happy," she squeaked. "Robbie's never been able to play outside all by himself before. A growing boy needs his fresh air. Don't you, Robbie?"

The boy looked sullenly at the floor.

"So, what are you two doing here?" Schlesinger asked.

"This and that," I replied, not wanting to get into specifics.

"We both got jobs at the same pharmaceutical company," Glenda cut me off. I felt her nails digging into the back of my hand. "Neil is manager of the night shift quality control staff, and I work QC during the day."

Helen extended her lower lip and raised her black eyebrows in that queer facial cast people affect when they are impressed by something they don't really understand.

"My, my!" she clucked absurdly. "But it sure doesn't leave much time for, you know, marital obligations."

"Oh, we're not married," I piped in, and regretted it instantly. Schlesinger gave his wife a disapproving frown. Helen blushed and stammered an apology.

"What Neil meant to say is, we're engaged," Glenda said and wrapped herself around my left arm. I felt her breasts push firmly against me, and the uncomfortable tingling in my loins. "We came here to start our lives fresh."

"Oh, isn't that lovely!" Helen chirped with obvious relief. "Don't you think that's lovely, Eddie?"

"I do, I do," Schlesinger boomed. "Congratulations, you old dog!"

He slugged me in the shoulder, and practically sent me flying off the bench. Glenda had to smother a laugh when she saw the expression of loathing I transmitted to her with my eyes. I sat up, massaging the spot on my arm where the big goon had hit me.

"So when's the happy day?" Helen asked Glenda.

"We haven't set one yet," Glenda replied. "It's all been so much, just getting up here. We figured we'd make the arrangements once we got ourselves settled."

"That's smart," Helen agreed.

The two of them prattled on, Glenda caught up in the world of her fib, and Helen ecstatically hanging on every word of it. Schlesinger put his arm around the back of my bench and sat forward to speak with me. I automatically reclined away from him. His breath was overpowering.

"That's quite a woman you got there, mister," he intoned, gassing me. I had to stifle a gag.

"Thanks," I wheezed. Then, attempting to deflect the conversation: "So where were you employed before the infamous transfer came through?"

My ruse worked. Our man-to-man sense of conspiracy punctured, he sat back in his chair and gave me some much-needed breathing space.

"Gecko's corporate headquarters in Montreal," he answered. "I was the chairwoman's personal bodyguard. Nasty old bitch. When they offered me the promotion, I grabbed it. Before that I was doing security in Oklahoma. But, you know, with the war and all--it wasn't a suitable place to raise a family."

"No kidding."

"And before that," Schlesinger continued, "I was walking a beat in Houston."

"You were a cop?"

"That's generally how anyone gets started in the security business." He lit another cigarette. "I was on the force nine years."

Helen stopped talking to Glenda and leaned into our discussion. "Eddie was involved in that horrible Maplelawn Hills affair."

I raised my eyebrows with distaste. Maplelawn Hills had been the big news story for most of the previous year. It was an abandoned suburban bedroom community, near Houston, that had been taken over by squatters. Last March, the land was purchased by some megacorporation for a huge condominium development project. The squatters were to be peaceably relocated, but in the fine tradition of American homesteaders they refused to budge from their houses. Many of the neighboring police forces were mobilized to rout them; and the resulting massacre gave a whole new meaning to the concept of state-sanctioned cruelty.

All the interactive media ran the same holoclips of entire families lying in puddles of their own blood and excrement. There were rumors of military-style executions, none of which were formally confirmed as true. Texas officials, from the governor down to the mayors of the participating municipalities, went on-line to insist that the police were not out of control, that they were still in charge, and that God was in His heaven and all was right with the world.

None of this seemed to bother Schlesinger very much. He shrugged and said, "What a goddamn mess that was," and left it at that. There was a long, uncomfortable silence; and I wondered if he had gone into the industrial security business by choice, or if he had been forced into it.

"Mommy." Robbie stepped forward, pinching his penis through the material of his pants. "I gotta pee again."

Schlesinger grinned at me and winked. "That boy. I told him not to drink them five cans of fruit juice on the flight up."

III

Three more hours passed, and we were four applicants closer to our interviews with the immigration officials. I was literally at my wits' end. Glenda and Helen seemed to have no problem wasting their time with useless chatter over fashion, food, and feminine hygiene (the Three Fs, Helen called them). Schlesinger and the boy had gone off to the other end of the room to enjoy a rousing virtual reality video game on the portable player they brought with them. Which left me to myself--and I was finding it hard to care how many metric tonnes of livestock feed were exported from Columbus during the harvest seasons.

I turned off my information disk, leaned back on my throbbing buttocks, and closed my eyes. Now was a good time to sort out the whole nagging issue of the paradox I might have created. I had filed the matter away for future speculation after placating Glenda's apparent need for reassurance. There was something about the problem that stuck in my craw. I needed to work it through.

More and more, I was beginning to suspect that my older self had been dead wrong about the cause-and-effect relationship at work behind the event of the PSP sabotage. He had been looking at it from a linear perspective, which was only natural. We as a species had learned to consider the so-called passage of time in precisely that manner. It was just one of those things that was so deeply ingrained in our very beings that we could not separate ourselves from it without suffering psychologically. Consider the inexorably linear structure of literary narratives, musical arrangements, or sports such as bullfighting or baseball, and you'll understand what I am so inadequately trying to say.

But what if time were in fact a nonlinear thing, as many physicists claimed? What if the effect (the sabotage) did not necessarily require the cause (me) to exist? What if the effect were just there, as a kind of resonance from another time line, perhaps, where I had gone ahead with the mission? Variables and inevitabilities. By typical linear reasoning, the successful completion of the Society's plan would itself negate the very reason for doing the deed in the first place. If we had managed to change the past, thereby creating a markedly better tomorrow, then there would be no justifiable reason for the Society to exist at all; therefore, no mission.

That wasn't a paradox. It was a bloody vacuum. And you know how Nature abhors those.

The problem with linear thinking is that we always have to find an explanation for why things are the way they are; and this problem defines itself most clearly when we attempt to contemplate the beginning and the end of time itself. For instance, we have the Big Bang theory, which is a nifty method of justifying how all matter in the universe came to be the way we know it. But no one seems prepared to discuss how the universe itself was formed.

I opened my mind to the farthest reaches of possibility, and came to see the universe as a thing that had always been: no beginning and no end. No linear time. Everything--the past, present and future--simply existed together in one lump sum, without start or finish. That was why the Shiv worked. We weren't using it to travel to another time and place, as if this were a physical location we could pinpoint on a map. We were merely transporting ourselves to some other juncture in the eternal now.

Where the hell was I going with this? Oh yes. Any given point in the eternal now represented the convergence of all that was possible. Our older selves would never find us here, on Columbus, no matter how hard they looked. Because we were everywhere and nowhere in one and the same instance.

IV

No, that was bullshit. By that logic, the Shiv wouldn't work at all. Jesus, my mind wasn't trained to think on such a grand scale. The eternal now. Pah! What nonsense.

I checked my watch. Oh well. At least I'd managed to kill an extra forty-five minutes without going completely mental.

V

" and so," Schlesinger was saying, using the flat of his burly palm to demonstrate, "if you slam the nose just so, it drives the bones up into the brain. Bingo. No more bad guy. But be prepared to wash up after. It's pretty damn messy."

"How interesting," I mumbled absently.

I made the mistake of asking why the immigration people didn't just put us out of our misery, rather than let us fester away in this office for hours on end. My intent was to elicit grim nods of agreement from my fellow sufferers. But Schlesinger launched instead into an explicit description of the many methods there were to efficiently kill a human being, using only your bare hands. As he went on, I was forced to wonder if it were possible to perform any of these maneuvers on myself. Anything was preferable to enduring this idiot's mindless banter.

At that moment, and to my enormous relief, the officers at the counter called out our numbers. I was instantly on my feet, our bags slung over my shoulder.

"Come on Glenda, that's us."

Before I could react, Schlesinger stood, seized my hand in his, and pumped my arm as if he were jacking up a car.

"Best of luck to you, mister," he bellowed. "You take care of that little lady, now."

Helen touched her hand to her mouth, remembering something, and then started to rummage anxiously through her purse. "Wait. I have to find a pen and paper. We simply must get your access number."

"There's an idea!" Schlesinger said. "We'll have you two over for a barbecue once we're all settled in."

"My Eddie does wonders with meat," Helen put in.

"I'm sure," I replied, eyeing Glenda severely. "But we haven't got a number yet. Do we Glenda?"

"Well "

"Then we'll give you ours." Helen furiously scribbled their access code on a small, yellow sheet and handed it to me. "Now you be sure to call. It's just so wonderful to have new friends here already. We'd love to see you again."

"We'll be in touch," I called over my shoulder, pulling Glenda by her arm.

Glenda waved, and stumbled as she tried to keep up with me. When we were safely out of earshot, she whispered viciously: "Did you have to be so damn rude to those people? We have an access number. Why wouldn't you give it to them?"

"Look, the last thing we need is to get friendly with that dope and his family," I hissed tersely. "He's security, Glenda. Guys like him love to dig up poop on people like us. It's their business."

"So what? We haven't done anything wrong."

"Well, I just don't want him asking any questions. You said so yourself--we left a lot of loose ends behind us. Now shush. Here we are."

We arrived at the counter before Glenda could say another word. I had my passport and approved immigration forms at the ready, and slid them across to the stern, uniformed officer opposite me. The man attending to Glenda was looking over the papers she had submitted, but from the corner of my eye I caught him sneaking a peek at her ample boobs. Oh well. Let him have his fun. I returned my attention to more important matters.

I don't think I need to tell you how long we stood there, waiting. The officials did their well-choreographed finger dance across the keyboards of their workstation computers, filled out a thick wad of preprinted documents (in triplicate), and stamped whatever needed stamping.

Then came the questionnaire. Were we, or had we ever been, members of the Destructionist Party? Nope. Did we have criminal records on Earth or any of the other colonies? Absolutely not. Were we prepared to renounce our Québec citizenships? Sure. Would we defend, to the best of our abilities, the Five Statutes of the Columbus civil order co-op? Yup. The inquiries continued.

Finally, they made us place our hands on copies of the Five Statutes; and, palms over our hearts, we pledged our allegiance to the Columbus flag. Both officers extended new photo ID citizenship "smart" cards across the counter top. (Pictures, retina scans, and genetic blueprints had been submitted with our original immigration requests for just this purpose.) Glenda and I pocketed them.

"Welcome to Columbus," the two men said in unison. And then the officer who attended to my application droned, "Please use the door on your right to leave the building."

So we did. On the way out, and while Glenda was preoccupied with the contents of her handbag, I tossed the Schlesingers' access number into the closest available incinerator chute.

CHAPTER SIX

I

There is no light. But somehow I can see half my reflection in the great mirror that occupies one full wall of the parlor in my father's house. I study the single blue eye, peering at me from beneath a patch of black hair, burning with the passionate intensity of youth; the smooth cheek, not yet disfigured by the lines of age; the half-mouth set with that cocky sneer which so often is removed forcefully by the humiliating accumulation of experience.

And then

There is no light. But somehow I can see the other half of my reflection in the great mirror that occupies one full wall of the parlor in my father's house. I study the single blue eye, peering at me from beneath a patch of black hair, devoid of intelligence, blank as water at the bottom of a glass; the hollow and pitted cheek; the half-mouth drooping in a kind of Mongoloid idiocy.

And then

There is the grim face of my father behind me, and a gnarled hand on my poorly lighted shoulder. Without so much as a word he shakes his head heavy with disappointment. The hand slips from my shoulder. His image dissolves into the deep shadow.

And then

There is the voice that whispers to me with no great urgency: Most times, these things don't make all the difference.

And the mouth that is forming these words, I discover, is my own.

II

I woke from an unsettling dream I could not remember, and looked over at the clock on my night table. 1134 in the morning. Early, by the hours I kept.

I yawned, stretched, and stopped myself before I barked out my breakfast order for Gert.

This was a habit I had not yet managed to kick. Voice recognition computers were not standard issue with assigned housing on Columbus. Neither were matter processors, laundry filters, or holographic communication equipment. In the seven weeks since Glenda and I relocated, I still had not learned to do without the conveniences I had taken for granted on Earth.

Although I quickly became accustomed to our two-dimensional "television" and audio-visual "telephone," I nevertheless discovered that I had no talent for cooking my own meals, and an equally frustrating inability to issue computer commands with an old-style keyboard and pointing device.

Glenda, to my surprise, adapted to her new life with much more success. Apparently, she had little use for such technologies on Earth--a prejudice she attributed to her upbringing in the wilds of northern Alberta. (Her father, of whom she spoke very little, was a logger in the days when trees were still hunted for their pelts.) Back home, she had always prepared food with some sort of heating element and a variety of stainless steel pots and pans. Which made her a perfect candidate for house chef, and so she was promoted to that high rank.

In exchange for eating privileges, I made the bed, tidied our two-room apartment, and "washed" the laundry. On reflection, I believe I got the better end of that deal. I had always been a relatively neat person, so my cleaning chores were no great hardship, and I performed these duties efficiently and without complaint. Folding sheets, on the other hand, was a complete mystery to me; and within a few days of our arrival at the colony I managed to discolor most, if not all, of our clothing.

Glenda smiled and said nothing. But I knew she remade the bed each night before sleep, while I was away at work. And I had witnessed the heartbreak written on her face when her favorite cotton twill shirt (pink) came out three sizes too small, and roughly the same color as my old class three rain slicker.

Aside from my shortcomings as a domestic, our lives together were unusually agreeable.

The apartment generously provided to us by Columbus' housing co-op was certainly pleasant enough. Located in a commune near the downtown core of the colony's only major urban center, Litton, it was far more luxuriously appointed than our old compartments on Earth. That is, it had a separate bedroom, as well as a flush toilet, a sink, and something called a shower (for bathing, our orientation counselor informed us) located in a small, enclosed chamber off the main living area. There was also a tiny kitchenette hidden in the recess behind our slide-aside wall unit; and this too had been thoughtfully equipped with the appliances we--or should I say Glenda--needed to cook our meals and store our provisions.

(I must confess that the concept of obtaining and stocking supplies confounded me. I was accustomed to flipping through the shopping channel menus in search of raw materials for my matter processor. This physical act of walking into a large, garishly-lit hall and selecting foodstuffs from shelves, then waiting in line to pay for the selections, was to me an egregious waste of my valuable time, and I made no effort to conceal my dissatisfaction with the process. After only two of these expeditions, Glenda insisted that I stay home, and from that day forward took care of the shopping on her own.)

Of course, she also worked her usual magic with our interior decor. While we were not allowed to exchange our furniture or paint the walls of our apartment--this type of housing was subsidized, and included as a standard component of our joint employee benefits package--she still managed to subvert the mind-numbing neutrality of the co-op's preferred color scheme (white) with a wide assortment of potted plants, paintings and tasteful knickknacks. These, combined with a couple of resplendent throw rugs, some nice curtains, and an exquisite comforter for our bed, made me wish I had something more to offer our household than my poor domestic administration, my paltry QC supervisor's salary, and my unexpected mood swings. Nevertheless, I endeavored to show my appreciation by taking her to dinner from time to time at some of Litton's finer restaurants, and by behaving myself in bed.

While Glenda and I slept together for practical purposes (there was only the one mattress), we still had not consummated our relationship. Which was to her enduring bewilderment, since she continued to make herself available for sex, and I well, I did not. I still felt a tendril of suspicion clinging to the back of my mind, and though I apologized profusely for my paralysis in bed, I never explained why I was refusing her. Far better, I thought, to have her suspect impotence than to say outright that I believed her seductions were insincere.

Despite our problems in the sack, we were yet becoming fast friends; and I found that many of my preferred pastimes--drinking to excess, patronizing cyberstrips, wiring myself into the hallucination libraries--were losing their considerable ability to charm, because she refused to do these things with me. Instead, we spent much of our off-shift time together on hiking trips to various points of destination within the monstrous tube that was Columbus.

During our first week of orientation seminars, our counselor explained how to use colony maps. These were handheld devices, similar in purpose to the intelligent vehicle-highway systems installed in automobiles, with small, integrated viewing screens and global positioning capabilities. Any place inside Columbus could be targeted by plotting it in circular degrees by the number of kilometers north or south of the settlement's central positioning marker. (For instance, Litton's coordinates were one hundred and sixty-seven degrees, forty-eight kilometers south.) The marker, in turn, tracked our map and displayed its location on the screen, then suggested the best possible routes to our goal. However, we soon found that the best possible routes were not always the most scenic, so we generally ignored these tidbits of information and resolved instead to get wherever we wanted to go whichever way we pleased.

And Columbus, to our mutual delight and wonderment, was very scenic.

Admittedly, it had not looked like much when we stepped out of the spaceport immigration office and took in our first impressions of the streets of Litton. The city's chief architectural metaphor seemed to be the gray or brown modular cement cube. These can be quite pleasing to the eye when a dozen or so are artfully arranged in a construction similar to Montreal's historic Habitat project. But they are most definitely uninspiring when thousands upon thousands are stacked together to form dwellings, office towers, schools, theaters, sports arenas, and strip malls.

Dissatisfied with our more immediate surroundings, my next impulse, naturally, was to look up. And I nearly fell over from the shock.

Imagine, if you will, the landscape of Earth as seen from a jet cruiser. Then imagine, if you can, that landscape arcing over your head at an impossible height, with "sunlight" blazing down upon you from ultraviolet radiator dishes suspended along the length of the hub at spin center. Topographical features disappear, and all you discern are small black lakes, the winding lines of rivers, and squares of farmland patched together like a dun-colored quilt.

But Columbus was far from featureless. As we learned from our orientation sessions, it was only the second agricultural colony built during the big push into space seven decades ago. Raw materials were still plentiful then--iron ore was mined from the moon; contaminated soil was shipped from Earth, sterilized, then repopulated with live bacteria; plants were grown hydroponically in space; etcetera--so the physical and ergonomic engineers were encouraged to be as creative as they pleased.

What our weekend treks revealed was a landscape rich with lush forests and drinkable, filtered water; mountainous terrain suitable for even the most avid hiker; swampland--a "natural" method of recycling human and other waste--alive with every manner of amphibian, reptile, and migratory bird (though where they migrated to, I hadn't the slightest idea); in short, the kind of garden Earth used to be, but was no longer.

On scheduled rain periods, which occurred in a rotational cycle every seventy-two hours, we directed our wanderings to the extensive network of "underground" malls beneath Litton. One of the access points to the subterranean city was conveniently located in our commune basement, so we never had to brave the "weather" if we did not want to dress for it.

The malls, like Litton itself, had their upscale annexes and their seedy side streets. Glenda preferred the classy bistros, art galleries, clothing stores, and leisure courtyards in the north end; while I was more curious about the brothels and sex shops to the south. As a compromise, we generally confined ourselves to exploring the Midway--multi-level terraces of special-interest shops, restaurants, night clubs, and assorted amusement outlets built around a holoform theme park complete with an enormous gravity coaster.

While we frequently became lost negotiating the Midway's serpentine promenades, it was easy to reorient ourselves by zeroing in on the screams that issued from the vicinity of the park. Sometimes Glenda shopped by herself while I leaned over a balcony to watch the coaster slingshot its occupants sixty meters into the air, through a kaleidoscope of non-corporeal holoforms, and into a pillow of artificial gravity. The shrieks of the children delighted me, and I found myself idling in this particular spot more and more often.

The cyberstrips, I reasoned, would always be there for me tomorrow.

III

The lights flickered to inform me of an incoming telephone call. I stepped from the shower, a towel wrapped about my waist and another in my hands to dry my hair, and went into the living room to accept the message. Glenda's pretty face grinned at me from the viewing screen. She was calling from the plant's employee lounge.

"Hey, sleepy-head," she giggled. "Do you always answer the phone in your birthday suit?"

"I'm wearing something," I pointed out. "See?"

I peeled away my waist towel and held it up in front of the small video lens.

Glenda pantomimed an expression of shock, then peered over the edge of the viewing screen. She could see nothing, of course, but she wiggled her eyebrows and smiled broadly.

"Oo la-la," she trilled. Then, composing herself: "Anyways, I was just making sure you're up. You always forget to set the clock."

"I'm awake, all right," I replied and put my towel back on. "All by myself, too. The alarm didn't even have a chance to go off."

"Good for you. I pressed your favorite jumpsuit this morning before I left. It's hanging in the closet. And there's some breakfast in the fridge. Nothing special. Just fruit and a couple of croissants."

"You're a doll, you know that?"

"Yeah. You really don't deserve me," she kidded.

"So you keep saying."

I scrubbed my hair with the other towel, then let it drop around my shoulders. Glenda scratched the delicate bridge of her nose.

"Anything else?" I asked.

Glenda blinked, remembering. "Oh yeah. Seems some of those special serums going down to China wound up in the English packaging during last night's shift. The day supervisor is all in a snit about it. You're probably going to get an earful when you come in."

"Not again!" I shook my head. "Jesus, I have some of the biggest boneheads working for me. Tell Ross I'll have a few words to say to them about it. In the meantime, extend my most sincere apologies."

"Okay." Glenda's head turned to acknowledge someone outside the booth, and she nodded a response. Then she looked back at me. "I gotta go. Lai wants to use the phone. Are we still on for dinner?"

"Wouldn't miss it for the world!" I assured her.

"Great." She leaned forward into the viewing screen. "See you later, handsome," she whispered and blew me a kiss.

The screen went blank, then displayed the number of credits that had been withdrawn from our joint account for the call.

I walked into our bedroom to get dressed for the day. I found my pressed jumpsuit in the closet, but opted instead for my snazzy black jacket and pants outfit.

I said nothing to Glenda about it, but I had arranged an afternoon meeting at Columbus' physical laboratories in the northern pole. And the senior engineer who agreed to see me, Sandra Chan, was cute as a bug's ear--if a bit chilly. I wanted to make a good first impression.

I guess I felt a twinge of guilt concerning my eagerness to meet Ms. Chan in person. After all, my relationship with Glenda was more than platonic, though substantially less than sexual. Nevertheless, an intelligent and comely woman can make even the most steadfast of monogamists think twice about his commitment to a single mate. And it was not as if Glenda had some kind of territorial claim to me, nor I to her.

Washed, dressed, and reeking with a fresh slap of cologne, I went back into the living room to retrieve my breakfast. Plate in hand, I sat down in the couch, turned on the TV, and flipped through the day's headlines on the interactive news channel. There was the usual list of the previous day's atrocities on Earth--more underclass rioting in Europe, an escalation of the water war between East and West America, the predictable summer famines throughout Africa. I shook my head and thanked the stars for allowing me the opportunity to escape that terrestrial hell. Earth was a waste. The heavens were where humanity's future lay. At least I had had the good sense to leave while I could.

Pity the poor, delusional bastards who thought things would improve if only they fought (or starved) long enough to affect the will of the politicians.

IV

I caught a subway train to my branch of the First Interspatial Bank of Columbus. Glenda and I had our joint account at the Workers' Union Trust, but on one of my free afternoons before shift change I visited the FIBC to procure a safety deposit box for our stolen Shiv. I never told Glenda what I had done with the device, and she made it a point not to ask. Indeed, that topic was verboten between us. We had canceled our former lives back home--specifically the events leading up to our defection--as easily as one deletes a computer file. Still, I had it in mind to reverse-engineer the apparatus, which necessitated my meeting that afternoon with the sultry and talented Sandra Chan.

After withdrawing the contents of my box and signing the requisite release forms hefted upon me by the bank administrators, I walked out onto the street, the Shiv in my coat pocket, and took a cab to the nearest transport spoke.

Spokes, for those of you who don't know these things, are lift tubes connected to the colony's central hub. They are arranged much like the spokes on a bicycle wheel (hence the name), and are conveniently situated near Columbus' most densely populated sectors--which is to say, Columbus has only twelve spokes. Farmers in the outlying regions must drive to Litton, or one of the smaller communities, to ride one. But since farmers rarely use the hub's rapid transit system, or have any interest in touring the null gravity high tech facilities, this has never proved to be much of an inconvenience.

The cab ride was not long, only ten blocks. I could have walked, I suppose. But the moisture collectors scattered throughout Litton had reached their capacity for the next rain cycle; it was too muggy to go by foot, and I did not want to risk contaminating my introduction to Ms. Chan with clammy palms and a wrinkled suit.

I had never before been inside a spoke, or even in the vicinity of one (though Litton's were visible from our apartment balcony, as indeed they could be seen anywhere within the city). When I got out of the cab, I was again struck by the impulse to look up, and I did. It certainly was an impressive spectacle, as wide in diameter as your average office tower, but (needless to say) much taller. For a moment I marveled at the engineering know-how required to build such an imposing structure. And it occurred to me that I owed Ms. Chan a little more respect than I had heretofore granted her.

Collecting myself and my thoughts for the task at hand, I made my way up the wide column of concrete steps and pushed through the revolving doors at the crest.

The vast, sparsely populated entryway at the base of the spoke was warmly lit, and decorated with slabs of sheet marble in a design motif reminiscent of art deco. The voices of passing commuters bounced off walls, ceiling and floor; and my footfalls started a choir of echoes that drowned out the reverberating babble of their conversations. I approached the closest turnstile and waved my credit card at the integrated proximity monitor. The force field dropped, and a sign over my head flashed its green permission to enter. I passed through the x-ray cubicle and the weapons detector, then made my way down the long hall to the lift.

I thought it curious, as I walked, that the spoke's admitting area had been designed to manage the flow of huge numbers of people. Curious, because Litton had a population of one hundred and twenty-seven thousand, not all of whom would use the rapid transit system on a twice-daily basis. Curious, also, because Columbus was a planned community with tightly controlled immigration policies. I shrugged it off as another example of technology run amok. Give a modern engineer the freedom he needs to design a better mouse trap, and he'll come back with an armor-piercing bazooka.

The lift itself was circular, with benches arranged in rows around an operator's console. A handful of people were already seated inside, reading their newsdisks or doing crossword puzzles. I selected a bench to the rear of the chamber and strapped myself in securely. Gravity would diminish the higher we went, and I did not want a reprise of my shuttle trip mishap.

I waited ten minutes for the lift to fill up, which it did not. The operator, a middle-aged man dressed in a nondescript blue uniform, stepped on board and took his place behind the console. He flipped a switch, and the chamber door closed and sealed. I felt a rush of cool air as filtered oxygen hissed from the circulation vents. Then an unexpectedly forceful push from beneath the floor flattened me into my seat. Within seconds we were hurtling upwards at breakneck speed. I felt the burden of gravity ease from my body.

I did not have long to enjoy the peculiar sensation of near-weightlessness. Within minutes our rate of ascent decreased, and soon we were easing into the underbelly of the hub. There was a field of artificial gravity here, so commuters could make their ways comfortably onto the tube train. I unstrapped myself and followed my fellow travelers as they shuffled out the chamber door and onto the lift bay annex. There, I stopped to purchase a rum and cola from a vending machine, checked the time, and walked slowly, sipping my drink as I went, to the escalators that would carry me up to the tube train level.

This particular station had a connecting transport spoke from 180 degrees above Litton. I was surprised to find that the artificial gravity field worked both ways; that is, people were disembarking from another lift bay overhead, and walking upside down (from my perspective) on the ceiling. This experience was a first for me, and I began to feel slightly surreal, as if I had ingested a mild hallucinogen. But two more sips from my drink, a couple of deep breaths, and I managed to reach the escalators with only moderate impressions of nausea and disorientation.

The tube train offered a spectacular ride along the spine of the hub. The compartmentalized fuselage was fashioned entirely out of some kind of heat-resistant Plexiglas, and treated with an effective ultraviolet filter that reduced the glare from the massive radiator dishes hanging alongside the monorail. From this unique vantage point I could see the vast panorama of Columbus on all sides of me, immense beyond description. The sheer enormity of the spectacle literally took my breath away, and I wondered briefly how my fellow passengers could appear so blasé in its presence. I suppose that, with my face pressed up against the glass, I must have seemed to them the archetypal "Newbie," as newcomers were called; or worse, a gawking tourist.

Halfway through the trip, and while I was gaping out the window, a dozen or so human shapes plunged past the train from overhead. My heart almost stopped. I let out a surprised shriek, causing several heads to turn in my direction, and was immediately shamed into red-faced silence when my neighbor explained, with lavish contempt, that I had merely spotted a group of hub jumpers. These were young adrenaline junkies who leaped from the colony's axis, allowed themselves to be caught up in the gravitational well one hundred meters or so beyond the perimeter of weightlessness, and plummeted to the earth with parachutes billowing open at the last second before impact. I had heard of hub jumping, though I had never actually seen it. While not strictly illegal, it was severely frowned upon by the public safety co-op. From time to time, some of the kids became tangled up in the radiator dishes, and were roasted so completely that even dental records were useless when identifying the charred remains. I resolved to try it at least once.

My train ride took approximately twenty minutes, with nine stops in between. Good time, considering the trip was almost an hour using conventional means of transportation. Nevertheless, I had seriously miscalculated the duration of my journey, and found, as the train nosed into the station at the colony's northern pole, that I was running late for my appointment.

I pushed through the knot of people that blocked the open door of the train, apologizing profusely for my lack of finesse, then ran for the stairs and scrambled down three flights to the administration offices. Engineering, I discovered, was two levels below that, but you could only get there by taking an elevator from the heavily guarded lobby.

The security officer on duty at the front desk must have sensed my haste, in much the same way that dogs are rumored to sense fear. In good civil service fashion, he slowly and inefficiently went through the form-signing process of admitting me onto the premises; and while I danced around him in anguish, he leisurely filled out not one but two visitor passes for my use. (The first had a typographical error on it and had to be discarded, "just in case." "In case of what?" I asked dryly. He shrugged with indifference and mumbled, "You never know.")

I made it to Engineering a full half hour behind schedule. The secretary, a thin-boned, nattily-dressed young fop, looked up with amusement as I stumbled out of the elevator and lurched toward his small workstation, swatting a lock of sweat-dampened hair from my eyes.

"I have a meeting with Sandra Chan," I said breathlessly.

"I see. And you are ?"

"Neil Erdogan."

He checked the appointment log on his computer terminal, then nodded priggishly. "Yes. If you'll have a seat, Mr. Erdogan, I'll inform Ms. Chan that you're here."

I looked around the room. There were no seats.

I was about to ask the secretary if he was joking when an astonishingly pretty, black-haired woman popped her head around the corner and said, "Mr. Erdogan?"

I spun around. "Yes!"

She came forward, extending a slender, white hand that was cold to the touch. "I'm Sandra Chan," she said, quite formally. "Please come in."

CHAPTER SEVEN

I

Her office was--well, I wouldn't call it uncluttered: Spartan was more the word for it. There was a desk with a high-backed swivel chair behind it, pushed into the corner opposite the door. The desk was spotlessly clean, and had on it a lamp, a computer terminal, and a stylus. In front of it, at an angle, was an unattractive orange metal and plastic chair, much like the kind you see in schools. Next to the desk was an artificial oak bookcase, lined immaculately with volume after volume of reference disks in plastic jewel boxes. On the wall over the bookcase there hung three framed diplomas from some engineering college I had never heard of, their holographic seals casting a rainbow of colors when the light caught them. Beside to the bookcase was a potted plant. The rest of the room was bare.

I sat in the plastic chair while Ms. Chan arranged herself primly behind her desk.

"You haven't any seats in your lobby," I pointed out.

"Yes," she said. Apparently, that was intended to suffice as a response.

"It's just funny," I continued, chuckling. "I mean, your secretary asked me to sit while he paged you, and I--"

"What can I do for you, Mr. Erdogan?" She cut me off, instantly shocking me into silence. "Our telephone conversation the other day was cryptic, to say the least."

"Yes," I said, a bit perturbed by her brusque attitude. "I apologize for that. I couldn't risk saying too much over the phone."

"I see."

"The reason for my visit is this." I leaned over her desk, and spoke to her in a conspiratorial tone. "I have come into possession of a curious device, whose internal workings elude me. I was hoping you, or one of your engineers, might be able to figure out how it operates."

I pulled the Shiv from my coat pocket and placed it delicately in front of her. She looked at the contraption. Then she glanced up at me with a disdainful expression on her face.

"It's an old garage door opener," she said stiffly.

I glared at her. "I'm not a complete idiot, Ms. Chan," I snapped. "I can assure you, it is significantly more advanced than that."

"Then what do you think it is?" She was obviously playing me for the fool.

"If I tell you, you have to promise that you'll keep an open mind."

She rolled her eyes impatiently. "If I do, will you get to the point of this whole matter?"

"Yes."

"Then I promise."

"It's a Temporal Displacement Field Projector."

I sat back and studied her face. She either thought I was crazy or she believed me--I could not tell which. She displayed no reaction of any kind.

"A what?"

"A Temporal Displacement Field Projector. Are you familiar with the work of Franz Calvert?"

"I know who Calvert is," she said. "More to the point, how do you know of Calvert? I thought his ideas were too esoteric for general consumption."

"Well, I'm a pretty esoteric guy, myself," I replied acidly. "Look, who cares how I know him? Do you believe what I'm saying?"

"No."

She did not intimidate me; I had prepared for this contingency.

"Then I suppose a graphic demonstration is in order." I quickly surveyed the office for a suitable prop. "Can I borrow one of those disks on your book shelf?"

"If you must."

I got out of my chair and went to select one of the jewel boxes.

"I'll have it returned to you," I told her. "I give you my word."

Ms. Chan said nothing. But she watched me carefully--wondering, I suppose, if it was time to call in a guard and have me removed from her office. I went back to her desk, the disk in hand, and picked up the Shiv.

"Look," I offered, "if what you're about to see doesn't impress the living crap out of you, then you can have me thrown out on my ass. Okay?"

She gave me a nearly imperceptible nod.

I held out the Shiv at arm's length, pointing it at the empty corner of the office, and pressed the red button. A moment's silence, and then the loud concussion as the field opened up before me in mid-air. Quickly, I put the Shiv in my pocket, took the disk in my right hand, and tossed it into the hole. The blue electricity at the field's edges shivered, then contracted into a tiny white spot and disappeared.

I turned around. Ms. Chan was on her feet.

"So," I said casually, "do you want to call security now?"

Ms. Chan stared at the spot where the field had been, then blinked.

"No, no," she stammered. "I don't think that will be necessary. Please sit down."

II

She had the Shiv in her hands, and was inspecting it closely in the light cast by her desk lamp.

"Well," she muttered, more to herself than to me, "it doesn't seem to be a holographic imaging device. At least, none that I know of."

"It isn't," I assured her.

She turned her reserved gaze upon me (she had clearly recovered from her initial shock) and said: "That remains to be proven. Anything is possible these days. And what might look like magic, at first, always turns out later to be something quite ordinary."

"There's no need to talk down to me, Ms. Chan," I said and gave her my most distant smile. "I don't believe in magic. And I'm hardly so impressed by technology that I can confuse it with sorcery. However, I would say this projector definitely falls into the class of the extraordinary, wouldn't you?"

"Not just yet, no, I wouldn't. But if it is as you say; well, the significance of it--" she trailed off. Then, pointedly: "And how exactly did you come into the possession of this this thing?"

"I'd rather not say, if you don't mind," I replied.

The woman eyed me sharply. "You didn't do anything illegal to obtain it, did you? I'm afraid I would have to turn down your request, if that were the case."

I shook my head. "Nothing illegal. But I'd just as soon keep the projector a secret for now."

"Obviously. By the way, where did my disk go when you threw it into the 'field?'"

"My place. I was thinking about my living room."

She raised an eyebrow. "Of course. Thought activation."

"As far as I can tell."

"Interesting." She returned her attention to the Shiv. "There isn't a seam or aperture of any sort in the casing, except where the button protrudes," she observed. "I don't know how I'm going to get this thing open to study it. Maybe I could run it through the scanner, do an external circuit pathway diagnostic. If all else fails, can I bisect it?"

I balked. "I really wish you wouldn't. As far as I know, this is the only projector I'll be able to get my hands on. Its inventor, my partner--I was the investor--died, and I can't find his blueprints. If he even made any."

The lie set my eyelid to trembling. I put up a hand to cover it.

Ms. Chan considered my objection. "Well, if I can't scan it and I can't open it, I don't know how I'll be able to manufacture a working prototype."

"I see your point," I mused. "I suppose damaging the casing while sparing the internal firmware won't hurt."

"Not necessarily," she pointed out. "The casing itself could very well function as an amplifier or, possibly, a deflector. I don't recognize the alloy used in its construction. And the fact that there is no seam or indentations would suggest that the shell was designed for more than mere aesthetics. For the sake of argument, though, I'll say it projects some sort of a beam or pulse--probably inverse tachyon, which would hold with Calvert's theory. But it could as easily be something beyond our currently documented physical knowledge. Whatever it is, this 'beam' certainly appears to destabilize or rupture space. Now, whether it affects time is another story. I have no evidence that it does anything more than swallow up optical disks. For all I know, it may be a miniaturized version of a matter processor, working in reverse. Even that in itself is an accomplishment. As you may or may not know, we can use energy to reorganize moderately complex molecular structures, not break them down into their subatomic constituents."

I nodded absently. Most of her speech had glided neatly over my head, particularly the stuff about deflectors and inverse tachyon pulses, whatever those were. The one thing I knew for sure was that I was getting nowhere at a leisurely pace. Ms. Chan, the classic technocrat, was prepared to run every imaginable hypothesis up her flag pole to see which one fluttered. I, the classic entrepreneur, was not. I had to prod her into action. So I said the only thing that came readily to mind.

"I've used the device on myself," I told her.

She stared at me. "On yourself? What do you mean? You've actually traveled through time?"

I nodded again. "Yes, I have. And space."

"Forward or backward?"

"Both."

"Could you be a little more specific?"

"No."

There was a long pause as she digested this information. Then she cleared her throat and said, "Well, of course I can't take your claim at face value until I have some way of substantiating it. Nor do I intend to step through that hole until I know it's safe. You must understand that good science precludes hearsay or foolhardiness. However,"--and here she leaned forward to speak in an undertone, as though she were afraid of being recorded--"this kind of activity must stop immediately. We don't know what forces are at work, let alone how to manipulate them with impunity. Who can say what damage you've already caused by using this device? I can't! Can you?"

"Actually--" But I stopped short. I did not want to risk telling her more than she needed to know; nor did I feel like delivering the Robert Frost speech my other self had given me before our meeting at the Preservation Society. Hell, she probably would not have believed me even if I made a full and frank confession.

"I won't use it again," I said at last. "And you have my permission to employ whatever means are necessary to build the prototype. In exchange for your services, I am prepared to offer you half of anything I earn when it goes into mass production for the open market."

Ms. Chan's eyes widened with alarm. "You don't actually think you can make this thing available to the general public? My god, what's wrong with you? If it is, in fact, a time-space manipulation device--well, the implications are staggering! Every half-baked megalomaniac or crazed industrialist in the system would be traveling back and forth in time, tampering with the stock markets, influencing political leaders, changing everything we know to satisfy their appetites for power and wealth."

She straightened up in her chair and shook her head resolutely. "No. I won't have any truck with this scheme of yours. In fact, I'll do everything in my power to prevent it."

"Now hold on," I soothed. "You've got me all wrong, really. No one knows more than I what can happen when the projector falls into the wrong hands. I'm interested solely in its practical applications. For instance, if there were some way to deactivate its time manipulation capabilities, this device could very well revolutionize the transportation industry. And that's just the beginning."

I knew I had caught her attention with this line of reasoning; her pretty, dark eyes glazed over as she considered my idea.

"Imagine," I said, going for the clincher, "eliminating the need for automobiles, jet cruisers, space shuttles; and thereby greatly diminishing the need for fossil or nuclear fuel consumption. Think of the impact this will have on the environment. Why, within ten or fifteen years we might actually be able to discard our filters and breathe the air down on Earth. Then there's the matter of colonizing space " and I regurgitated some of Calvert's more sanguine prophesies, invoking as well the accomplishments of the pyramid builders by way of comparison. Ms. Chan interrupted me with a wave of her delicate, white hand. She had heard this song before.

"Okay, you've made your case," she said. "I'll think about it. Personally, I'm an advocate of technological advancement, particularly where it improves the general quality of life. But I do not do a thing simply because it can be done, even if it is for the broader good. There are certain moral issues involved in any project such as this. And, to be frank, your device presents one hell of a philosophical quandary."

She took a deep breath and continued. "Yes, I agree with you: there is a compelling argument to be made concerning the projector's value as a teleporter. However, the problem with technology--and indeed this is a problem with human nature as a whole--is that whatever can be used for good can also be used for evil, given the proper conditions. Eventually some physicist, whose ethical moorings are far flimsier than my own, will work out the missing time manipulation factor--"

"And sell his calculations to the highest bidder, yes," I interjected. "It's not as though I haven't considered the possibility. But the fact remains that the projector exists. It is here, now. Moral issues aside, who do you think is better qualified to control the technology, apply for the appropriate patents, oversee its distribution and use? Us, or some white-haired, misguided old fool with delusions of grandeur?"

Ms. Chan folded her hands together and looked at me very seriously.

"Neither," she said. "We are a two-faced lot, we humans; both enlightened and absurd, profound and profane, good and evil; always one or the other, in turn, but rarely both at once. I know that's not a very original observation, Mr. Erdogan, but it's nevertheless the perennial contradiction of being human. Very few of us know that happy medium, that Golden Mean. Thus, very few of us deserve the right to uncover or exploit some of God's higher truths."

Which gave me pause. For a moment, I contemplated my own reasons for wanting to do this thing.

III

I met Glenda at 1730 hours at Eduardo's, an upscale but not too expensive Italian restaurant on the Midway's sixth level. I got there fifteen minutes early. The waiter showed me to my table, and I ordered a rum and cola to pass the time.

Glenda walked in as the waiter arrived with my drink. She was looking startlingly attractive, and I noted with satisfaction the heads turning as she entered the establishment. She had let her blonde hair down to her bare shoulders--uncharacteristically, since she liked it pinned up and away from her face--and she wore an airy, boldly patterned dress that, when the light caught her from behind, revealed the shadow of her marvelous nude figure beneath it.

She peered about the room, caught my eye and waved, smiling prettily. I waved back, and she came over to where I was seated, gave me a kiss, and slid into the chair opposite mine. The waiter was immediately at our side, offering menus and filling our glasses with ice water. We thanked him, and he padded quietly away to another table.

"How was your day?" I asked while savoring the tantalizing aroma of tortellini alfredo synthesized by the menu at my request.

"Great," she said enthusiastically. "Listen, I hope you don't mind, but I told Ross you'd called in sick for tonight."

"Why did you do that?"

"You looked a little tired when I phoned this morning. And you've been putting in too much overtime lately. You need to relax more."

"What did Ross say?"

"Oh, no big deal, you know him. He was kind of pissed today because of the packaging screw-up, but that's all forgotten. He said for you to take care of yourself, and he'd see you tomorrow."

I leaned back in the chair and sipped from my drink, surprised at this unexpected break in my routine. "Well, gee thanks I guess. I wasn't really all that tired. After all, I had just gotten up."

Glenda gave me a charming grin. "So, now that we got the whole night together, let's take our time over dinner--you eat way too fast, you know--and maybe we can catch a show later or something."

"Sounds fine. What will you have?"

She glanced over her menu, and pressed the scent button next to one of the selections. She closed her eyes and breathed in the delectable fragrance of the dish she had picked. "Mmm, this smells good. Veal scaloppini. I think I'll have this."

I toggled through the menu options, and found several entries listed under Veal.

"Wow. I didn't know they had meat on the colony."

"It's probably not real," Glenda pointed out. "But who cares? It smells absolutely wonderful! And look at the way it comes!" She held out her menu to show me a digitized color image of the artfully prepared entrée. Superimposed over one corner of the image was a video clip of the chef demonstrating some of her seasoning secrets and braising techniques. I had to admit, it all looked pretty damned appetizing.

"Okay, then."

I motioned the waiter over to our table and ordered two plates of veal scaloppini with Caesar salad, some fresh-water mussels as a starter, and a bottle of inexpensive red wine. (Yes, it was the real thing. Columbus provided ideal growing conditions for grapes, so wine was plentiful here, though most of it was only so-so.)

While we waited for the mussels, Glenda told me about her day. To her, a "day" never really revolved around work, but rather encompassed all the latest gossip on the production line: who was sleeping with whom; who had received mismatched breast implants after a mastectomy; that kind of thing. I listened patiently, nodding my head on occasion, and labored to find interest in what she was saying. This was the environment in which Glenda thrived; her world, I had discovered, was the accumulated peaks and valleys of the lives of her acquaintances, as well as of her own. She seemed to have a tireless ability to sympathize with and support other people's problems, and they easily confided to her their secrets. I did not begrudge her this. In fact, I had noticed of late that the list of my own personal deficits included an extreme egocentricity, which most likely accounted for the fact that I had few friends, while Glenda had many. I was trying to change.

"And what did you do?" she asked when she was finished.

"Not much," I lied. Again, my eyelid fluttered. I turned my head. "Hung around the house, mostly. I watched some of the news from Earth. Depressing, as usual."

She clasped her hands together, and rested her elegant chin on the hammock the backs of her fingers made. "It's so sad, isn't it, when you think about it. All those people, living like that down there. If they only knew what it's like up here. I think everyone would want to come."

"Actually, I suspect you'd be surprised how few people like the idea of living in space," I reflected. "There's a very real stigma attached to it. I imagine it might have something to do with leaving the cradle of our species."

"Yeah, I guess."

There was an uneasy pause in which neither of us said a word; we were encroaching on our one forbidden topic. Nonetheless, I reached over and took her hand.

"I've never asked you this--perhaps because I was afraid of what your answer might be," I ventured unsurely. "But are you happy here? I have to know."

Glenda looked away.

"It's important to me. Please," I prodded.

She returned to me and smiled, playing with a lock of her velvety hair. "You know something? I am. I really am. I didn't think it was going to be like this; I mean, with you and all. Back home I thought you were a real ass, the way you kept looking at me with your tongue hanging out. But you're real kind and thoughtful, and you listen to me. I like that. You have no idea how many guys just want to get their hands up my skirt. But you--" Suddenly, she straightened up in her chair and scooped her hair behind her ears with the fingers of both hands. "Okay, since we're being so honest and stuff, I have a question for you."

"Shoot," I said.

"Why don't you want to have sex with me?"

I blinked, startled by the unusual frankness of her inquiry. I say unusual because when I refused her advances we never talked of it later. This was the first time she had directly challenged me on the subject.

"Well, it's, it's just that--" I stammered. My face blazed uncomfortably, as if I had swallowed three cups of coffee and chain-smoked half a dozen cigarettes.

"Don't you like me?" she asked with genuine concern. "I thought we had something special going here."

I nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes. Absolutely. It's just that I--"

"Are you gay? I mean, you know, it's okay and all. You can tell me."

"No, I don't think I'm gay. Of course, I haven't really had an opportunity to test that assumption. But still--"

"Then what is it?"

"Look, I'll tell you," I said firmly, "but you have to let me get a few words in edgewise."

Glenda instantly stopped talking and put her hands in her lap like a scolded schoolgirl.

"Okay " I rearranged my napkin and cutlery; my fingers needed something to do while I struggled to compile my response. "I guess I find it hard to believe that you are actually interested in me. I mean, why exactly did you come to Columbus when I asked you to? You could have stayed to complete your mission for the Preservation Society, and left me to rot up here by myself."

I hoped she would not notice how I had neatly deflected the burden of answering her question. She did not; or perhaps she did, because she said, "What else could I do?" Which signified nothing, but put me in the hot seat once again.

"What else? Anything. Anything at all, but you decided to come with me."

"Yes."

I shifted in my chair, exasperated by my inability to dodge the issue.

"All right. To be perfectly candid, I can't help thinking there's some ulterior motive behind all this: your unconditional friendship, your gracious offers of sex. Let's face it, I'm not a great success with women. I never have been. Back home, I spent most of my time with virtual companions because because I couldn't attract the real thing. I'm not what you might call personable. People find me stuffy and overbearing. And I think I've been single so long that women regard me as something akin to damaged goods, kind of like milk after the freshness date has expired."

Glenda's face became clouded with a curious expression--one that I had never seen on her and therefore could not read--and she looked as if she were about to say something. The she laughed and reached to daintily touch my hand.

"You silly. Women don't look for stuff like that in a guy. At least I don't. You want to know why I came here with you? I'll tell you. My life was boring until all this happened. I was probably going to quit my job anyway, and go do something else. I don't know what--backpack around the world; hop a transport shuttle out to the west coast and live on the beach; anything. And then you came along with this boneheaded idea of yours about going to the colonies. So I thought what the hell? An exciting life with an asshole like you is better than being stuck in a rut in the same old place for the rest of eternity."

I grimaced. "An asshole like me, eh?"

"Oh, you know what I mean."

"Indeed," I said pensively. And wondered why her explanation suggested there was more that had been left unspoken.

IV

After dinner (which was superb), we walked to a nearby liquor store to buy another bottle of wine, then took a cab out to the Biodome in the underground city's north end. Glenda said she wanted to walk among the flowers, and I agreed to this without hesitation. I think it must have been the booze we had with our meal, but I was beginning to feel like a high school kid on his first date, awash with that peculiar, heightened sense of romance that makes even the drippiest love song sound profoundly wise and achingly personal.

The Biodome was a labyrinthine complex where the last of Earth's most exotic plants and animals flourished in careful reconstructions of their "natural" habitats. We had already explored more than a third of the compound, so that evening we generally limited ourselves to the sealed environments we had not yet visited on our previous expeditions.

Glenda and I leisurely strolled, arm-in-arm, through a dense tropical rainforest, pointing out the colorful flashing of birds winging through the moss-covered trees. Pushing through a series of revolving doors, we found ourselves on the rocks of an Atlantic seascape, the tide pools brimming with unusual mollusks and scuttling shellfish, the cold slap of salt air a surprise after the steaming humidity of the jungle. From there, we ventured into a recreation of the Canadian Shield--a curious display, since all it seemed to offer for study were boulders and blackflies. We hurried through this wide chamber, swatting vicious, biting little insects from our exposed skins, and found an exit that led us down a long passageway to the Dome.

This was Glenda's favorite stop on the tour. It was a huge, circular observatory, about as wide in diameter as two football fields laid end to end, and vaulted overhead with a colossal blister of thick Plexiglas that held back the vacuum of space. Every fifty minutes, as Columbus spun 'round its axis, the Earth rolled with a stately elegance to the exact center of the dome, paused a moment, and then slowly withdrew.

I suppose its designers had intended it to serve as a reminder that our beleaguered planet was the ultimate habitat--a self-deprecating response to the fact that attractions like the Biodome needed to be built at all. But more and more as I frequented this spot, I came to regard it as a descendant of that bizarre museum the Nazis partially constructed to house artifacts from the "lost" race of the Jews: a monumental exhibit of the life we had extinguished through our brazen stupidity and unrecognized self-loathing. For tonight, however, I was willing to put aside my extreme cynicism and indulge Glenda's bucolic whims.

The Dome was obscurely lit by yellow phosphor lamps. (Columbus was in its night cycle now, so everywhere the lights were gradually being dimmed to emulate the dusk of late evening.) Glenda and I removed our shoes, and I felt the luxurious carpet of cool, natural grass beneath my feet. There were many people, alone or in couples, out walking beneath the Dome. We aimed ourselves in the direction of a solitary heath, idling here and there to dip our toes into the rivulets that wound through the neatly manicured gardens, and found an open space on the grass where we could lie on our backs and look up at the stars. All around us crickets whirred; a recording, perhaps, but it made no difference--the pastoral effect it elicited was enchanting. A blue crescent of the Earth widened above us.

"This reminds me of Regency Park in Edmonton," Glenda said dreamily. "My dad used to take me into town for supplies. We'd stay a couple of days, you know, to see the sights; and at night we'd go to the park to count stars, and he'd tell me stories. I miss him."

"Is he still alive?"

"No. He got skin cancer from handling freshly cut wood without gloves. He didn't like to wear them. Said they were an abomination."

"That's too bad."

"Yeah."

"My old man never told me stories."

"No?"

"Nope. He was the most severe person you'd ever want to meet. You know, I dream sometimes that he used to like my company, that we had the ideal father-son relationship, whatever that's supposed to be; but in actuality we didn't. I don't think he cared much for anything, in fact, except his work. Everything to him was either something that needed to be done, or a waste of time. I guess storytelling fell into that latter category. Considering my background, it's a wonder I ever entertained the ambition to become a writer."

Glenda propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at me. "I didn't know you could write."

I shrugged, feeling the grass ruffle against my shoulder blades. "I can't. But there was a time when I thought I could."

"So what happened?"

"Reality, that's what. It's not easy to convince yourself that you have the ambition, but not the talent, to do a thing. My father always told me I would accomplish nothing as a poet. It took a few years of trying before I realized he was right."

Glenda lay back down on the grass and folded her hands across her stomach. "That's really sad. Whatever happened to him, your father?"

"He grabbed his chest one morning after breakfast. Dead before he hit the floor. He had a weak heart. It runs in the family; my grandfather died from the same condition. I suppose that's the one legacy Dad left me, if nothing else."

"Oh."

For a while we said nothing, we two orphans, drawn together in our silence by what seemed to me an oppressive sense of rootlessness.

Columbus was orbiting over Africa, and I could see the whole of that dark brown continent beneath a thin cataract of cloud. All those people--starving, desperate, forgotten, as their lands dried up and blew away in the hot winds of another devastating summer. It was so remote, so unthinkable, looking up at it as we were now. I supposed that cliché had been invoked since the first men ventured into space. But there was no dispensing with it. There was nothing else to contemplate.

Suddenly, Glenda's voice in my ear murmured, "What do you want? Out of life, I mean. What do you want out of life?"

I turned my head to look at her, the profile of her face and neck illuminated by the dim yellow glow of the phosphor lamps. "Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I think I have no center, like I've fallen off the merry-go-round and I can't get back on."

"I know what you mean," I said, puzzled. It was not like Glenda to make such a poignant philosophical observation, particularly one with which I agreed. But, like everything else I had taken for granted lately, I was beginning to find out just how much I had miscalculated her, and the effect she was having on me.

"So, what do you want?" she persisted.

I searched for the answer, and could find only one. All those years of floating from day to day as if in a dream; puncturing with hallucinogens and synthetic alcohol the illusions that barely registered as experience--when I thought about it, now, it seemed as if I had stuffed with sand a vessel that had been intended to carry water, simply because a void needed to be filled.

"I just want things to be simple again," I said at last. "Everything is so damned complicated these days. I guess you could say I want a normal life. But I don't know what that is. Strange, don't you think? To pine away for something you've never known?"

Glenda said nothing, her silence prodding me to expand on the little I had shared with her.

"My mother left us when I was very young," I elaborated. "Just after I was born, in fact. My dad was an assistant professor in clinical psychology, so he dragged me from one college town to another, always looking for that elusive tenured position. When we finally settled down in Sherbrooke--well, I guess that's the closest I've ever come to normality. I made some friends, and Dad learned to cook a turkey dinner for Thanksgiving. I remember playing outside, in the late summer evenings, with the sun going down behind the hills; and I'd cast these long shadows across the street. I would try, as an experiment, to jump up and detach myself from my shadow, but of course it never worked. I think back to the simplicity of that time, before I realized there were some things I just couldn't do, some parts of me I couldn't exorcise " I trailed off. There seemed nothing more to say.

Glenda rolled over and snuggled against my arm.

"Make love to me," she whispered.

I sighed. "Glenda, I thought we'd--"

"Please?"

"Well here?"

"No. At home. In our bed."

V

I had forgotten what it was like to be with a real woman. Which surprised me, since over the years I had not noticed how I had become so accustomed to virtual companions, and so alienated from real, human flesh and bone.

Indeed, when I think back on it, having sex for the first few times with virtual companions was a slightly unsettling experience. If there were fluctuations in the power grid, for instance, they tended to lose their corporeal cohesion, which sometimes had disastrous effects. A co-worker at R-MegaDawn once had that happen to him while he and his companion were locked in a passionate, missionary-style embrace. The power cut out momentarily, and he crashed to the floor with his full weight bearing down on his erect penis.

I am not sure if it is possible to break that part of your anatomy, but he fractured his pretty badly. For a month, he was forced to wear a molded fiberglass cast and pee through a catheter into a bladder bag strapped to his thigh. After hearing his story I limited myself to performing on the bottom, as a precaution, while my companions straddled my waist. Before long I stopped experimenting with sexual positions altogether.

Another drawback to virtual companions was that they were not perfect human reproductions. All of them had a light blue aura--a byproduct of the holoform projection system that modeled them--which made it seem as if you were screwing angels. Being a devout atheist, I never had much of a problem with the "halo effect," as I called it; though I had heard of a few priests who required psychiatric attention after their first-time encounters with this curious phenomenon.

Also, the flesh of virtual companions seemed too much like cellulose film, their body temperatures never felt natural, and, after a while, I became easily irritated by the predictability of their responses to my wily charms. With them, there was no such thing as the thrill of the hunt. All I had to do was look at my watch and say something like, "It's late," and they were all over me. To relieve the tedium, I tried a variety of exotic threesomes and foursomes, but these too became routine with time. Eventually I went back to the hand method, and purchased a companion only when I felt like having a couple of really big boobs waggled in my face.

It's funny, the things you get used to.

But with Glenda it was very different. I did not have to ask her for anything. She seemed to know precisely what I wanted from her. And strangely enough, she said I gave her what she needed, too.

When we got back to our apartment, still dizzy from the bottle of wine we drank in the cab, she went directly to the bedroom and lit her incense candles, then asked me to undress and wait for her in bed. I did as I was told while she turned on some music and disappeared into our bathroom with her handbag. She came back a few minutes later, wearing nothing but a gauzy little slip, which she then proceeded to model for me.

I began to suspect that she had planned our evening from the start, and that I was now helpless to resist her. When she turned around to show me her delightful bum, I lost whatever reason I had left. Grabbing her about the waist, I pulled her onto the bed and took her voraciously. My shuddering orgasm was almost immediate, and she welcomed it into her, thrusting her hips up to meet mine, consuming every drop of my release. We collapsed, gasping for air, into each other's arms.

Later, I saw to it that she was lovingly satisfied. Glenda produced from the drawer of her night table a gleaming, stainless steel vibrator--I did not know she owned one--and I used it on her, fingering her tight little rectum until she convulsed, her slippery thighs pressed together with such a ferocity that I thought she would crush my hand. When she was finished she turned over on her side, the vibrator purring softly between her legs, a beatific smile on her pretty face, and closed her eyes. In seconds, she was snoring.

VI

On the edge of sleep, I fuzzily recalled my afternoon meeting with Ms. Chan. The reference disk I had tossed into the temporal rip was lying somewhere on our living room floor. Reluctantly, I dragged myself from bed and went to look for it. The silvery object was in the corner by the wall unit, its plastic jewel case reflecting vaguely the insubstantial half-light that filtered through the open window. Naked, I sat down on the couch and gazed at it.

What road, I wondered drowsily, was I traveling now? And where was it leading me?

Only one ambiguous answer came to mind: It is the path you have chosen. And its destination is the end of your time.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

I would not say our tomorrows crept in a petty pace from day to day. The weeks went quickly. Glenda and I were settled very comfortably into each other's company. We continued to work hard, and our leisure hours together were relaxing and enjoyable. Soon we were having friends over for dinner. Ross phoned me occasionally to play tennis at his health club in the Midway. Glenda shopped with her workmates, and sometimes brought them home for coffee. (I excused myself when she came in with guests, if I felt like preserving my solitude, and took a stroll through the park or sipped at a frosty mug of beer in the local pub.)

I called Sandra Chan every now and again, but she never had anything of significance to report. The scans of my Shiv revealed nothing. She was having trouble cutting through the casing, and she expressed both wonderment and irritation at the metal's resistance even to the high temperature of her laser knife. I could tell pride was getting the better of her. She spoke less of the device as an ethical dilemma, and began to regard it more as an affront to her engineering prowess. I told her to ring me if there were any developments.

Meanwhile, summer abruptly gave way to autumn. Which came as a surprise to me, because here you could hardly tell one season from the next. I was used to certain slow, predictable transitions in nature. But on Columbus the trees did not color; there were no arrowheads of geese flying to southward; the gray, chill clouds of the gathering winter did not brood above the horizon. There was only life as it always is in the Big Tube: temperate, immutable, without extremes. And yet, I would be lying if I said I did not feel something, some slight touch of that melancholy presence that accompanies the late fall. Glenda admitted she felt it too. I suppose it was an echo of the environment we had left behind. Our bodies--or perhaps it was our souls--reminded us that we were not completely of this place. At least not yet.

But that was a sentiment we alone shared. Many Colombians, especially the ones who had lived their entire lives on the colony, looked forward to this time with great anticipation. Columbus had three harvests, the first two in February and in June, which were almost entirely exported to Earth. But it was the October crop, the crop that fed the colony for another year, that brought with it the festivals and celebrations.

Every morning that month Glenda and I woke to find more decorations brightening Litton's otherwise ordinary cityscape. Amber, orange and brown garlands unfurled from the lampposts. Bouquets of dried corn and small, yellow gourds rattled and bumped against the front doors of people's homes. Wax pencil drawings of nasty-looking jack-o'-lanterns appeared in the windows of the elementary schools. City work crews came out at night to scatter colorful, synthetic leaves about the streets.

At the plant, I heard my employees chatter excitedly about the costumes they were preparing especially for the coming celebration. From what I could gather, the annual carnival was something of a hybrid between Oktoberfest and Mardi Gras. I pictured drunken Bavarians in lederhosen, swinging huge beer steins through the air in a collision of rambunctious pledges to each other's health, while all around them lithe, tanned women danced in rhinestone-studded bikini bottoms to the grumping of tubas and shrill chirps of police whistles.

But then again, I had a tendency to expect the worst from anything I had not yet experienced firsthand. It couldn't be as bad as that.

Glenda also was caught up in the spirit of the occasion. At the suggestion of her friends, she began to assemble a costume of her own, which she coyly kept hidden from me. She worked on it only while I was away at my shift, and told me nothing of its design, except that I would be pleased when she wore it the night of the carnival. I feigned disinterest at her teasing. But there were days when I found myself casually snooping through her closet, ostensibly for the purpose of locating a lost shirt, but hoping instead to come across the project she had so carefully concealed from me.

The day of the carnival was a bit of a panic at work. Management was kindly shutting down operations at 2230 for the midnight celebration; and the next morning's shift was canceled so people could recover from their excesses. We had to get a cargo of delicate antibiotics shipped to Earth in cold storage. But the express shuttle's refrigeration unit was on the blink, and we had to wait for the green light from Distribution before we authorized the transport release. The members of my team were keen to leave so they could change in time for the festivities. When it became apparent that the okay was not soon in coming, I told everyone to go and stayed by myself to see the shipment off. I didn't get home until quite late.

Glenda was livid when I walked through the door.

"Where the hell have you been?" she demanded. "The parade is finished. The carnival's already started."

She wore her bathrobe and stood in the living room with her arms crossed, looking very fierce indeed.

"I know, I know," I said apologetically, and explained my delay. "If I could have left any sooner, believe me, I would have done so. Sorry."

"Well, all right," she relented. "Hurry and get changed. I don't want to miss another minute."

"Change?"

"You got a costume, don't you?"

"Uh, no, not exactly."

Glenda rolled her eyes, then forced an exasperated sigh and shook her head. "Shit, Neil, when are you going to join the rest of us here in reality?"

"What?"

She waved her hand impatiently. "Never mind. I thought you'd go and do something like this. Wait here."

She stormed off to the bedroom, and returned a moment later carrying a shopping bag.

"I bought you this."

From the bag she pulled a plastic crown studded gaudily with colored zircons, and a black harlequin's vizard. I accepted these items from her, and held them up for inspection.

"How subtle," I chuckled. "I don't suppose you could have found anything a little more, um, understated."

"Nope. Go ahead. Try them on."

"Okay."

I pulled the mask over my eyes and dropped the crown onto the top of my head, setting it at a jaunty tilt.

"So? How do I look?"

Glenda put a hand over her mouth and giggled. "Like a total idiot."

"Really?" I went over to the mirror beside our front door and examined myself. She was right. I did look ridiculous. The crown was too small. I adjusted it several ways, but nothing seemed to help. Finally, I left it to wobble precariously above my brow.

"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" I theatrically quoted to my reflection. The fool in the mirror grinned back.

"Huh?"

I turned. "Nothing. Now, let's see what you've been working on all this time."

Glenda smiled lasciviously. "Okay. Ready?"

I nodded.

She undid the drawstring of her bathrobe and pulled the garment open with a ceremonial flourish, as if she were unveiling a work of art.

"Ta-da!"

I gasped.

She wore a near-invisible toga made entirely of SpectrumSilk. It was gathered at her waist with an elaborate, gold lamé sash. Her bikini bottoms were of the same fabric as the sash. Her bare breasts were capped at the nipples with conical, gold pasties. When she moved, the light caught her outfit and it exploded in shimmering, prismatic waves that ranged from the infrared (which of course I could not see, but knew was there) to the invisible ultraviolet. She executed a practiced, runway-model turn, and then looked at me.

"What do you think?"

My jaw had become unhinged. I snapped it shut. She grinned at my reaction.

"Wow!" I gushed. "I think the carnival can wait another half hour, that's what I think."

"Later," she said with mock severity. "I want to go out and have some fun."

"Fifteen minutes?"

"No! God, you're awful! Now, where's my mask?"

She glanced around the living room. Ripples of light cascaded from the toga, illuminating her exquisite face with such an intimidating splendor that I was momentarily dazed. With a surprising pang of realization, I knew she was perhaps the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I was entranced by her every movement. I was possessed by her.

And it occurred to me that I had stopped breathing.

I inhaled deeply, feeling suddenly lightheaded, and thought: Get a hold of yourself, man! What kind of nonsense is this? You, more than anyone else, knows she has her flaws. The way she wads up her used tissues and leaves them lying around the house, or folded into the sleeves of her shirts. The way she snores, loud enough at times to rattle the bedroom windows. The startling reek of her breath in the morning. The purple bags she gets under her eyes when she's tired. The way she shreds her fingernails with her incisors when she's stressed.

And let's not forget the PMS. Lord, the PMS!

But none of that seemed important. I conceded the illogic of my emotions. To me, now, she was ravishing beyond words.

Glenda found her mask perched on a shelf in the wall unit, and put it on.

"Okay. Let's go," she said, startling me from my trance.

"Uh, yeah, right."

"You okay?" she inquired. "You look like you zoned out there for a minute."

I smiled and reached to give her hand a squeeze. "Just a little tired, that's all. The fresh air will wake me up."

"Well, if it doesn't, I know a couple of tricks that might."

She turned around and wiggled her ass at me. I grabbed it, but she smacked away my hand and told me laughingly to behave.

We switched off the lights and let ourselves out into the hall. The door of our home swung shut behind us, and locked itself tight.

II

A human skull the size of an ocean liner hovered directly above our commune.

I didn't notice it at first, when we stepped down onto street level. The din from the carnival, and the multitudes swarming about us, immediately caught my attention. But there were small knots of costumed people gathered on the sidewalks and gaping at the night "sky." So I looked up too, and practically dropped dead of a heart attack.

Of course, the skull was merely a non-corporeal holoform. Its source, no doubt, was a huge projection system located somewhere high over the city, perhaps on the hub itself. But it still managed to scare me half out of my wits.

The beastly thing was accompanied by other spectral images: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, caught in mid-gallop over-top the Shuki Ma building on Twelfth Avenue; two colossal, white face masks--one frozen in the throes of riotous laughter, the other sobbing piteously--suspended above the old Snowdon amphitheater at the city limits; a glowing cross that dropped great scarlet blobs of blood onto the buttressed spires of Our Lady of Space Cathedral; hideous caricatures of famous, dead politicians; wolves, bats, and other creatures of the night; and the pièce de résistance, a twenty-story Elvis with a silver belt buckle that was big enough to make any professional wrestler slaver covetously.

I sighed. At least there were no tubas.

"So, what do you want to do first?" I shouted to Glenda above the clamor. She was on her tiptoes, trying to see over people's shoulders.

"Damn it!" she called back. "I'm too short. Is there any place we can get something to eat? I'm starved."

"Hang on. I'll check." I looked around. There was a man in traditional Arab garb about half a block away. He was using tongs to flip some kind of dark, spitted meat on a brazier. Several people were standing around him, munching pita bread sandwiches. "How do you feel about kebab?"

"Right now, I could chew the ass end out of a skunk!"

"Well, you might get your wish. This way." I took Glenda by the hand, and we pushed through thickets of bystanders until we stumbled into a clearing on the sidewalk where the man and his barbecue were waiting. The aroma of spiced, flame-broiled meat instantly set my salivary glands to squirting. The man looked up at me and smiled broadly, his large, white teeth glinting from beneath a bushy black mustache. He turned his attention to Glenda, and his smile grew wider. He bowed deeply to her.

"What may I do for such a lovely lady?" he said with a thick, middle eastern accent. I could not say if he was a genuine Arab, or if he was performing a well-rehearsed role for the benefit of the twittering tourists that surrounded him.

Glenda grinned bashfully. She was obviously enchanted by the man's exotic affectations.

"Two of those," she said, pointing to the roasting kebabs.

"Of course." The man bowed once more, and began to prepare our sandwiches. He dropped a dollop of tahini sauce on one side of the pita, sprinkled in some lettuce and onions, and used his tongs to pull the wooden spit from the kebab. Steaming chunks of meat dropped into the sandwich as the spit withdrew.

"What is that? Is that goat or something?" I asked suspiciously. You had to be careful what you ate around here. Columbus did in fact have some real meat. But not all of it was prepared strictly in accordance with the health and welfare co-op's guidelines; and a lot of it was obtained from some pretty unconventional sources. I found that out the first time I bought from a street vendor what looked deceptively like an old-fashioned hot dog. To be sure, it was hot--no false advertising there. But it was probably also a dog, and not a very good one at that. I was sick for days.

The man smiled toothily. "Ah, is special, my dear sir. Special just for the carnival. Very good to eat. You will try one, yes?"

I shot Glenda a warning with my eyes, but she shrugged and said, "What the hell. I'm famished."

"If you say so," I replied skeptically.

I paid for our meal with my credit card, and we walked over to an unoccupied bus stop bench to sit and eat. I took a tentative bite and chewed it cautiously. It was hard to tell exactly what kind of meat I was consuming; it had been heavily spiced and oiled, and there was a peculiar, though not entirely disagreeable, flavor that I did not recognize. I took another morsel. Actually, it wasn't half bad. The taste was definitely growing on me. By the third mouthful I was absolutely ravenous. I began to eat with enthusiasm.

Glenda was also wolfing down her sandwich. Strange. She normally ate very fastidiously. I wondered about this for a while.

But by the time I finished my snack, I realized something was seriously wrong with the both of us. All of my senses seemed extraordinarily heightened. The noise of the carnival was quite deafening. My eyes played tricks on me. The chaotic scene in front of me and around me inexplicably lost its depth and became flat and compacted, almost two-dimensional, like a Cubist painting. My lips and tongue felt swollen. My fingers and toes tingled, and the muscles in my legs started to do flip-flops. I looked over to Glenda. Her eyes were wide, and she stared through the holes in her mask at everything and nothing in particular. She was rocking back and forth on the bench.

"I think the meat's been drugged!" I yelled. I couldn't be sure if she heard me. The roaring in my ears was overpowering.

She jumped and glanced quickly at me. "What?"

I leaned closer to her and shouted at the top of my lungs. "The meat. There was something in the meat. I'm getting really stoned."

Glenda nodded absently, and stared off into the crowd.

Then she began to giggle.

Within seconds she was laughing uproariously. Her hilarity was contagious. Soon I was cackling away like a madman. I don't know what was so funny. I didn't really care. I couldn't stop myself.

Glenda stood up. She made as if to clap her hands together, and missed. This brought another explosion of laughter from the both of us. I felt as if my head were about to blast wide open.

"God, this is incredible!" she trilled. "My ears are buzzing. I have bees in my ears. There are buzzing bees in my ears."

I tried to repeat "buzzing bees," because it sounded like such an absurd thing to say, but my tongue stopped working. It lay disabled in my mouth like a fat, dead leech.

"Come on!" Glenda hollered.

She seized me by my shirt sleeve, and dragged me from the bench headlong into the throngs of people moving one way down the avenue. We were immediately swept up in the masses of bodies and carried along by their momentum. Everywhere around us strings of firecrackers burst in a rapid succession of staccato pops and cracks, wisps of sulfurous smoke stinging the insides of my nostrils. Chinese spirit dragons twisted to the clatter of cymbals and tin drums. Police sirens wailed. Caribbean music blared from loudspeakers. Fans of green laser light spread out above our heads, and converged into pencil-thin beams that flittered to and fro. Men in tribal costume, their bare washboard stomachs gleaming with sweat, writhed as if possessed by demons. Women dressed only in shimmering plumes of peacock feathers glided by us, their small breasts and shapely legs glittering with sparkle dust.

I looked wildly to Glenda at the end of my arm and saw that she was lost, lost in the anarchy of the moment, lost in the giddy, whirling, light-headed, breathlessness of the moment, lost in this wonderful, joyous, dizzy celebration that was the expression of all things human and divine; and I felt my own self slipping away with her, with all these people who surrounded us, with this community, this world we had entered; and we were part of it, completely of it, wholly in it; and I raised my arms and howled the breath from my lungs, because this at last was my release. I pulled Glenda to me, and with my arms about her waist lifted her from her feet and laughed, singing, kissing her, embracing the warmth of her, suckling from the life of her; and her arms around my neck, and her lips at my ear, the heat of her breath on my ear, and her words that were like a blow to the head: I love you.

And the stillness, how everything became so still and simple and quiet, her eyes from behind her mask locked in my eyes behind my mask.

"I love you," she said again.

And with a great rush of sound and light and movement the carnival returned and she was gone, pulling me behind her into the depths of the pulsing crowd.

III

I don't remember much after that. There was some dancing, I recall; and it seems to me we did a bit of gambling, though how much we won or lost would not be discovered until I went on-line the next morning to check our bank account.

We came down about four hours later, both with nasty headaches and dry mouths, under the buzzing neon lights of a cyberstrip in the city's south side. Don't ask me how we got there; for the life of me I can't answer that question. All I know is this. We were propped up against the cold, concrete wall of the strip club when we snapped out of our shared euphoria. Glenda had a half-smoked cigar wedged into one corner of her mouth. My shirt was gone, and I was wearing a jock strap on the outside of my pants.

Glenda groaned and spit the cigar onto the sidewalk. She rubbed her temples with the tips of her fingers.

"Christ, my head! What the hell happened to us?"

"Not sure," I muttered. I was checking for my wallet. It was still in my back pocket. Thankfully. "Must have been something in the sandwiches. That son of a bitch! I knew I didn't like the look of him. He could have bloody warned us."

Glenda noticed my jock strap and pointed to it. She was about to ask where I got it, but I waved away the question.

"I've found it's sometimes best if you don't probe too deeply into these things."

She nodded bleakly. "I've never been stoned in my life. Shit, my head hurts. I don't know what you see in this drug stuff, really."

"Well, it's been months since I did anything like that," I said reproachfully. "And it's not exactly as if I'm responsible for getting us loaded. You were the one who had to have a sandwich."

"Don't say that word. I'm going to throw up."

"Sorry."

"But you're right. It's not your fault. I'm just angry because because I--"

"Because you've never let loose and had a good time before?"

Glenda paused for a moment. "Maybe."

"And we did have a good time, didn't we?"

"I think so."

"Then I suppose there's nothing to be upset about. Except, of course, for these fucking headaches."

Glenda laughed, and then winced. "Ow. Oh shit that hurt."

"Come on." I stood up painfully, and offered my hand to help her back onto her feet. "Let's go home."

The crowds had dispersed. There were still a few people ambling drunkenly about on the littered streets. Glenda and I found an all-night pharmacy a couple of blocks away, and we went in to buy a bottle of aspirin. We were lucky they had any. Most druggists in this neck of the woods carried only condoms, rubber gloves, vaginal shields, and adrenaline hypos. We tossed back four aspirins each, and washed them down with some carbonated water. Our headaches were gone within minutes.

"We should really report that sandwich guy," Glenda said when we were back out on the sidewalk.

"I'm not sure if what he did was illegal here," I pointed out. "No Sin Laws, remember?"

"Yeah, I guess. I'm still pretty mad about it."

I shrugged. "Oh well. Better we know for next time."

"If there is a next time. I'm never going to party like that again."

"Ha! If I had ten credits for every time I said something like that, I'd be able to buy Columbus outright. And still have change left over for another one of those sandwiches."

Glenda nodded.

"Besides, I think you're a hoot when you're a little out of control. You said some pretty crazy things back there."

I hoped she would not notice how I had so artlessly broached the topic of her expressed feelings for me.

I love you.

Three words I had never before heard, even from my father. Of course, she had made her confession under exceptional circumstances. But I wanted to find out if she meant what she said, or if it was the narcotic that spoke for her.

Glenda made no reply. So I let it go. No sense forcing the issue, I thought, when you don't even know your own mind on the matter. We walked together in silence.

The radiator lamps on the hub were beginning to glow dully. It was near "dawn." I looked up and saw sprinkles of pin-light from the windows of the homesteads far overhead. The farmers were awake, and undoubtedly stuffing their massive pot bellies into unwashed bib overalls or sliding on pairs of shit-encrusted work boots. I shuddered. What a picture. Their wives were probably serving up big, cholesterol-laden plates of ham, potatoes, and fried eggs right now, getting their men ready for another day in the fields. It all seemed so ludicrously backward to me.

Until I realized we ourselves were just now on our way to bed, exhausted from a night of drug-induced, hedonistic abandon. For the first time I wondered who was more out of step with the rhythms of modern life.

And then I stopped wondering. The things that come into your head in the wee hours of the morning. Sheesh. Lighten up, Neil.

IV

Forty-five minutes later we were traipsing up the wide avenue that led to the front door of our commune. A small group of people were gathered just outside the building, on the sidewalk.

"Hello, what's this?"

"Maybe someone had an accident," Glenda speculated. "Let's go see if we can help."

But it wasn't an accident. It was a mime. Which is more or less the same thing, when you think about it, though you can avoid an accident if you try hard enough.

This mime was dressed in black leotards and a white-and-black striped vest. Instead of the usual white face makeup, he wore a latex death's head mask. He was apparently trapped in an invisible, shrinking box--standard fare for this preposterous art form--and he seemed quite intent on escaping from it. When we entered the circle of onlookers he noticed us and broke away from his act. There were two electric torches on tripods to light the area. He seized one of them, marched up to directly in front of us, and held the torch to my face.

"A-ha! Mr. Erdogan, the fool-king. And Ms. Watson, the buxom temptress," he intoned, his voice muffled behind the mask. He performed a low, theatrical bow. "I thought I recognized you beneath your disguises."

I started. "You know us?"

"I know of you, sir. As do I know of you, my lady." He took Glenda's hand to kiss it. She immediately pulled away, as if she had been stung. The man straightened himself and looked at me. I stared back at him. We remained like this for several seconds.

"Aren't you breaking some kind of mime law by talking?" I asked, hoping to permanently rupture this ridiculous silence between us.

"I speak when things need to be said," he answered mysteriously.

"I see. Are you a member of the commune?"

The death's head cocked to one side. "I am a member of the commune of humanity, sir. For tonight, however, I am masking my business from the common eye, for sundry weighty reasons."

I raised an eyebrow. "Shakespeare?"

"If you knew your Bard, you would not need to ask such questions."

"True."

Glenda pulled my arm and complained, "Neil, I'm really tired. Can we forget this bullshit and go to bed. Please?"

I turned to acknowledge her. "Absolutely."

I saw no reason to prolong this conversation. I stepped around the mime and followed Glenda to our door. She rummaged around in her purse for the magnetic key.

From behind me I heard the man's voice, loudly, to his audience: "Do you see that? Feh! Disgusting! He is a slave, whose easy-borrowed pride dwells in the fickle grace of her he follows."

There were some chuckles. I turned around, irritated, to see who was laughing at me. But the mime rushed up and again stuck his torch in my face. This time I tried to slap it away. He held firm.

"Admit it, sir," he said.

"Admit what?" I snapped.

"That you are a slave."

"Oh, for Christ's--okay, fine: I'm a slave. Now will you please fuck off?"

His dark eyes flitted from me to Glenda, and then back to me. In an undertone he said, "So now she must die, else she enslave more men. Put out the light, and then put out the light."

He snapped off his torch and glared at me. My cheeks began to burn. It took everything I could muster just to keep from hitting him.

"Yes, well, I'm sure that's very funny," I said tightly. "But would you please excuse us?"

The mime's eyes widened behind his mask. "Pardon me, dear sir. If this shadow has offended, think but this, and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here, while this vision did appear."

He leaned close to my ear and whispered, "I bear a gift, to prick the conscience of the fool-king." He slipped something cold and metallic into my right hand, then took a step back. "This visitation was but to whet thy almost blunted purpose."

With that he spun around and disappeared into the crowd. There was scattered applause as people turned to watch him make his departure. They no doubt thought this the end of our performance.

I looked after him as he sauntered down the street and turned a corner.

"What a strange person," I said wonderingly.

Glenda, who had been on the steps behind me and listening to our exchange, bent over my shoulder and asked, "What was that he gave you?"

I looked down at my closed fist. "I don't know."

I held up my hand and opened the fingers. There, in my palm, was a small, elaborately detailed, pewter pill box in the shape of a casket. I flipped up the lid.

Glenda gave an involuntary gasp. I felt the blood drain from my face.

Inside was a single PSP.

CHAPTER NINE

I

"They've found us, I tell you!"

"We don't know that."

"Oh, come on. You were just as shocked as I. We were both thinking the same thing, that the Society sent him."

"Yes. But now I'm not so sure."

I held out my hand. "How do you explain this little 'gift' he left me?"

Glenda sat in front of her bedside vanity mirror, removing her makeup with a cotton ball dabbed in cold cream. She looked into the mirror at my reflection holding the pewter casket, and shrugged.

"Just part of his act, I guess. It's not like PSPs are too hard to come by. You can get them just about everywhere. Besides, it's probably not even a real one."

That much, I conceded, was most likely true. A box of PSPs came with a single suicide pill (you only needed one) and a small bottle of heavy sedatives in look-alike capsules. This hideous packaging strategy was based on several R-MegaDawn market surveys that proved self-destruction was more palatable if you first performed a few trial runs, to assuage your fear of the unknown. There were plenty more soporifics than real suicide pills floating around out there. Glenda's "theory" made sense. But I was in no hurry to test it.

"Well, what about the fact that he knew our names?" I persisted doggedly.

"Lots of people know our names," she said over her shoulder. "That doesn't mean anything. He could have been someone from the plant, playing a practical joke. I'll bet it was that Tim guy in the accounting department. You know what an asshole he can be. Remember the time he changed all the video signs to 'Out of Order' on the washroom doors? Christ, I thought I was going to pee my pants that day, I had to go so bad. And he's always looking at me funny. He was probably just trying to impress me."

I grunted distastefully. "I didn't know he was bothering you."

"Well, he never bothers me," Glenda admitted. "Actually, he's kind of cute. A real jerk, but cute. I seem to be going for that type lately."

"Very funny. Can we please stick to the topic? Tim's no taller than my shoulders. That mime stood eye-to-eye with me."

Glenda thought about this, and went back to wiping off her makeup. "Then it must have been somebody else."

I rolled my eyes. "Obviously!"

She threw down her cotton ball and glared at me in the mirror.

"Don't get snarky with me, buster!" she warned. "It's too late, and I'm way too tired for this conversation."

"But we have to do something, Glenda," I insisted. "We can't just sit here and wait for them to show up."

She turned around in her chair and said with an infuriating calm: "So, what do you have in mind? Should we run away again?"

"Well, no "

"Good, because I'm not going anywhere. I like it here. You and I, we've made a life for ourselves in this place. And I'm not about to up and leave it because some masked jackass had a little fun at your expense."

I was about to object, but she raised a finger and cut me off. "I know you, Neil. You're always the last one to get a joke. And the ones you tell are so confusing, sometimes it's hard to know when to laugh."

"That's not true," I flustered indignantly.

"Yes, it is. Everyone says so."

"Everyone? Like who, for instance?"

Glenda shrugged. "I don't know. Our friends have mentioned it to me. And more than once, too."

"Huh," I sulked. "They just don't appreciate my sense of humor."

"Poor baby!" She got up to turn back the bed covers. "Look, no one thinks more of you than I do. You're a fantastic guy, and you're probably the smartest person I know. But sometimes you can be such a dope. Oh, don't pull that long face of yours. Think about it for a moment. You run into a talking mime at a carnival, and all of a sudden you believe the time cops are coming to get you. I mean is it me, or have you finally fried that brain of yours?"

When she put it like that, it did sound pretty implausible.

I exhaled sharply and said, "I wish I knew for sure. If this had happened six months ago, I'd have never made such an issue of it. But with all we've been through in the last little while, I find it hard to believe the mime's 'gift' was purely coincidental. I think someone's trying to tell us something. Remember what he said? 'This visitation was but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.'"

Glenda made a sour face. "I don't even know what that means."

"In a nutshell? It means get off your ass and complete your mission."

She hesitated. "So what does that have to do with being wet?"

I threw up my arms in grief.

"Nothing!" I shouted. "It's got nothing to do with being wet! Jesus, why do I bother? This is like talking to a brick!"

Her eyes flared with sudden anger. She snapped: "Hey! I may not be as educated as you are. And I may not know every goddamn line in every one of those stupid Shakespeare plays you're always reading. But you don't have to treat me like a complete nitwit. I thought we got past all that dumb blonde stuff."

I looked at her, and my fury drained from me instantly.

I was being an asshole. As usual. How could she know? Shakespeare was no longer taught in public schools. These days, performances of his work were less popular than watching the recyclers make their weekly rounds.

"I'm sorry," I softened. "That was totally inappropriate."

"You're goddamn right it was!"

She turned her back to me and fumed silently for a few minutes.

It was obvious I'd stepped over the line that time. I honestly didn't think of her as a dumb blonde. At least, not any more. It had simply slipped out. But even as this occurred to me, I knew it wasn't much of an excuse. She'd been right. I was an intellectual snob.

I peered cautiously over her shoulder. She was staring at the floor, a single tear caught in the corner of her eye.

"I'm just a walking pair of tits to you, aren't I?" she said forlornly.

"No, that's not true."

She paused. "Well, that's how you make me feel."

"I have no right to do that." I touched the back of her neck. She pulled away, but only a little. "You mean more to me than you realize. I don't know what my life would be like without you. Actually, I do. And it makes me shudder to think about it."

She turned to look at me. "Really?"

"Yes."

"Because sometimes I wonder if you'd be better off with a woman who's more like you."

"Ha!" I snorted, and thought immediately of Sandra Chan. "I can barely stand my own company. You should have seen me with my other self. We were constantly at each other's throats."

Glenda laughed and wiped her eyes. "I can imagine."

"It's the sad truth," I mused grimly. "But the important thing for you to know is that I well, that I--"

I coughed; and to my surprise I found that the words were firmly stuck in my throat.

Glenda looked at me and smiled. "It isn't so easy to say when you're sober, is it?"

I shook my head.

"No," I allowed shamefully. "It most certainly is not."

"Then don't. Not until you're ready."

II

In the end we resolved nothing.

Glenda began to snore as soon as she was settled comfortably into bed. I tried to nod off, but instead remained captive for hours in that strange twilight zone between sleep and consciousness. My mind would not descend into the gray emptiness of pure slumber. It darted manically from one obscure thought to the next. The mime haunted me. Fragments of our conversation repeated in my head like an old digital recording caught in an infinite playback loop. The cruel laughter of the crowd chittered relentlessly in my ears.

It was 0837 when I realized I was too tightly wound to sleep. I got up and made myself a pot of strong black coffee, then reclined on our couch to sip pensively at the steaming liquid.

This visitation was but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

Glenda couldn't have been more wrong. A talking mime? Ridiculous! He knew exactly which of my buttons to push. Who except me would even understand the message he came to deliver?

No one, that's who.

You could say what you wanted about my snooty intellectualism. I knew my Shakespeare. That "visitation" was intended for me alone.

Which meant if the Society knew where we were, then it also knew where I left our Shiv.

I checked my watch. It was a few minutes past oh-nine-hundred. Today wasn't officially a civic holiday. The government would surely be open for business. Perhaps Sandra Chan had a similarly bizarre encounter during the night. The odds were against it, but you could never be sure. Every whimsical decision I made, every unanticipated action I performed, was another paragraph of my future that had to be erased and rewritten. And the Society members were at the far end of my story, reading each new line that was added, compiling the clues I had left to my whereabouts.

I went to the phone and punched in Sandra's office access code. Her young fop of a secretary answered.

"Physical laboratories."

"Yes, Sandra Chan, please."

The screen went blank.

I blinked, then pressed the Redial button. This time I got a busy signal. Something in my gut twisted itself into a painful knot.

I entered the number once more. Busy.

Again. Busy.

"Shit!"

I exhaled and tried to collect my thoughts.

Okay, no need to panic. Columbus' communication lines were regularly under repair. Hell, the technology was more than sixty years old. At that age, even I would need servicing from time to time.

So what should I do?

Simple. Go to see her in person.

I slipped into the bedroom and dressed quietly, so as not to wake Glenda. Then I went back to the living room to find my wallet and magnetic key. I wanted to bring a weapon of some sort, but the only weighty object I could scrounge up on the spur of the moment was Glenda's rolling pin.

On my way out I snatched two hasty gulps of my now-cold coffee, double-bolted the door behind me, and set the intruder alarm as a precaution. (There was no telling who might show up while I was gone.) I took the stairs, two at a time, down to street level.

My pupils contracted painfully as I stepped from the lobby into the bright of day. I shielded my eyes with the flat of my palm and looked around for a cab. There were none in sight. Pedestrians kicked their ways through the garbage that littered the sidewalks.

What a bloody mess. The municipal workers had done nothing to clean up after the carnival. Passing cars gusted confetti and colorful nylon streamers against the curbs. Beer bottles or small tins of Asian Sailor opium sat empty on people's stoops and windowsills. Cigarettes were stubbed out in the streetside flower boxes, making strange bouquets of white- and orange-tipped filters amid the clusters of red freesias. Party hats perched atop the parking meters. Eye masks, their stretchy support strings broken, lay discarded on the ground.

I began to walk, hoping I might find a taxi around the next corner. But when I got there the street was empty of vehicles. It was well past rush hour (which itself is a misnomer, because no one here really rushes to work, and the "hour" generally starts around seven and ends close to nine). All the cabs were most likely over at the hotels, bringing business travelers to and from the Litton spaceport.

It seemed I had no choice. I'd have to hoof it instead. And I really didn't want to; I was feeling quite lightheaded from lack of sleep, and in the last few minutes I had acquired a good case of the shakes. So I went into a nearby drug store (for the second time that morning, I reflected ruefully) and picked up a bottle of StaWake. The capsules were loaded with Dexedrine, which is probably the last thing I needed after the liter or so of coffee I had consumed; but they also contained a nicotine derivative to help me concentrate.

I popped four of the pills and continued on my way.

III

Three blocks from the pharmacy, I realized suddenly that I was being followed.

It wasn't any kind of conscious awareness. I don't know how to explain it, except to say that my back and neck started to tingle. I stopped and turned, perplexed by the sensation. But as I had taken no notice of my surroundings, I could not tell which one of the pedestrians was the culprit. Nevertheless, the prickling would not go away. I kept walking; and when I found myself beside a long plate glass office window, I glanced quickly at the obscure street scene it reflected.

And saw him.

He was about my height, with dirty blond hair. He wore a brown jumpsuit and cowboy boots--an odd combination of styles, but there really is no accounting for some people's tastes. What distinguished him from the other passersby was his tan. His face and hands were colored a deep amber; and this meant he was newly arrived from Earth.

(Columbus' light sources on the hub emitted just enough ultraviolet radiation to engender rapid photosynthesis in plants. It certainly could not affect skin pigmentation. But since the ozone layer's almost total dissipation during the First Order, it was hard to spend any unprotected time out-of-doors back on Earth without contracting a horrible sunburn, or worse.)

Now, the tan itself was not enough to tip me off. Plenty of people counteracted the ghastly pallor of their skins with a visit to one of the many fake-bake salons in Litton. There was just something about him that I didn't like. He was well behind me, and seemed to be sauntering aimlessly along the sidewalk, pausing here and there to inspect the street vendors' wares. I think it was the way he wandered. It was too casual, too leisurely. Colombians were renowned for their fairly laid-back lifestyles. Nothing was ever so pressing that it could interrupt the manner in which they drifted from one day to the next. But this guy looked as if he were hamming it up. He seemed to be performing a role, like an actor.

Or perhaps like a mime?

Yes, exactly like a mime! His build was identical, and he had those same exaggerated mannerisms, that same fluid gait, as the buffoon Glenda and I ran into earlier that morning.

I immediately experienced a sinking sensation in my stomach. My instincts had been dead on. This was no coincidence. I was in real trouble.

But at least I wasn't in any immediate danger. There were too many people around. From what I knew of this spy stuff (which was basically limited to my collection of vintage James Bond video disks), he wouldn't try to make a move on me--if indeed that was his plan--until we were well hidden from the public eye. So at the moment I had only one problem. I was pretty sure Sandra Chan would object to being identified by the Society as one of my accomplices; and I was not so enamored of pantomime that I required the company of my own personal performance artist. I had to shake him.

The question was, how? Dodging into a store was not the answer. He would wait for me to come back out, and then continue to shadow me. Hail a cab? He'd hail one too. Hide in a dumpster until he passed me by? Oh, be serious!

I thought about this with some agitation. In fact, I set my years of higher education, my extensive training in philosophical syllogisms and problem solving, to the resolution of this predicament.

And when I ultimately came up with nothing, I decided instead to run like hell.

This was probably not one of the wisest things I could have done. If you want to attract attention to yourself on Columbus, start running. Nobody ever runs here. Even in designated exercise areas, the best example you will find of that particular activity is an all-out jog.

I might as well have provided the mime with a map that clearly detailed my route of escape. When I broke into my mad dash, the head of every pedestrian turned with shock and amazement in my direction. People who had been plodding along the sidewalk, alone or in clusters, grudgingly stepped aside to let me through, then stood gaping at me long after I had flown past. Shopkeepers idled in bewildered silence, their mouths hanging open, at the doors of their establishments. Small children pointed at me, then looked to their mothers for an explanation of my unaccountable behavior.

I ignored them and ran on. The neighborhood bank with its stalwart Doric columns and vacant facade; the general store in front of which old men played chess and smoked cheap cigars; the café patios where gaunt hallucination junkies wired themselves into their portable headsets and sipped at small cups of espresso--everything was a wild blur as I rushed by.

Four blocks later, when it felt as if my lungs would burst, I lurched from the busy thoroughfare into a narrow and secluded alleyway. I was shaking like a leaf in a high wind. My heart slammed violently against my ribs. I pressed myself flat against the wall, gasping frantically, and peered around the corner.

To my surprise, the mime was gone. Surely he would have noticed my hasty getaway! I held my position a few minutes longer, but he did not reappear.

I shook my head to disperse the fog that settled over my thoughts.

This was nuts. I hadn't slept properly in almost twenty-four hours. I had taken far too many stimulants, after having ingested some strange narcotic the night before. Heavy fatigue was known to be accompanied by paranoia, and sometimes by transient psychosis. Maybe I was imagining things.

Maybe. But I hadn't imagined my interrupted phone call to Sandra's office. Something peculiar had occurred. It could have been the result of a faulty communication line. But I doubted it. I wanted Sandra to assure me, face to face, that she was well, that she had not received an unwanted visitor in the early hours of the morning. If she could do this one simple thing, I would happily accept my lunacy and go home for some much-needed shut-eye.

I stepped cautiously from the gloom of the alley, and resumed my trek to the transport spoke.

The remainder of my trip was uneventful. I found myself glancing back over my shoulder more often than I care to admit. But no one followed me. By the time I made my way onto the lift, I was convinced that I had experienced what some older folk euphemistically call an "episode."

That is, until the mime sauntered on board and sat next to me.

IV

"Hello there," he said quite amiably. "Have a nice run?"

I looked straight ahead. I did not want to meet his eyes.

"Yes, thank you," I said frostily.

"Good. But you shouldn't have expended so much energy. You see, I know where you're going. Seems rather unnecessary, all that sweating and bumbling about, wouldn't you say?"

"I suppose."

He leaned back in his seat and draped an arm around my shoulders. "So, you caught my performance this morning. What did you think?"

I shook my head. There was no point to his query. He was being facetious; rubbing my nose in the fact that he was clever enough catch me, while I was stupid enough to be caught. Nevertheless, he did ask

"Honestly? I think you should keep your day job."

The man snorted. "Yes, I guess you're right. I've always loved the theater. Mime has become kind of a hobby for me. I find it's very therapeutic; you know, like Tai Chi. I'm still not very good at it, though." He sighed. "Oh well, in time. But you have to admit, the Shakespeare was a nice touch."

"You got a couple of the quotes wrong."

"I realize that," he said in earnest. "But I had to work them into the context of our dialogue. That's not such an easy thing to do. Personally, I think it was a nifty ploy. I knew you'd get it; and I didn't want that bleached bonehead of yours to figure out what we were discussing. I can imagine how long it must have taken for you to translate, when you got home."

I bristled protectively. "She's not as stupid as you might think. Besides, you've obviously come for me. Glenda doesn't need to be harmed."

The man raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Who said this has to end in violence? You've got a mission to perform for us, and you certainly won't be able to do it if I kill you. Am I right?"

"Clearly. But I notice you've said nothing of Glenda. And you intimated earlier this morning that she was expendable. Remember? 'Put out the light?'"

The man gave a cagey smile and wagged his forefinger at me. "You are a bright one, aren't you? They warned me you were perceptive. Yes, as a matter of fact, she's very expendable--seeing as she failed her mission so completely. Never send a woman to do a man's job, I always say. In this case, however, I don't think a man would have been quite so appropriate. You're pretty much hetero, or so says your psychological profile."

I looked at him blankly. He stared at my expression with interest, and then laughed out loud when he recognized it.

"You have no idea what I'm on about, do you? Ho, that's rich! Well, I suppose it's of no importance. You won't be seeing much of your little booby doll after all this is over."

My heart stuttered. But I had no time to dwell upon Glenda's fate. I felt something push hard against my ribs.

"I've got a nerve stick pointed at you," the man informed me in an undertone. "It's set to kill. Then again, that's all nerve sticks are good for. So don't make any stupid moves. I don't want to damage you. But know this: you're not entirely indispensable to the success of this mission. We're keeping you alive more for convenience's sake than anything else. Step out of line, and I'm under instructions to fry your nervous system. Do we read each other?"

"Where are you taking me?" I demanded angrily.

"Oh, I think you know the answer to that question. But first we have to pop in on Ms. Chan and get back that Shiv of yours."

"You haven't hurt her, I hope. She knows nothing about the Society."

"She's fine. One of our operatives is already with her. I don't expect she gave him much of a struggle. A good puff of wind would knock her over."

I grimaced.

There seemed to be no way out of this situation. The lift was filling up quickly. At any moment the doors would slide shut, and we'd begin our ascent to the hub. If I didn't do something soon, escape would be unlikely.

My mind raced over the possibilities. I drew nothing but blanks. Christ, I was too tired to think straight.

And that's when I noticed the group of hub jumpers seated at the far end of the lift, their laps piled high with parachutes and other equipment. I gritted my teeth and stood up.

"Get your ass back here!" the man hissed from behind me.

"Fuck you!" I snarled.

Without allowing myself time to contemplate the consequences of my decision, I walked over to the jumpers and took a seat next to them. My "abductor" remained where he was, his eyes flaring nastily. The nerve stick had been returned to his jumpsuit pocket.

I turned to the closest of my neighbors, a young man in his early twenties, and blurted, "I'll give you ten thousand credits if you let me use your gear for a jump."

The kid looked at me and blinked. "Huh?"

"I said ten thousand credits. For one jump. How does that sound?"

He glanced around at his friends. They shrugged, bewildered.

"What is this, some kind of mid-life crisis thing?"

"You could say that."

"Well, I'd do it in a flash, man," he grinned. "But I'm like the group leader, you know? I gotta fly with the rest of the guys."

I looked at the others. "Ten thousand credits. Any takers?"

One of the kids stuck up his hand. "Me. I'll let you use my stuff."

"Great!"

The group leader nodded to his friend. "You sure, Jake? We're only gonna get one shot at it today. I got exams at noon."

"What the fuck, man. Ten grand's a lot of beans."

"What about your pal there?" another said excitedly. He pointed to the mime. "You think he's got that kind of spare change?"

I was about to state an emphatic no, but the youth was already on his feet and shouting across the lift. "Hey, mister! You want to jump too?"

The mime gave me a malicious smirk. "How much?" he called back.

"Ten thou, man. Same as this guy."

He got up and sauntered over. "I think you've got a deal. Will you take a check?"

The kid made a face. "Check? No way, man. Plastic or nothing."

"A real businessman. I like that. Here." He handed over his card.

The youth swiped it across the face of his wristwatch. He paused, then poked at a couple of small buttons, and held up his arm.

"Okay, dude. Give me your PIN, and we're all set."

The one named Jake looked at me. "So, how you gonna pay for the trip?"

Dejectedly I took out my wallet. Jake processed the transaction.

I buckled up for the ride to the hub.

V

I was screwed, pure and simple.

The mime would jab me with his nerve stick at the first opportunity that presented itself to him--probably while we were floating around in the null gravity zone. And for this pleasure I was to be charged ten thousand credits. I don't know what pissed me off more, my impending execution or the fact that I had to pay for it.

The group leader, whose name was Denzil or Danny or something, chattered excitedly as the lift charged upward. I think he was telling me about a few of the more harrowing leaps he had performed. I was only half listening. I nodded when the pause in his monologue became pregnant enough to warrant one. I threw in the occasional "Really?" or "That's interesting," just to keep his side of the conversation going at a steady rhythm. But my mind was elsewhere. Even the adrenaline that should have been pumping through my veins at the thought of the jump remained conspicuously absent.

While he blabbered incessantly, Jake handed me the bulk of his equipment. There was a baggy blue jumpsuit that looked as if it were big enough to fit me; a scuffed, white crash helmet with a rather unpleasant odor on the inside; a new pair of SunSpecs to shield my eyes against the glare from the radiator dishes; a parachute; a thruster belt; and magnetic boot soles, which were a little on the snug side, but would keep me from flying off the hub once we stepped beyond the influence of the artificial gravity field. Denzil (or Danny) helped me dress when we arrived at the tube train station. Jake and Arnie--the other boy who had rented his outfit--attended to the mime.

"Okay, dude, here's the drill," said the group leader once he had slipped easily into his own gear. "We're going out through a service hatch one level below us. Don't worry about the guard; he knows me, and he's cool. When you get outside, you'll see a dozen or so grips next to the portal. Grab one, use your free hand to turn on your magboots, and get your feet up and onto the hub as fast as you can. Then move the fuck out of the way so the rest of the guys can come up after you."

I nodded and glanced quickly at the mime. He was getting the same speech from the two boys. He looked up and waved heartily. I averted my eyes.

"Once we're all on the hub," the kid continued, "I'll give the signal, and you turn off your magboots, okay? Push up with your legs, and let yourself drift two or three meters. Then press this red button here on your belt. That'll fire your thrusters, and take you out of range of the radiator dishes. Everything clear so far?"

"Drift three meters, then hit the thrusters," I confirmed. "Got it."

"You only need to do a ten-second burn. Count One-Mississippi, Two-Mississippi--you know what I mean. Take your time; you don't want to shoot your wad too soon. When you feel the gravity well pick you up, punch the red button again to turn your thrusters off. Then count to thirty--One-Mississippi, Two-Mississippi--and pull the black rip cord on your 'chute."

"Then what?"

"Then enjoy the view, man."

"What happens if my 'chute doesn't open?"

"Simple. Pull the red rip cord. That'll open your auxiliary."

I paused. "And what happens if my auxiliary doesn't open?"

The kid laughed. "What do you think?"

I felt sick to my stomach.

"Hey, don't worry, man," he said when he noticed the look on my face. "Everything's going to be cool. You'll see. Just let yourself go. It's a fuckin' rush!"

"Okay."

I smiled weakly, and took two deep breaths to calm my nerves.

"I'll be waiting for you at the bottom," the kid informed me. "Just follow me straight in. There's no wind, so you shouldn't have a problem. My car's parked at the landing site. I'll give you a ride back into town, if you want. Jake and Arnie will catch the next lift down to Litton."

"Sounds great," I muttered absently. I knew the mime wasn't going to let me make it that far.

Danny (or Denzil) gave me a friendly slap on the shoulder and grinned reassuringly. He went to join the others at the stairs. I followed close behind him. And behind me came the mime.

VI

The service hatch swung open with a sharp, metallic clank. Beyond the small portal I could see the patchwork of farmland at a distance, curving noticeably against the hull of the tube, vague beneath a blue haze.

The group leader flipped his SunSpecs down over his eyes and called my name. I moved over to him.

"Okay, dude. I'll go first, in case you need help getting on your feet."

I nodded. My chest felt as if I had inhaled a cannon ball.

He turned and vaulted himself expertly through the hatch. His legs gave a kick in mid-air, and he disappeared from view.

I stepped up to the doorway and peered cautiously over the edge. It was a very long way down. My head swam dizzily.

I swallowed and grasped each side of the hatch frame, then pulled myself forward. It was a peculiar sensation, passing from the field of artificial gravity into near-weightlessness. My upper body floated free, while my legs seemed as if they were suddenly bolted to the floor with heavy blocks of lead. I pivoted awkwardly, and grabbed at one of the hand rails. Denzil stood over me at an odd angle, grinning. I reached to snap on my magnetic boot soles; then, grunting, I hauled myself clear of the door. A hand clutched at the material of my jumpsuit. With Denzil's help I got my feet underneath me. The magnetic soles clamped themselves onto the rutted metal skin of the hub. I shuffled off to one side. The mime's head appeared below me.

This was my only chance! I glanced around desperately for some means of escape. There were none. Apparently, the hatch I had just come through was the only one of its kind in sight. Two massive radiator dishes towered above me, about four hundred meters away on either side. Even with my SunSpecs on, the light they emitted was blinding. And the heat! It was almost unbearable. Fat beads of sweat formed on my brow. My armpits were slick with perspiration.

"Wow, is this amazing or what?" came a voice.

I turned. The mime was standing behind me, taking in the grand panorama that surrounded us.

"I tell you," he said breathlessly, "it makes you humble, doesn't it?"

I ignored him. This was a mistake. I was done for. Who would question any "accident" that occurred to a nervous and inexperienced jumper? The mime definitely had the advantage here. I raged at my stupidity.

The remainder of our group clambered out to join us. Denzil held up three fingers, two fingers, one. Each of the boys doubled over to turn off their magboots; and whooping like banshees, they pushed off into space.

The mime lurched clumsily toward me. Without thinking I ducked, jabbed crazily at the lever on my boot soles, and went reeling over the edge of the hub.

What happened next isn't very clear.

I tumbled ass over tit in mid-air, frantically trying to right myself. Everything was spinning. Someone grabbed my foot. I kicked violently, but could not shake myself free. Before I knew what was going on, the mime's arms were around me. I flailed wildly at him, and managed to knock the SunSpecs from his face. He shrieked and wrenched back his head to protect his eyes. While he was off his guard, I balled my hand into a fist and punched at the red button on his thruster belt.

The small engines roared to life, scorching my left leg. Searing pain shot down my thigh. I was in agony, but I held it back. I twisted myself around, and watched with horror as my adversary hurtled straight into the maw of a radiator dish.

He screamed--such an awful, feral sound--and burst into flames. I could see him scramble savagely, the length of his body engulfed by fire. Then he became very still. He drifted into the intense light and disappeared. Black smoke misted lazily over the edge of the basin.

I turned away and vomited.

VII

Denzil and I filled out the accident declarations that were to be submitted to the health and welfare co-op ("wealth and hellfire," he called it). He seemed fairly cavalier about the whole affair, and wasn't particularly interested in the details of my "friend's" death. To him, this was just one of the more mundane rituals prescribed by the cult of adrenaline that guided his life. The mime would no doubt receive an honorary toast later that evening, in some seedy bar frequented by himself and his fellow jump worshippers.

When we both had signed the requisite paperwork, he gave me a couple of amphetamines for the pain, then treated my leg with the contents of a first aid kit stored in the trunk of his car. We drove, chatting sporadically, back to Litton. I might have slept; I'm not really sure. It wasn't a long ride.

He dropped me off at my street corner. Leaning over the passenger seat, he reached through the open window to hand me his access number.

"You did fine up there today, man," he said. "You kept your head under some pretty bizarre conditions. That was one helluva jump. Call me if you feel like doing it again."

I nodded and waved as he pulled away from the curb. No offense kid, I thought, but I'd rather stick a live grenade up my ass.

He was no sooner out of sight when another car pulled up beside me. I looked at it vaguely; my head was beginning to spin again.

The back door slid aside. I bent over and peered through the windshield.

Sandra Chan was behind the wheel. Glenda was riding shotgun.

"Well, don't just stand there with your mouth open," she called. "Get in!"

CHAPTER TEN

I

We drove in silence down Third Avenue, exited at the turn-off to the Trans-Columbus superhighway, and flew at high speed past the Litton city limits sign. The only vehicles on the road were a small number of sleek RoboHaul tractor trailers, carrying heavy machinery to the outlying regions. We kept our distance from these fast-moving behemoths. They were not equipped with proximity sensors; and if one, by some misfortune, ran over you, the others behind it would promptly follow suit. There would soon be little evidence that you traveled this freeway, except for a long black smear on the gray asphalt.

Fat drops of water spattered against the windshield. It was starting to rain. Sandra turned on her wipers, but the downpour quickly intensified. Within minutes we were forced to pull into the service lane, to wait until the deluge was over. (The worst of these cycles generally lasted about half an hour.) Rain drummed deafeningly on the roof of the car.

Glenda turned in her seat. "You're hurt," she said, noticing my leg for the first time.

I covered the burn with my palm, and flinched. The stuff Denzil sprayed on me had been quite effective. The wound was healing nicely, but it was still a little tender to the touch.

"It looks worse than it feels," I informed her.

"What happened?"

"That's a very long story. I was right about the mime, though."

Glenda nodded grimly. "I know. I'm sorry I didn't believe you."

"Who could blame you? I almost didn't believe myself." And then to Sandra: "I'm relieved to see you're okay."

She glared angrily at me in the rearview mirror, but said nothing. I ignored her fury for the moment. There were a number of questions on my mind that required immediate answers.

"Could you bring me up to speed on what's been going on?" I asked.

Sandra shook her head and reached for a cigarette in the dashboard dispenser. When she lit up, I noticed that her slender hands were trembling. She exhaled a cloud of smoke and looked back into the mirror.

"Why didn't you tell me the device was stolen?"

Glenda's brow furrowed. "Device? What device?"

"I let her study our Shiv," I admitted.

"You did what?"

"Didn't Sandra explain?"

"Nobody's explained a thing to me, as usual," Glenda said with frustration. "I was eating breakfast when the doorbell rang. She said she was a friend of yours, and that we were all in danger. I didn't know what the hell she was talking about, but after that business with the mime--" She paused. "I got dressed and went with her to find you."

"How did you know she was telling the truth about being my friend?" I asked. Glenda was far too trusting sometimes.

She shot me a startled glance. Questioning the authenticity of Sandra's claim had clearly not occurred to her. "I didn't know where you were. You didn't leave a note or anything."

"Still, you should be more careful," I chided.

"I will."

"Good. I'm sorry about not leaving a note, though. That was pretty inconsiderate of me. I wasn't thinking very clearly this morning. I was worried about Sandra. I tried calling her, but the line had been disconnected. So I went to see if she was all right."

"You haven't answered my question," Sandra cut in.

"It's not stolen!"

"Why did you give her our Shiv?" Glenda demanded.

I threw up my hands in despair. "Could we impose a little order on this inquisition? Please?"

The women stopped talking. I closed my eyes and massaged the bridge of my nose with my fingertips. I could feel a potent migraine coming on.

"Thank you. Sandra, you go first. Why are you here? How did you manage to escape?"

"But--" Glenda began to protest.

I held up my hand for silence. She slouched grumpily against the back of her seat.

"Last night," Sandra started, "I used a hypersonic on the device. I had already tried just about everything else to get it open. I figured a high-frequency sound wave might do the trick. When I placed the projector into the path of the wave, it emitted what you might call a temporal homing beacon. I have few words to describe it, really. I had my scanners set up to register the presence of inverse tachyon particles, as well as a wide-ranging variety of spatial anomalies. The beacon practically blew my equipment to bits."

I raised my eyebrows. She nervously flicked ash from the tip of her cigarette and continued.

"Before I knew what was happening, a temporal rip popped open and this rather large man stepped out of it. He held a nerve stick to my head, and told me the device was stolen property that had to be returned to its rightful owners. I should have known you were lying about its origin."

"Then what?" I asked, firmly guiding her back to the topic at hand.

Sandra gave me a sarcastic grin, remembering. "I zapped him with my purse."

I looked at her, bewildered.

"I have this purse, you see. The handle is coded to accept only my own palm print. If someone else picks it up, it delivers a high-voltage electrical charge."

"Pretty vicious stuff," I smirked.

"No woman should be without one. Anyway, when the thug told me I would have to go along with him, I asked if I could bring my handbag. He must have suspected there was a weapon hidden inside it, because he went to get it for me. And when he did--pow! It knocked him right off his feet."

She clucked her tongue repeatedly and said, "Men!" as if this accounted for all the stupidity in the universe. Glenda nodded seriously. Since I was in the minority, gender-wise, I resolved to let her comment pass me by unnoticed.

"What happened after that?" I inquired. "Obviously, you got away from the goon."

"I tried calling to warn you, but you weren't in and I didn't want to risk leaving a message. I went home to collect some of my things. I wasn't sure if the man knew my address, so I decided to stay at a hotel for the night. But my building was under surveillance I think; there were two strange men waiting in the lobby. I drove over to Takahashi Stadium and slept in my car."

"And then you came looking for me," I completed her narrative. "Where's the Shiv now?"

"In my purse."

I eyed her judiciously. "Uh, you can get it, if you don't mind. Is it still sending out that signal?"

Sandra shook her head. "I don't think so. It seemed to stop when I turned off the hypersonic."

"I hope you're right. Otherwise, we might as well wait around here until your rather large man comes to pick us up." I sighed wearily. My fatigue was getting the better of me, and my head was starting to throb with enthusiasm.

"Thanks," I added as an afterthought. "You've explained a great deal."

"I have done no such thing," Sandra said disagreeably. "I've only told how I managed to elude that thug. I still have no idea what he was really after. He says the device is stolen. You maintain it is not. If anyone deserves an explanation, it is I."

I looked to Glenda for support. She offered none. Her arms were folded across her chest and she stared at me with her usual silent wrath, her lips pinched tightly together. I was on my own this time.

So I told Sandra our story. From the beginning.

II

The rain persisted in its loud thrumming. The interior of our car had become uncomfortably hot and humid, the windows fogged with our breath.

Glenda and I watched Sandra carefully. She was lost in thought, no doubt analyzing the finer points of our strange tale. At last she nodded her head.

"You did the right thing," she told me, "though I am appalled by your self-serving motives."

I said nothing. There was no point in trying to dodge her scorn. I deserved it. Fortunately for me, Sandra had other matters on her mind. I was spared the full force of her contempt for the moment.

"Had you gone ahead with their plan," she continued, "who knows what kind of temporal chain reaction you might have provoked? Nevertheless, I am puzzled. You say this Society is benevolent. I find that statement at odds with the behavior exhibited by its operatives."

I frowned. "So do I. But like I said, their environment could be causing some type of mass insanity. I was pretty much convinced, at the time I was with them, that they were dangerously psychotic."

She dismissed my idea with a wave of her white hand. "I doubt that. Our species has survived so successfully through the ages because we have the ability to adapt--even to the most inhospitable climates. Do you think the Society has another hidden agenda?"

"If it does, I wasn't made aware of it."

"No, I don't suppose that you were," she mused. "Of course, the thugs we encountered may not be connected with the Society at all."

"What do you mean?" Glenda asked with concern.

Sandra turned to her. "They may be working for someone else; someone who knows about the Shiv, and who wants it badly enough to kill for it. I have no other explanation for the incongruity between the Society's alleged aims and its apparent methods."

"That doesn't make sense," I countered. "Your attacker came at you through a temporal rip. If there is another clandestine organization involved in this affair, then it already has a projector in its possession. Why go through the trouble and expense of hunting down the remaining devices?"

Sandra looked at me pointedly. "You already know the answer to that question."

"What are you talking about?" I huffed. "That's nonsense."

"You asked me to obtain a patent for the projector, didn't you?"

"Well, yes."

Sandra smiled; I had evidently fallen into her trap.

"As your own actions have so suitably demonstrated," she said evenly, "it's all about control. The invention of the Shiv is perhaps the most important event in human history. Its destructive potential alone is inestimable. Imagine how easy it might be to form massive corporate monopolies, simply by traveling through time to eliminate the founders of your competition before they have a chance to set up shop. The same theory applies to nation-states. Why go to war, when you can influence past political, social, and economic circumstances to such an extent that your enemy's country is never established? Absolute ownership of this technology means, in no uncertain terms, absolute power."

I thought about this. She was right. If I had been interested in capitalizing on the projector's potential as a teleporter, it was no great leap to assume that someone with higher aspirations might also be attracted to the device, but for substantially more malevolent objectives.

My vacuous greed shamed me. I was no better than the industrialists who turned a blind eye to the evils of their trade--spewing toxins into the atmosphere, for instance, or condoning slave labor in Third World countries--for the sake of a healthier balance sheet. No matter how I couched my avarice in the euphemisms of technological progress, it all boiled down to one thing: the problem that Sandra, Glenda and I now faced was of my own doing. And for no better reason than the fact that I wanted to line my pockets with a few fast credits.

"So, what should we do?" I asked no one in particular. There wasn't an identifiable answer to my question. "These people have to be stopped somehow."

Sandra drifted away for a moment, and then returned. She shrugged.

"I don't know," she said. "But we can't act too hastily. We need a strategy."

"And we need a place to hide while we're thinking one up," Glenda put in.

Sandra nodded and looked at her with approval. "At least one of us is using her head for more than a hat rack."

Glenda beamed with pride.

"Okay," Sandra said. "The rain is letting up. My lover has a summer home over at Bull Pond, near the northern pole. I have a key to the place. I suggest we drive there--it's only a couple of hours away--and stay put until we know what we're going to do next."

"Sounds fine," Glenda said, happy at last to be of some small service. "Neil and me have vacation time coming. I'll call Ross when we get in."

"I don't know," I balked warily. "Staying at your beau's house seems a little obvious, don't you think? If these people have done their homework, they'll know everything about the guy you're sleeping with--right down to his favorite flavor of edible underwear."

Sandra sniffed distastefully. "First of all, she doesn't like edible underwear, and neither do I. Secondly, we've handled our relationship with extreme discretion. She's a member of the executive council, and her peers are decidedly conservative about their sexual preferences. I doubt anyone knows about us. Even your friends from the Society."

Glenda looked over at me and gave a wry grin.

"Neil," she observed, "your mouth is hanging open again." Then, as an aside to Sandra: "He's such an old fuddy-duddy."

Sandra chuckled to herself and started up the car.

III

I dozed fitfully, uncomfortable in the cramped back seat of the small vehicle. My migraine had developed quite nicely; the back of my neck and shoulders ached, and my sinuses thudded with each heart beat. The pain reached into my sleep. I woke every fifteen minutes or so in agony. Finally, I managed to slip into a trance that was beyond the clutch of my headache's squirming tentacles, and stayed that way until we arrived at our destination.

"We're here," Glenda informed me as I opened my eyes and yawned.

"I can see that," I grouched. Glenda stuck out her tongue. I ignored her.

I unfolded myself from the fetal curl I had slept in, the small of my back complaining as I released my spine from its unnatural distention. I peered through the windshield at our surroundings.

There was nothing of the house to be seen from my vantage point. We were parked at the far end of a long gravel drive. The narrow road curved into a stand of tall fir trees, their rough bark blackened from the recent rain. Chipmunks darted noiselessly about on carpets of copper-tinted pine needles. Birds chirruped from somewhere deep within the grove. Colorful field flowers bowed to the earth, their delicate petals heavy with glinting droplets of water.

"It's lovely," Glenda said in a small, halting voice. (Nature affected her like this--it was something about her I noticed on our walking tours of Columbus, or whenever we visited the Biodome. She seemed always to be struck mute in its presence.)

"Isn't it?" Sandra agreed. She was visibly impressed by Glenda's sensitivity to her environment. "Wait until you see the house."

She retrieved her purse from the glove compartment, then opened her door and stepped out. Glenda got out too, and came around back to help me pull myself from the narrow rear hatch. My legs were stiff when I stood upright. I stretched awkwardly, and hobbled after the two women as they walked side-by-side into the wood.

The air was scented wonderfully with pine. I inhaled deeply, glad to be free of the car's suffocating interior, and felt my head clear in an instant. It was like water draining from a sink. I marveled at the haste with which my headache--and all of my other stress-related ailments--receded. It was true what the naturalists claimed: there really was no better tonic than the aroma of a rain-drenched forest. I ambled lazily down the drive, enjoying this new-found analgesic.

Through the trees I heard Glenda's voice calling excitedly, "Neil, come quickly! You have to see this."

I jogged clumsily around the bend in the road, and found Glenda standing with Sandra in a clearing, waving at me to join her. Behind them, and set against the sloping expanse of the Colombian landscape, was one of the most impressive sights I have ever beheld.

The house would have made Frank Lloyd Wright's jaw drop open. It was built beside a lovely, winding stream (although "built" is probably not the right word; it looked as if it had arisen from the rock as a natural formation). The porous sandstone walls curved in lines that ran parallel to each turn and dip the water made in its course through the lush meadow that cradled it. The staggered terraces and balconies were trimmed with glazed bricks, and green with the heavy foliage of potted indigenous plants. Banks of dark, reflecting windows were inset on each new level. The roof spiraled into an elegant cupola. Beyond the house towered a thicket of white pines, their barbed tips gently swaying in the warm breeze.

I stopped dead in my tracks and gasped at the incredible beauty of the architecture. So this was how the other two per cent of the population lived. I said as much to Sandra, and she shrugged.

"Wealth has its obvious advantages," she muttered, not without a perceptible measure of disfavor. She dug around in her purse and pulled out a magnetic key. "Stay here. I'll disable the security system."

She walked up the path to the front door, her shoes crunching on the gravel. Glenda stayed beside me and whispered wonderingly, "Have you ever seen anything like this?"

"Only on holovision," I replied somewhat enviously. "I suppose we couldn't do much better for a hideout."

"That's for sure. What do you think a place like this costs?"

"I wouldn't even try to guess. More than we can afford. But that goes without saying."

Glenda nodded. "I wonder if there's a pool. It's been years since I went swimming."

I turned to her. "We're not here on holiday, you know. Eventually they'll figure out where we are."

"But Sandra said no one knows about--"

"I don't care what Sandra said," I impatiently cut her off. "They'll come looking for us, you can bet on that. We have to work up a plan as soon as possible, and then get the hell out of here. Don't you see? We decrease our chances of getting caught by remaining constantly on the move. The Society can only find us if we stay in one spot long enough to affect their time line."

She looked at me with incomprehension.

"Variables and inevitabilities," I explained, not really caring if she understood; I barely grasped these concepts myself. "We could remain here, or we could just as easily pack up and drive somewhere else. At this point, they can't locate us because we haven't committed ourselves to a definite course of action. The more arbitrary are our decisions, the less likely they are to discover our whereabouts."

She thought about this.

"I get it," she said suddenly. "It's like trying to guess where a feather will land when you drop it. You won't know for sure until it hits the ground."

"Uh, yeah. Exactly."

Glenda gave me a wide smile.

"Dumb blonde, eh?" she said slyly, and walked off to join Sandra at the house.

I raised my eyebrows. Dumb blonde, indeed.

She was full of surprises, that girl.

IV

It was mid-afternoon, and we were ravenous. I personally had not eaten at all that day. Glenda said she had breakfasted only on cereal and coffee at our apartment; and Sandra made a meal of a snack cake in her car at Takahashi Stadium. So our first order of business, we decided unanimously, was to fix a late lunch.

The massive, luxuriously appointed kitchen was equipped with the various appliances that were necessary for food preparation. As an added bonus, it also contained a matter processor, presumably for late-night snacks or small meals to be eaten on the run. This was good fortune for us because the larder, we discovered, was bare--save for a few boxes of saltines, a bag of wild rice, and a half-empty jar of rancid peanut butter. Sandra turned off the secondary electrical supply, which ran the house's security system, and activated the main power dynamo by placing her hand on a biometric scanner in the utility room next to the kitchen. She then ordered several ham and Swiss cheese sandwiches with a pitcher of cold milk, while Glenda and I set the table for our meal.

Surprisingly, the food had no particular flavor. I assumed it was because I had grown accustomed to Glenda's cooking, which generally alternated between mildly spicy and gastrointestinal volcanism. But both Sandra and Glenda agreed it was simply the character of synthesized cuisine--to them, it always tasted like cardboard. I wondered, while I munched joylessly on my sandwich, how I had gotten along for all these years on such lackluster fare.

After she was finished her lunch, Sandra reached into her purse and extracted a packet of cigarettes.

"Your story has a few inconsistencies that I've been meaning to ask you about," she said, lighting up. She took a long drag and exhaled. Tendrils of smoke curled from her nostrils. Glenda stared out an open window at the sunlit countryside, lost in her own thoughts.

Dissatisfied with my sandwich, I dropped the uneaten portion onto my plate and washed its flat taste from my mouth with an unappetizing swig of artificial milk.

"Fire away," I gagged.

Sandra got up to find an ashtray in one of the kitchen cabinets.

"How did the sabotage at R-MegaDawn occur if you abandoned your mission?" she queried over her shoulder.

"Good question. To be honest, I'm not exactly sure. My older self didn't provide me with much of an explanation. It could be the result of a paradox. More likely it's an echo from another time stream."

She stopped to ponder my hypothesis.

"You don't think so?" I prodded.

She grimaced. "Anything is possible, given how little we know about these matters. It sounds highly unlikely, though."

I turned in my chair to look at her. "Do you have a better explanation?"

"No," she conceded. "But I've never believed in the notion of paradoxes, either. I consider time to be a little like nature--it has a way of compensating for imbalances. I suspect you might be compelled somehow to complete your assignment for the Society."

"Fat bloody chance that's going to happen," I snorted.

Sandra returned to the table, her ashtray in hand. She tapped her cigarette into it and took another haul.

"You may not have much of a choice," she ruminated. "If in fact there is no other secret organization pursuing the time travel technology, then it's reasonable to assume the Society members will use whatever force is necessary to make you comply with their wishes."

I felt my stomach tighten. She had a point. They certainly appeared as if they were desperate enough to see their scheme to fruition, no matter what the personal sacrifices might be. I wondered if my older self was so fanatical that he could offer up his life for the cause, by having me eliminated if I did not cooperate.

But I put the thought out of my head. Impossible. He wasn't that crazy. Was he?

"So what you're saying is, I'm a slave to my destiny," I ventured unhappily.

"Essentially, yes," she agreed. "The sabotage has already taken place, so to speak. To me, this indicates that you have no free will. If you stay here, they'll catch you. If you run, they'll eventually hunt you down. Your escape to Columbus has done nothing to obstruct their plans. It would seem you have only delayed the inevitable."

"I don't think I like your theory," I groaned.

"Whether you like it or not, it might nevertheless be the truth."

I sat quietly for a moment. Yes, indeedy. That was a fine kettle of fish, wasn't it? We couldn't spend the rest of our lives on the lam. Our crisis had to be resolved sooner or later. And despite how bad my morning had been, it looked as if the worst was still to come. I sighed despairingly and rubbed my temples.

"You had other questions about my story?" I asked sullenly, not really wanting to hear them.

Sandra crushed out her cigarette. "Yes. You mentioned the authorization forms for the distribution of the tainted suicide pills required a scan of your thumb. How did you escape suspicion when you were interviewed by the president of R-MegaDawn?"

"I'm not sure I did," I admitted. "And now that I've been AWOL for so long, Quigley probably has an all points bulletin out for my arrest. At the time, however, I wasn't aware that I was the guilty party--as it were. That most likely made the difference in my defense. You know what they say: a lie works best when you think you're telling it as God's own truth. Besides, Quigley understood that I approved those documents more as a matter of formality. I generally took it for granted that my inspectors were doing their jobs."

"I see."

"Anything else?"

"Just one last item on the agenda. There might be nothing to it. It's just something that doesn't make much sense."

"And that is?"

Sandra gave a sideways nod to Glenda.

"I'm not sure how our Ms. Watson fits into all of this."

Glenda turned from the window. I looked at her, and then at Sandra. A funny feeling seeped into my gut.

"She was to assist me with the mission," I explained.

"Really? In what way?"

I paused. It wasn't as if I was incapable of releasing the PSP shipment on my own. Hell, a trained ape could have done it.

"I don't know," I said quizzically. I glanced over at Glenda, and saw that she was squirming uncomfortably in her seat.

"Glenda?" I prodded.

Sandra sat back in her chair, awaiting a response.

"Glenda." Firmly this time.

"It's like Neil said," she muttered uneasily.

"I don't think so, dear," Sandra intoned.

Glenda looked at me imploringly. Her eyes held an expression I could only interpret as pure remorse.

"I'm sorry," she told me. "It wasn't supposed to be like this."

"What are you talking about?" I demanded.

She let out a shuddering breath, and with it came an unexpected rush of words: "They had this profile of you, a psychological profile. They said I was the mission's insurance policy. They said you couldn't be counted on to do the right thing. I just had to jiggle my tits in your face a few times, and you'd do whatever I told you. I didn't know you'd turn out to be such a nice guy. It was supposed to be easy. But you didn't go for it. You didn't--"

Her voice thickened. She put a hand to her mouth and fled from the room in tears. I heard the front door open and slam shut.

I stared at the archway through which she made her departure. My nerve endings were numb from the shock of her confession. It felt as if I had received a solid blow to the head. I couldn't think.

I glanced helplessly at Sandra. Her cheeks were colored with sudden embarrassment. She coughed and gave me an apologetic smile.

"Think I'll take a walk," she said and retreated.

I sat alone at the table, wondering what the bloody hell had just happened.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I

All those months I had suspected the purpose of Glenda's sexual advances, yet did nothing to assuage my doubt. All those months I had foolishly accepted her nebulous responses to my queries.

What a goddamned ass I was! I recalled the mime's sloppy grin, mocking my stupidity: You have no idea what I'm on about, do you? Ho, that's rich! The evidence had been squatting under my nose the whole time, and I was too engrossed by the size of Glenda's breasts to notice. My imbecilic fetish enraged me. I repeatedly chastised myself, cursing, "Idiot! Cretin! Blockhead! How could you be so blind?"

The winding path I followed through the meadow offered up small stones and fallen tree branches for me to kick in my violent fury. But I misjudged one rock, thinking it loose enough in the earth to send flying with a vicious swing of my boot. I found instead that it was quite solidly planted, and the resulting collision set me to spitting wild obscenities as I hopped about on my one good leg. My wrath spent, I collapsed onto the damp ground and massaged the toes of my damaged foot.

What a day this was turning out to be. What a fucking lousy day!

I sat in silence, trying to calm down, and stared across the fields of long grass ruffling occasionally in the gentle breeze.

From behind me came the sound of dried leaves crunching. I glanced back over my shoulder, and saw Sandra making her way toward me.

"There you are," she called. "What are you doing out here?"

"Tilting at windmills," I replied sourly. "Or should I say boulders?"

Sandra eased herself into a cross-legged sitting position beside me, and pulled a wayward strand of black hair from her eyes.

"Listen," she said, "I'm awfully sorry about opening up that can of worms. I had no idea."

I looked up at the "sky" and squinted against the brilliant lamp light. "You're hardly to blame. It's an issue I should have resolved a long time ago."

She gave me a nod. "Perhaps. But Glenda really does love you, Neil. Anyone could see that. The way she looks at you--I can tell she thinks very highly of you."

"Where is she now?"

"I don't know. Somewhere off in the woods."

"I should go and hash this thing out with her, once and for all."

I felt the cool flesh of Sandra's hand on my forearm. "Leave her be. She needs to think about what she's done. And so do you. How are you feeling?"

I looked at her and frowned. Sandra didn't strike me as the nurturing or sympathetic sort. In the time since we had come to know each other, I learned to regard her as too remote and unemotional to call a true friend. It may have been a disposition she assumed when dealing with men in general, or with me in particular. But I did not care to discuss my emotions with her now. It made me uncomfortable, as if I were being analyzed for signs of structural weakness.

"I'll get over it," I replied evenly.

But when? I had been wounded to the core of my being; and not just by Glenda, though her betrayal (if you could call it that) hurt me terribly. I was especially injured by the knowledge, so late in coming, that others held me in such low esteem. To the members of the Preservation Society, I was some manner of Pavlovian mutt that slavered whenever they jangled my dinner bell. To my older self I was a lethargic misanthrope who thrived on cynicism and bad pornography. To Sandra I was a detestable opportunist, bent on turning a profit from my ill-gotten temporal projector. And to Glenda--well, God knows what she really thought of me.

How did my life become so marginal, so corrupt? Where was that line I had crossed, however long ago, when I turned from a promising young writer to the person I was now? What had gone wrong?

As if reading my thoughts, Sandra leaned closer to me and said, "You're really not such a bad man, you know. I suspect that, like so many of us, you've simply lost your way."

I winced. "Please. I could do without the pidgin psychology, if you don't mind."

She chuckled quietly. "It's hardly psychology. I think of these things as the fruit of personal choice. Who was it said a man's character is his fate? I can't remember; and anyway, that's nothing but crap. You never just become who you are. And anyone who blames his character flaws on something else, in effect, chooses to ignore the responsibility he must assume for these faults. The impression I get from you--and correct me if I'm wrong--is that you're not this kind of individual."

I smiled distantly. "No, I'm not. At least, I don't think I am. So what's your diagnosis, Sigmund?"

Sandra studied me for a moment. "I see you as someone who chose one path over another, but discovered later it was leading you in the wrong direction. Now you're trying to get back to that crossroads in the hope of setting everything to rights. Except you can't remember which way you came."

"Okay."

"The 'misunderstanding' you had with Glenda, I believe, flows from your desire to become what you think she wants you to be, as if this will resolve the way you presently feel about yourself. Because she's a strikingly beautiful woman, she is for many people a measure of their own worth--as if they must adopt some exotic qualities themselves to be in her presence. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't guilty of a similar affectation: she really is gorgeous. So you deliberately ignored the fact that she might also be human, and weak, and given to making the same monumental fuck-ups as the rest of us."

I'm not sure if I knew what point she was trying to make. I was only half listening at the time.

"You're probably right," I said, just to provide a break in her monologue. "But I don't see where your argument is going."

"It's simple, really," she replied. "The reason she made herself available to you has nothing to do with your respective missions--although that might have been her only motivating factor at first. You obviously possess certain characteristics that she herself is missing, and that she needs to feel more complete. Once you realize that, you become free to change whichever way you please. And she'll be right there with you when you do."

I paused. That seemed to make some kind of sense. But I wasn't ready to forgive Glenda; I couldn't take that leap just yet. I had been wronged. And if it was indulgent of me to feel that way, then so be it. That was my due.

"Yes, well, I believe our time is up, doctor," I joked.

"You're right, of course," she said. "I've done as much meddling as I care to for the day."

She swiped little clumps of mud and dead grass from her palms, and stood up. "Besides, we have more urgent matters to discuss."

"Such as?"

"What we plan to do about our current predicament," she answered.

I scrambled to my feet, favoring my injured leg. "I thought you said my fate was irrevocable, that I was bound to the completion of my assignment."

Sandra nodded. "That may yet be true. But you still have a choice. You can willingly submit to your destiny, like some pathetic sheep on its way to slaughter--"

"Or?"

She grinned deviously. "Or you can put up one hell of a fight. I prefer the latter option. Don't you?"

II

Sandra and I spent the remainder of our afternoon, and a good part of the early evening, configuring the house's profusion of anti-terrorist systems. They were newly installed, she said--the latest in personal protection technology. I was suitably impressed. The structure's beguiling architecture effectively camouflaged the abundance of automated weaponry that was available to repel an attack.

There were pressure sensors buried beneath the manicured lawns; and these were connected to a network of concealed laser shredders which could easily reduce an army of aggressors into quivering lumps of raw hamburger. The exterior door latches and window frames were equipped with electrocution filaments that were set to release their charges when they came in contact with human skin. The walls inside the house were coated with a special gel paint that detected motion and body heat, and also performed a simultaneous DNA scan whose results were comparatively analyzed by the house's neural nets. (Glenda and I provided tissue and blood samples so that we would not trigger the defense mechanisms when we got up in the middle of the night to use one of the bathrooms.) The entire system was complemented by a series of stationary and rotating CCTV cameras, force fields, and tiny robotic sentries, all of which were controlled via workstations located in the basement and the master bedroom.

"And for the finishing touch," Sandra said when everything was operational, "my own personal favorite."

From her purse she pulled a small, black globe. There was a hatch on its back. She flipped it up, pushed at something hidden inside, and replaced the covering. Then she set the thing gingerly on the floor. When released, the ball rolled by itself out the open bedroom door and disappeared down the hall.

"What was that?" I asked.

"A ProtectHer. It'll patrol the house, looking for intruders, and sound an alarm if it finds one. If it's close enough to the prowler, it jumps up and detonates at groin level."

I winced. "Ouch!"

"I got it at my Applied Feminism workshop," she grinned.

"Well, it seems hardly necessary," I noted. "We have enough explosives in this place to blast a hole in the moon."

Sandra eyed me seriously. "The power grids in these outlying regions aren't too reliable. One fluctuation, and we'll be defenseless while the system comes back on-line."

"I see. Better safe than sorry, I guess."

"Precisely."

She returned to the access control workstation, to make sure our fortifications were functioning to her satisfaction. I poked about the room, examining the fine quality of the furnishings, and fingering some of the fancier accessories. Sandra's lover had dainty tastes: intricately carved mahogany music boxes; ceramic figurines of women in Victorian dress; delicate (though probably phony) ivory combs; an assortment of silk hair ribbons. I couldn't imagine Sandra herself purchasing such items. She was far too practical for such frivolities.

I glanced around. Curiously, it seemed there was little of Sandra's personality reflected in the decor. She must not spend much time here, I surmised.

On a pine wardrobe I found a photograph of Sandra and a relatively attractive blonde woman. The portrait looked as if it had been taken at the beach; though the backdrop could as easily have been a holographic seascape. Sandra smiled from behind a rock, her chin resting on her folded arms. The other woman stood over her, her hands on Sandra's shoulders.

"Is this your girlfriend?"

Sandra looked over her shoulder. "Yes."

"She's pretty."

Sandra paused, as if she were about to say something, then went back to her work.

"On the outside, yes," she muttered.

By the tone of her voice, I knew enough to drop the subject. I recalled the distaste with which Sandra had commented on her lover's wealth and privilege, and wondered if this were not a point of contention between them. The rich bitch, slumming it with her white collar sweetheart. Hardly worth the price of admission, that. So their relationship was under some strain. Join the bloody club.

"I'll be downstairs if you need me," I said and withdrew from the room.

She continued her review of the security systems, looking for all the world like the proverbial cat who had swallowed a sour mouse.

III

That night, and for the first time since we moved to Columbus, I slept apart from Glenda.

She sat in the living room, sullen and uncommunicative, for the remains of the evening. At her usual sack time, she rose from her overstuffed chair and padded quietly up the spiral staircase to bed. I pretended to concentrate on the novel I was reading, a light piece of commercial fluff I had confiscated from one of the many tall bookcases in the library. But from the corner of my eye I caught her stealing a sidelong glance in my direction; and inexplicably I was filled with the enormous satisfaction that I could inflict as much damage upon her as she caused me to suffer earlier that afternoon.

Yes, it was a childish emotion. But affairs of the heart make us act like idiots at times. Why should I be any exception to the rule?

When I went upstairs myself, I discovered the door to her bedroom was ajar. I looked in. She was snoring, naked above the covers.

Nice try, I thought. I chose another room at the far end of the hall.

IV

In my troubled sleep I was visited by an apparition of the dead mime.

His clothes smoldered, as if he were newly arrived from the pits of hell. His death's head mask had melted onto the plates of his skull, and it was horribly deformed and blackened by fire. His clear blue eyes stared at me from their lidless sockets. The jaw opened and clicked shut, forming words that were meaningless without the aid of a tongue or lips.

I'm sorry, I coughed, choking on the stench of his burnt flesh. I didn't mean for this to happen. It was an accident.

The jaw clicked.

Hunh-hunh-hunh, he said.

I leaned forward, straining to understand his speech.

He issued the same unnerving gutturals: Hunh-hunh-hunh.

Then, from behind his yellow teeth came a sudden, high-pitched shriek. I backed away, my hands covering my ears

And woke, alone and confused in a strange bed. My head spun crazily. An alarm pierced the still of night.

Before I knew what was happening, the siren stopped its earsplitting screech, and the memory of why I was here came rushing back to me. I leaped from my mattress and was out the bedroom door in a single bound. I arrived as Sandra hurtled into the hall, fumbling with the drawstrings of her robe. Glenda bolted from her room a moment later. She was wrapped in a bed sheet, her hair a tangle from sleep.

"What was that? What's going on?" I asked.

"I don't know," Sandra said. "It sounded like my ProtectHer."

"What happened to the access control system?"

Sandra shook her head and returned to the master bedroom. Glenda and I followed close behind. The CCTV monitors on the workstation console flickered with static, their connections severed. Sandra poked at a couple of buttons, and indicated the power levels on a smaller screen.

"Electricity's still on," she noted. "Looks like someone deactivated the ACS from the basement server."

"But how?"

"Beats me. You need administrator clearance to shut the system down. We should arm ourselves and spread out through the house. Hurry."

She opened the closet next to the workstation. Inside there hung six plasma rifles, secured to the back of the cabinet by a restraining bolt. She pressed her thumb against the red scanner pad, and the lock popped open. She grabbed a rifle and handed it to me, then retrieved one for herself. Glenda's hands were otherwise occupied with her bed sheet.

"Will you put on some clothes?" Sandra snapped.

Glenda stumbled from the room, and returned at once with her jumpsuit in her arms. She changed quickly as Sandra barked out her orders.

"Neil, you and Glenda take the north wing. I'll check the basement and see if I can't get the server rebooted. We'll meet back here in ten minutes. Glenda, take this rifle. And for God's sake, don't go firing at yourselves in the dark."

"Be careful," I cautioned her.

Sandra shot me a black scowl, and led us from the bedroom to the stairwell. I flipped off the gun's safety catch. There was a high whine as the power pack charged up.

"Shush!" Sandra hissed. I didn't know what she expected of me. I had to turn the thing on if I was going to use it.

We stood silently at the top of the stairs. I could barely hear myself breathe; and then it occurred to me that I wasn't breathing at all. I inhaled slowly. My heart hammered in my ears. Below us, in the living room, the ancient grandfather clock counted out the seconds with loud and resonating clacks.

"Come on," Sandra whispered.

She placed her foot on the first step. It groaned under her weight. I grimaced. Every little sound seemed to be amplified a thousand fold. She took two more stairs on her tiptoes this time; and I went next, my finger trembling over the trigger of my rifle. I could hear Glenda hyperventilating behind me.

My eyes darted frantically around. They could be anywhere, I thought. Every alcove, every nook and cranny, was obscured by deep shadow. You could have hidden an elephant in any one of them, and I wouldn't have known it was there.

Sandra stuck up her hand. We stopped dead in our tracks. She cocked her head in the direction of the utility room. I strained to hear whatever it was that caught her attention. Were there the sounds of movement on the first floor? I couldn't tell. I was panting too heavily.

In an instant Sandra whisked down the remaining steps. At the landing she looked up and waved for us to follow. I held my breath and plunged after her, stopping short as I arrived at the bottom of the stairwell. Glenda was too near me to check her descent, and she toppled face first into my back, pushing me hard against Sandra. The three of us nearly fell into a pile on the carpet. I seized the banister to steady myself.

"Sorry," Glenda whimpered.

"Be quiet!" Sandra admonished us fiercely. "He's in the kitchen. Listen."

We lapsed into silence. Something rustled in the dark ahead of us. I swallowed with difficulty; it felt as if there were a billiard ball lodged in my throat.

Sandra hoisted the butt of her plasma rifle up against her shoulder, and took aim into the center of the murky depths. I had my own gun unsteadily cocked into position at my hip. She looked at me and I nodded.

"Okay," she said under her breath. And then, in a savage bellow that surprised me: "Don't move, or I'll blow your fucking guts out!"

A high-pitched yelp issued from the dark. Then came a small, tentative voice:

"Sandra?"

Sandra caught her breath. The rifle dropped from her shoulder. "Oh God! Annie? Is that you?"

"Yes. Don't shoot. Please, don't shoot! I'm coming out."

Sandra involuntarily released her grip on the firearm. It clattered noisily to the floor.

"What--what are you doing here?" she stammered.

The woman whose photograph I had seen stepped cautiously into the dim light cast by a row of windows at our side. Her hands were raised.

"I was about to ask you the same question," she said, a regal authority now present in her voice. And then to me and Glenda: "Would you please put down your rifles?"

"It's all right," Sandra assured us.

We dropped our weapons and simultaneously heaved great sighs of relief. My hands shook. That had been too close for comfort. Another second, and I would have squeezed off a panicky burst of plasma; I was that tightly wound. Lord only knows what Glenda might have done in her fear.

"I thought you had meetings on Earth all this week," Sandra said, obviously gladdened by the sight of her companion.

"I did." The woman eyed me pointedly. "But you and your friends caused such a commotion, I personally had to see to you."

Sandra's face fell. "Annie, what are you talk--"

Annie leaned over and gave Sandra a delicate peck on the lips. "I'm sorry, hon. But business is business."

That said, she promptly stepped to one side and barked, "Now, please!"

From the area of the kitchen flashed an intense, blue-white light. Sandra literally disintegrated before my eyes.

I staggered back. Glenda stared in horror as a flurry of black ash settled into the spot where Sandra had stood a moment earlier. Annie stirred the growing mound with the toe of her shoe, and disconsolately shook her head.

"Such a shame," she murmured.

"Jesus-fucking-Christ!" I gasped in shock. Glenda began to sob hysterically.

The woman glared at us and snapped, "Shut up, both of you, or you'll get it next."

We did as we were told. Glenda snuffled pathetically, unable to contain her grief. My mind raced. I could not hold onto my thoughts. Confusion and rage gripped me instead. I looked down. One of the guns lay on the floor by my feet. Idiotically, I stooped to pick it up.

And a man's baritone rumbled from within the shadow: "I wouldn't do that, mister."

I stopped.

That voice. I knew it.

Ed Schlesinger emerged from the kitchen. His right hand held a plasma rifle. His left was wrapped in thick bandages and cradled in a sling. He walked up to me, as if he were taking a Sunday stroll, and casually pressed the muzzle of the rifle to my forehead.

"Helen gave you our number, but you never called," he said so very matter-of-factly. "Now what were we to think of that?"

CHAPTER TWELVE

I

"Lights," Schlesinger bellowed.

The house promptly complied with his order. Two banks of overhead track lights ignited, garishly illuminating the horror of Sandra's remains. Annie's hair and expensive-looking clothes were gray with a fine dusting of ash. She caught a glimpse of herself in a nearby mirror, and proceeded to angrily swat thick clouds of the powder from her scalp.

"Oh perfect," she complained. "I just had a hot oil treatment."

Glenda continued to weep into her open palms.

My eyes brimmed with the tears of my fury. I shook my head in disbelief and shouted, "You filthy animals! What have you done?"

Schlesinger lowered his rifle.

"My job," he replied simply. "Besides, that chink bitch and I had some unfinished business."

He showed me his wounded hand, as if I might judge the extent of his injuries by inspecting the bandage.

"That goddamn purse of hers nearly blew my whole arm off," he groused. "The doctor says I may never use my hand again."

"Well, I'm so very sorry for you," I sneered.

He glowered menacingly and poked me in the chest with the gun. "You know, I don't believe you really mean that."

I snorted contemptuously.

"How am I going to get this this stuff out of my clothes?" Annie flustered. "Wait. Where's my Dust Master?"

She stormed into the kitchen. Presently, I heard the high-pitched whine of a small, hand-held vacuum cleaner.

Schlesinger rolled his eyes. "Man, I'm just following orders. But that woman is cold!"

I stared at him incredulously.

"Following orders?" I sputtered. "Is that what this is for you?"

He shrugged. "What else would you call it? It's not like I go hunting people for the fun of it. I got a wife and kid to support, you know."

"Fine. If you're such a mercenary, then work for me. Right now I could use a guy like you. I'll pay whatever they're giving you, plus ten percent. How does that sound?"

Glenda glanced up at me as if I had gone completely mad. To be sure, it was a farcical offer that I could never expect to honor. But he wasn't aware of my modest salary. For all he knew, QC managers were amply rewarded for their tireless efforts.

A pensive expression crossed his weathered face. It appeared as if he were actually considering my proposal; and for a moment my hopes mounted. Then he burst out laughing and said, "That's what I like about you, mister: your sense of humor. Christ, what a hoot! Ten percent!" He threw his head back and roared. "Oh, oh, that's hilarious!"

"It's not so funny," I grumbled.

Schlesinger coughed and struggled to regain his composure.

"You're right," he said, ineptly wiping his eyes with the back of his bandaged fist. "I'm sorry, buddy boy, but money ain't the issue here. There's such a thing as professionalism, you know, and loyalty. No matter what you think of the job you got to do."

Six months ago I might have agreed with him, in theory. But seeing as I was now at the business end of his plasma rifle, my position on the topic of allegiance to one's employer quickly deteriorated.

"What's the joke?" Annie inquired as she returned from the kitchen. (Apparently, the vacuum hadn't been much of a success. She was still coated with a thin layer of ash.)

Schlesinger immediately straightened himself, as if called to attention by a superior officer. "Nothing, ma'am. Consorting with the rabble, ma'am."

Annie gave him a piercing scowl. "Shut up. My driver's waiting outside, and he's on time-and-a-half right now. So get these nuisances into the car, on the double, and wait for me there. My clothes are positively ruined. I'll have to change before we go."

"Where are you taking us?" I asked.

"You be quiet too!" she ordered. And then to Schlesinger: "Well?"

"Yes, ma'am!" he grunted.

Annie turned and stomped impatiently up the spiral staircase. When she was out of sight, he used the gun to herd us into position before him.

"Come on," he said tiredly. "Hands up. Let's get moving."

Glenda cried out as he jabbed her in the back, and she stumbled to the head of the line.

"Not so hard," I warned over my shoulder.

"Yeah, yeah," he mumbled distractedly.

I snatched one last glimpse at the little mound of gray ash, and silently apologized to it. I knew I would carry the guilt of Sandra's horrid death with me to my grave. And that didn't look like it was going to be a very long haul.

While we tramped out the front door, I fought to recollect fragments of my conversation with Schlesinger the day we met him and his family at the spaceport immigration office. Who was he working for? I couldn't recall; it was too long ago, and my short-term memory wasn't so impressive at the best of times. Something to do with a snake, or a lizard.

Yes, that was it: the Gecko Syndicate. The people who owned Columbus, and three of the other orbiting colonies. Otherwise known as the executive council, on which Annie sat as a member.

So Sandra had been right. There was another organization interested in the time travel technology. If only she'd suspected how intimately she knew our adversaries!

My heart sank. This whole affair had escalated far beyond what I would have thought possible. Now two people were dead--and both, you could rightly say, had lost their lives because of my sluttish greed. An immense feeling of shame and self-loathing welled up inside me. I could scarcely hold it back, it was so overpowering an emotion. But I had to. My life, and Glenda's, depended on how well I kept my head.

There was something else Schlesinger had said that afternoon. What was it? We were discussing self-defense? No, it was assassination techniques. It all came back to me: If you slam the nose just so, it drives the bones up into the brain. Bingo. No more bad guy.

The big goon pushed us onto the path that led away from the house to the gravel drive. Annie's car was nowhere to be found. It must have been parked in the woods, I reasoned, or perhaps where we left Sandra's vehicle. All around us crickets whirred. The black of night enveloped us. We were alone, and well away from the angry scrutiny of our guard's employer.

Perfect.

My muscles tightened. With as much force as I could muster, I spun around and smashed the flat of my palm against Schlesinger's face. The impact sent a numbing shock wave up my arm. Glenda turned and gasped. Schlesinger stumbled back. He blinked, then shook his head like a bull trying to rid itself of a bothersome fly.

A thin black line of blood oozed languidly from his right nostril. He put his hand up to touch his nose, then looked at me.

"What the hell wath that?" he slurred. His front teeth had been shaken loose by the blow, and his lips were beginning to swell.

I could only stand there, gaping at him.

He wiped the blood on his shirt sleeve and nodded. "Oh yeah, I get it. But you did it wrong. Here, let me show you."

All I saw was a shadowy blur.

II

Voices.

I heard far-away voices calling to me in the dark. I pulled myself sluggishly from the depths of my unconsciousness. It was like surfacing from the bottom of a cold, black lake, my kicking feet encased in separate blocks of cement

My eyelids fluttered open. The light was too bright. I cringed, turning my face from the glare. I felt the touch of warm leather against my cheek.

And then the pain. The incredible pain! It was beyond description, beyond anything I'd ever experienced. My head was a hammer striking an anvil--deafeningly, repeatedly, incessantly; and my nose, when I tried fruitlessly to inhale, sent excruciating, white-hot needles darting through me.

"Give him another shot," said a woman's voice.

A cool, metal object pressed against my neck. There was a brief hiss, and a prickling sensation, as the thing discharged its contents into the pores of my skin.

"Can he hear us yet?"

"I'm not sure," answered someone else, a man. "That other stimulant should have brought him around five minutes ago."

There was a pause. Then the woman said, "Was it really necessary to hit him so hard?"

"He hit me firtht," a second man growled.

"Such childishness. I expected more from you, Mr. Schlesinger. Leave us now."

"But--"

"He's in no condition to offer any resistance. Please, wait outside. You've done quite enough for tonight."

"Yeth, ma'am."

I listened to the soft padding of feet across a carpet. A door opened and swung shut. For one fleeting moment there was pure silence. I luxuriated in it. My head began to clear. I didn't know what medicines there were in the shots I'd been given, but they efficiently relieved me of my pain. I turned my face, and peered into the eyes of a stranger hovering over me. The man--an older fellow in his late fifties--gave me a grim wink, then stood upright and withdrew from my field of vision.

"He's fully conscious now," I heard him say. "That nose is pretty badly broken. He'll definitely need a couple of hours under a bone knitter. The packing I put in has stopped the hemorrhaging. But if he starts to bleed again, call me."

"Thank you, doctor. You're very kind to come here at this time of night."

"Don't mention it."

Again, the door opened and closed. There were the sounds of movement; and a spring creaked on what I had to guess was a reclining chair.

I propped myself up on my elbows and took a look around. The office was handsomely furnished and richly lit. I was, I discovered, unceremoniously splayed out on an expansive, brown leather sofa. To my right, a holoform fire blazed in an artificial stone hearth but radiated no heat. Annie sat across from my left in a leather love seat, quietly perusing something on a portable disk reader. Between us, and resting on a splendid Persian rug, sat an ornate coffee table whose polished surface supported a marble bust of Beethoven. Book shelves lined the wall beyond my feet; its opposite held a well-stocked bar encircled by tall stools. The far end of the room contained a long mahogany desk; and behind the desk a red leather swivel chair rocked with its high back turned in my direction.

"You may leave us, Ms. Steiner," came the woman's voice.

Annie returned her disk reader to the coffee table and stood up.

"Yes, my lady."

"I might add," said the woman, "that your tremendous sacrifice this evening has been noted, and is very much appreciated by the Syndicate. You will be generously recompensed for your tragic loss."

"Thank you, my lady," Annie replied and gave a slight bow. She walked silently to the door and left the office.

I sat upright on the sofa and gave myself a quick inspection. The front of my shirt looked as if I had been stabbed in the heart; the material was caked with massive quantities of drying blood. My nose was completely stopped up. I put my hands to it, and was surprised by how much it was swollen. Thick tufts of cotton wadding protruded from my nostrils. But I felt nothing, thanks to those hypos--not even the touch of my own fingers.

I wondered, in my light-headed state, what had happened to Glenda, but immediately assumed she was safe. I don't know how I came so easily to that conclusion. Perhaps it was because I did not feel especially threatened, there in that gracious and inviting place.

"Well, Mr. Erdogan," the woman's voice called from across the room. "You've certainly led us on a merry chase. I must say, I misjudged your resourcefulness."

Yes, yes! I thought with some irritation. Enough of this silly posturing. Let's get to the bloody point.

"To whom do I have the dubious honor of addressing?" I asked curtly.

The woman chuckled.

"Oh, we know each other well enough, you and I," came the response. "Or should I say, we will know each other well, some years from now."

The chair slowly turned. My memory, being what it was, failed me completely when I saw her face.

But I had not forgotten that ghastly green hair.

III

"Mrs. Dibbs. I might have known."

The green-haired woman leaned back in her chair and put the tips of her fingers together.

"Really? Why?"

"I'm not so daft that I can't tell when the tumblers have fallen neatly into place. Am I to assume that, aside from your leadership of the Preservation Society, you are also chairperson of both the Gecko Syndicate and the Columbus executive council?"

Mrs. Dibbs smiled. "You may assume whatever you please. But yes, I do wear many different hats." She glanced up at her hideously exaggerated hairstyle and added, "As it were."

"I see. Where's Glenda?"

"Oh, she's quite safe. You needn't worry."

I eyed her suspiciously. "You won't be offended if I decline to take your word for it?"

An expression of amusement passed over her seamed and garishly painted face. "No, of course not. I like to think I am above such pedestrian emotions."

"Fine. Bring her to me now."

The corners of her mouth twitched involuntarily. She said, "I'm afraid that's out of the question."

I settled back into the well-padded sofa and crossed my arms. "Then I suppose we have nothing further to discuss."

I tried to fix her with my most disconcerting scowl. But I probably appeared more comical than sinister, with my nose resembling a squashed tomato. Mrs. Dibbs looked at me and sighed, then reached to flip on her intercom.

"Mr. Schlesinger? Please escort our other guest to my office."

"Right away, ma'am," crackled the reply.

She released the switch and turned in her chair to stand up. I watched as she made her way over to where I was sitting.

"Please come with me, Mr. Erdogan," she said as she whisked by me, her multicolored robes billowing as she walked. "I'd like to show you something."

I got up from the sofa and followed her to the great stone fireplace. From a fold in her apparel she extracted a remote control device and pressed one of its buttons. The holoform evaporated. In its place stood a wide, night-blackened picture window dimly reflecting the contents of the room behind us. I cupped my hands against the cool surface of the glass and peered out.

Mrs. Dibbs' office overlooked the length of the hub and its many small, blinking lights. In the distance below us I could see the dull yellow glow of Litton. Smaller communities formed a patchwork of vague constellations against the unfathomable dark.

"Must be quite a view in the daytime," I noted.

"It is," she said and paused. "This is my world, Mr. Erdogan. I own every rock, every tree, every road and building; and all of the life that crawls along the inside of this tube."

"Okay," I mumbled. Her autocratic disposition surprised me.

She went back to her desk.

"You might want to consider this," she said over her shoulder, "the next time you feel the urge to make demands or issue orders here."

I cleared my throat. "You don't scare me, Mrs. Dibbs."

"I'm not trying to scare you, Mr. Erdogan. I'm simply stating a fact which may not have occurred to you."

I returned to my seat and confidently draped my arms along the back of the sofa. With a slight hum, the fireplace materialized behind me.

At that moment the door opened and Schlesinger pulled Glenda in by her arm. A visible wave of relief washed across her face when her eyes met mine. But the role I was playing did not allow me the luxury of an emotional reunion. I gave her an angry frown and shook my head. Her weak smile degenerated, and she transferred her gaze to the floor.

"Will there be anything elth?" Schlesinger asked.

Mrs. Dibbs waved her hand distractedly. "No, thank you. You may go."

The man bowed and left Glenda by herself in the middle of the room. Mrs. Dibbs resumed her stately position behind the enormous desk.

"As you can plainly see," she said, "I am a woman of my word. Please take a seat, Ms. Watson."

Glenda padded quickly across the lush carpeting and sat down next to me.

"I'm so glad to see you," she whispered tearfully. "You looked just awful in the car. All that blood. I thought you were going to die."

I did not acknowledge her. Instead, I addressed Mrs. Dibbs.

"Shall we begin our negotiations?"

The green-haired woman raised a dark eyebrow. "I wasn't aware that we had anything to negotiate."

I smiled. "Oh, but we do. You need me to complete my mission. And I am not prepared to do so until we have settled on a fair price."

"You mean, you refuse to save the world out of the goodness of your heart?" she asked, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

"Exactly."

Mrs. Dibbs folded her hands together in silent consideration of my unusual arrogance. She might have been wondering if it was all show, or if I had mysteriously grown a pair of big, hairy balls while she wasn't looking. I remembered the simpering acquiescence my older self had suffered in her presence, and realized that she might not be accustomed to dealing with me in this way. Too bad. With each new breath, I deliberately erased another scrap of the detestable person I was to become. The man who sat before her, now, didn't like to be manipulated or shoved about.

"What makes you think you are in a position to dictate terms?" she demanded unwaveringly.

I gave her an exaggerated look of astonishment. "Why, because I'm still alive, of course. If you really didn't need me, I suspect we wouldn't be having this conversation. Despite what your mime friend may have said to the contrary."

Mrs. Dibbs became pensive. "Ah, yes. Poor Jeremy. He always tended to be a touch too theatrical for his own good. I never imagined he would meet his end so dramatically. I always thought he might be struck down by an annoyed pedestrian."

"He was," I said evenly.

The woman did not flinch.

"I'm quite a busy person, Mr. Erdogan," she snapped. "Let's dispense with the idle chit-chat. What do you want?"

I made as if to inspect the length of my fingernails. Glenda shifted uneasily on the sofa.

"I want you to spare Glenda's life," I said at last. "And I want your assurance that she will be free to live it in peace once my mission is over. The same condition obviously applies to me."

"Such sentimentality," she warned after a moment's consideration. "It's a fatal flaw, Mr. Erdogan."

"That will be my concern, not yours."

"True." The woman settled into her chair. "To be honest, I intended to use your lives as bargaining chips. Now you have robbed me of that tactic, which is of no great significance. I grant you your request."

"Good. There's a shuttle leaving for Earth at 0725. When I receive word from Glenda that she's safely aboard and under way, I'll fulfill my end of the bargain without further postponement."

"Done."

Mrs. Dibbs summoned Schlesinger. Glenda turned to me.

"Neil, I don't want to go," she pleaded. "Please don't do this."

"It's over for us," I said icily. "You've done your job. Now leave."

"But I--"

"Leave!"

The hurt I saw in her eyes was almost more than I could bear. But our break had to be clean, as much for her sake as for mine. I couldn't live out the rest of my solitary days, knowing there might have been a chance at reconciliation. If I could never find her, after all this was over, then I wouldn't be tempted to patch things up, to make myself vulnerable again to the misery I endured because of her. My heart was flint.

Schlesinger entered the room and received his instructions from Mrs. Dibbs. He nodded his understanding, and held the door open for Glenda as she reluctantly left my side.

I did not watch her go.

"So, now we wait," I told the green-haired woman when we were alone.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I

"I am beginning to see, Mr. Erdogan, that you and I are of like minds."

Mrs. Dibbs poured out two drinks. She offered me one of the tumblers filled with scotch.

"I guess I'll take that as a compliment," I said, accepting the glass.

"And well you should," she agreed. "The Neil Erdogan I met--or will meet, some thirteen years from now, if he exists at all any more--he was so so utterly without hope, I guess you could say. An easy personality to influence, if you know how to do such things; and I do. But you--well, I can see how your recent ordeals have changed you, hardened you. In a way, I must accept the responsibility for your metamorphosis. Had I not mistakenly sent for you while you were still in your formative years, you might have continued your spiritual decline uninterrupted. Oh, you are still far too raw and undisciplined, the way you are now, to be of use to me. But with the proper training, you could prove in time to be a valuable asset. More valuable, even, than the soft and pliant Neil Erdogan I molded specifically for this mission."

I reclined almost pleasurably and took a sip from my drink. It was fine scotch, the first I'd had in a very long while.

"Are you offering me a job, Mrs. Dibbs?"

A sly grin spread across her face. "If I were, would you consider it?"

"I might."

She leaned against the bar and examined the glass in her hand.

"There are two types of people in this universe," she began. "I call them--for want of better terms--masters and slaves. Masters are people like me, who have a higher vision and the iron will to execute it. Slaves, on the other hand, are gray little people who lead gray little lives, and who never do anything of distinction. Forget what Marx writes about laborers and the aristocracy. These days, class division is not a form of economic oppression. It is merely a tangible consequence of the triumph or failure of the will. Those who lead have power. Those who follow are powerless. The so-called class struggle arises when slaves wish they could possess more of their masters' determination to prevail."

I could say nothing to complement her monologue. I had no idea why she was telling me this.

"There is no middle ground between the two," she continued. "I offer employment only to the masters. So I ask again: would you consider it? The answer is either yes or no."

I hesitated. "Then I would have to say yes."

"Excellent." She smiled approvingly. "Only slaves work for the Preservation Society. Anyone who can so effortlessly terminate Jeremy is a man I want on my personal staff. Or perhaps, in the near future, on the executive council itself."

"I'm flattered," I said. And then hopefully: "Does this mean I won't be obliged to complete my mission?"

"Oh, that's still a part of our original bargain, sir," she noted, wagging a finger. "Think of it as a test of your new-found loyalty to me. You will want do it in any event, and without equivocation, when you know why it is a thing that must be done."

I shook my head. "I'm sorry. I don't follow you."

Mrs. Dibbs took a seat beside me and crossed her flabby legs. Shards of ice clinked together in her glass as she made herself comfortable.

"Did you ever stop to wonder about the Society's goals?" she asked.

I blinked. "Well, yes. But I have serious reservations about the methods it uses."

She ignored the qualification I attached to my reply. "And what do you suppose these goals are?"

"In theory? To improve the quality of life for future generations. To resuscitate the dwindling human spirit. To give our species a second chance at survival. But I really don't think--"

"That," she cut me off, "is an artful but necessary camouflage. The Gecko Syndicate has extensive holdings in very risky, fledgling enterprises--enterprises littered throughout the time stream that wouldn't ordinarily prosper if certain conditions were not manipulated to guarantee their success."

Playing dumb, I said: "I'm not sure I understand."

The woman nodded. "Then let me give you an example. Would environmental clean-up companies be much of an investment if oil tankers never ran aground?"

"No, I don't suppose that they would."

"And yet, those tankers are by design extraordinarily reliable vessels. Even when they collide at high speed with much larger objects, they have an abundance of safeguard mechanisms to prevent leakage."

"But they do leak," I pointed out. "Earth's oceans are either dead or dying as a result of these disasters. Obviously, the safeguards don't work."

"Or," Mrs. Dibbs pointed out, "they work but have been rendered inoperative."

My mouth fell open when I realized what she was saying.

"The Society members sabotage oil tankers and Gecko earns its profits when the resulting spill is mopped up?"

She smiled knowingly. "On occasion, yes. Some of our recruits are, or were, employees of the world's leading oil refineries. They think they're drawing public attention to the environmental hazards of fossil fuel consumption." She gave a scornful chuckle, adding: "Slaves are too easily influenced. It's almost tragic."

I swallowed my nearly overpowering hatred of the woman and pressed on. The scope of her project was only now becoming clear. I needed more information.

"But a few oil spills couldn't possibly account for the severity of the pollution I observed in your time."

"My time?" she sniffed pretentiously. "I belong to no specific era. Just as the jet setters of old believed they were at home in any country. But you're correct. That particular 'crisis' is the cumulative result of more than four centuries of the Society's temporal manipulations. If you know your history, you might recognize some of our handiwork during that tedious war in the Persian Gulf; or the more recent conflict between the two Americas. Most times, however, the Society's campaigns are far less ambitious. We generally send politicians back to introduce bills that ease, say, restrictions on the disposal of industrial waste."

"And other times," I completed her progression of thought, "you sponsor missions to subvert the pharmaceutical industry."

"Precisely."

"To what end?"

"Are we talking about your specific area of influence?"

"Yes."

Mrs. Dibbs sipped from her drink.

"For the first time in recorded history," she explained, "the population explosion is under control, thanks to that horrid little pill you had a hand in making. If your act of sabotage were to sway public opinion in favor of the drug's abolition--"

"The number of Earth's inhabitants would surely double in less than a century, once the PSP became illegal," I broke in.

"Correct. Now, what is the single most valuable commodity Gecko's orbiting colonies can offer an overpopulated and dying world?"

"Food?" I guessed too quickly.

Mrs. Dibbs grimaced. "Matter processors have made traditional agriculture obsolete."

I paused. There was only one other resource Columbus had in abundance. And it wasn't cyberstrips.

"Real estate," I said.

The woman reached over to pat my hand, as if she were rewarding a child with her approval. I recoiled inwardly at her frigid touch.

"Very good. Our estimates show that Columbus alone can sustain approximately twenty-three million people--a far cry from the two hundred thousand that already live here."

"Twenty-three million?" I gawked.

Of course! This explained why the spaceport immigration office was so much larger than it needed to be; or why the transport spokes were built to accommodate a massive crush of daily travelers. They had nothing to do with overzealous engineers. Mrs. Dibbs and her executive council would force the Columbus immigration co-op to ease citizenship restrictions, in anticipation of the mobs that would swarm here from Earth to purchase their measly plots of grass.

"Your scheme is quite elegant in its conception," I said wonderingly, and not for the benefit of her already bloated ego. I was awed by the breadth of the Syndicate's influence, and by its almost complete mastery of human chaos. But--"Why do you have to make life so unbearable for so many people? Can't you benefit by tampering with the time stream in moderation?"

Mrs. Dibbs laughed out loud. "There's that sentimentality again. It will be your undoing, Mr. Erdogan, mark my words. To answer your question: I have been a student of human nature for a long while; a very long while indeed. And the one thing I have learned is that people need to find themselves on the brink of catastrophe before they are motivated to change. So I provide the conditions that encourage them in a specific direction--"

"And acquire a few trillion credits in the bargain." I clapped my hands to punctuate my simulated delight. "Outstanding!"

She puffed up with pride, visibly pleased by the impression I pretended she was making on me. I couldn't believe how easy it was to fortify this woman's lordly opinion of herself. But with my affirmation came the answers I required; and they enthralled me.

She leaned closer and with an air of conspiracy, said: "That's just the beginning. Using the Shiv, we have been able to manufacture what you might call atemporal cavities in the space-time continuum. We influence the past to maximize our dividends, then store the money in these pockets so it is not negated by the paradoxes we create when the process is reversed."

"Reversed?"

"Oh yes. Whatever we do can be just as easily undone. In fact, we're almost ready to begin our second iteration. When we realize our return on investment by fouling the atmosphere, we'll go back in time to profit from cleaning things up again. It's a self-replenishing resource, with unlimited growth potential. So I shouldn't worry about the fate of humanity, if I were you. Things will be set to rights soon enough; and no one will be the wiser for it."

I shook my head incredulously. This was beyond all comprehension, and certainly well outside the bounds of such a subjective concept as morality. The woman fancied herself a god. She controlled the direction of human history as if it were a toy car on a child's miniature roadway; and we were all of us unwitting victims of her capricious will, bumbling around the obstacles she set against us, while she leisurely gathered the rewards of our confusion.

Except there was one small oversight. I picked up on it almost immediately.

"If these paradoxes threaten to erase your proceeds, then you can never remove your money from the atemporal cavities. Isn't that true?"

Mrs. Dibbs became quiet.

"That's a wrinkle I haven't quite ironed out," she acknowledged, a shade of anger coloring her voice.

"So why are you doing this thing, if you won't be able to gain by it?"

She straightened herself haughtily and answered with three words I won't soon forget:

"Because I can."

And that statement alone told me everything I needed to know.

II

The call came in shortly after eight.

I was idly scanning some of the titles on the book shelves when the telephone rang. Mrs. Dibbs answered, then summoned me to her desk. Looking tired and drawn, Glenda peered out from the viewing screen. I could hear the voice of a stewardess beside her, and massive engines thundering in the background.

"I'm on the shuttle," she shouted over the din. "We just launched for Earth."

"Did Schlesinger mistreat you at all?"

"No. He's on his way back to you now."

"Good."

Glenda regarded me sadly. "Neil, I--"

She paused, canceling what it was she wanted to say.

"Yes?" I prompted her.

She looked away, then quickly returned her gaze.

"Good-bye, Neil."

I swallowed awkwardly. "Good-bye."

The screen went blank. I tried--unsuccessfully, I think--to hide my grief. Mrs. Dibbs seemed to take no notice.

"Get Schlesinger on the line," I commanded her. "I want to make sure he's nowhere near Glenda."

"One moment."

The woman punched in an access code. Schlesinger replied almost immediately. By his surroundings I could tell he was in the cockpit of a car traveling at high speed.

"Yes?" His lisp had receded, though the flesh around his thick mustache was still puffy with an ugly, purple bruise.

"Where are you now?" Mrs. Dibbs asked.

"The Trans-Columbus. I passed Perth about ten minutes ago."

"Very well. Come to my office as soon as you arrive."

"Yes, ma'am."

She turned off her telephone. "Are you satisfied, Mr. Erdogan?"

"As you say, you are a woman of your word."

"Indeed I am. All that remains is for you to prove that your promises are as unfailing." She slid open one of the desk drawers and pulled out my Shiv. "Ms. Steiner retrieved this from her unfortunate lover's purse. A complicated task, as Mr. Schlesinger will tell you, but not impossible. I believe you know what to do with it."

"I do."

She handed me the device. "Excellent. Do you remember the details of your assignment, or would you prefer to review them briefly before you go?"

"I remember."

"I thought you might. I don't know what you expect to tell the R-MegaDawn shippers about your nose. But you're a very bright man. I'm sure you'll come up with some outlandish story that will have those half-wits rolling in the aisles."

"I will."

"And that nauseating shirt," she said, pointing to my chest.

"I'll stop off at my apartment to change."

"Excellent. Then we shall await Mr. Schlesinger's return, and the two of you will soon be on your way."

I started. "The two of us? What do you mean?"

Mrs. Dibbs closed the drawer and reached for her disk reader. She glanced up at me and said, "I'm afraid you'll require an escort for your first few assignments. Don't take it personally, Mr. Erdogan; it's standard corporate policy. You must earn my trust before I allow you to work alone. Especially when the Shiv can provide a most expedient means of escape."

"You have my word, madam," I huffed.

The woman shrugged casually. "I know. But right now your word means very little to me. It took us months to find you; and I'm not about to start that process over again. Mr. Schlesinger will be instructed to monitor your activities from a respectable distance. But he will accompany you. Think of him as well, as our insurance policy."

"That's hardly necessary," I protested, making no attempt to conceal my disgust. I was all too familiar with the nature of her "insurance policies."

"My decision is final," she said and turned her attention to the disk reader. Dispirited, I withdrew to the other end of the room.

So much for Plan A. I had fully intended to wish myself to the farthest reaches of the globe. IndoPakistan was my first choice, because its sophisticated pharmaceutical industry would no doubt offer a wide selection of jobs to someone with my experience; and its burdensome population would make it nearly impossible to track me down, especially if I rid myself of that infernal Shiv. Unfortunately, Mrs. Dibbs had too easily guessed my game. I chided myself for having been so bloody obvious. She was already generously endowed with a sense of her own greatness. None of my flowery words had served to charm me into her confidence. On the contrary, they must have alerted her to my scheme.

I stood before the holoform fire and comforted myself with its illusion of warmth. It seemed an appropriate metaphor for my life up to that moment, I reflected bitterly. For what had I been doing these past few years, if not embracing one fantasy or another? The hallucinogens I consumed as entertainment; the virtual companions I requisitioned for my pleasure; the flavorless food my matter processor conjured to fill my belly: these had been so effortlessly replaced when I made my home with Glenda. And that was little more than one of the Syndicate's elaborate machinations.

Artifice or no, the flames struck a contemplative note deep within me. The silent minutes of my meditation were collected with precision on the face of a nearby digital clock. Mrs. Dibbs snuffled behind me and continued her reading.

Now is the time, I realized with grim finality.

A turning point has been reached; a decision must be made. As Sandra told me only yesterday, I could willingly submit to my destiny, or I could put up one hell of a fight.

And she was right. I was tired of living on my knees.

When Schlesinger strode into the office a half hour later, I knew what my course of action--indeed, my ultimate protest--would be.

He listened carefully to the details of his assignment, then joined me at the center of the office, clamping onto my forearm with his one good paw. I raised the Shiv and my hand trembled, despite how carefully I had circumscribed my fear.

Closing my eyes, I emptied my mind of its clutter. I emptied it of everything. It was a blank slate. A vast prairie of gray. A deathly silence.

The temporal rip yawned open before us.

I took a deep breath, then pulled Schlesinger into the content of my thoughts

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I

And stepped alone into an empty room.

It looked like the Preservation Society headquarters. The architecture was identical; and I remembered the elaborate cornices--all flowery seraphs and laurel leaves--that concealed the joints where ceiling met wall. But Mrs. Dibbs' breathtakingly vulgar furniture and assorted curios were missing.

What had happened? Why was I here? And where the hell was Schlesinger? I glanced around with confusion.

The hardwood floors were bare. A modest turquoise couch and matching lounge chair squatted in the middle of the room. Between them stood an antiquated reading lamp, its green shade wildly askew. Flimsy-looking bookcases leaned together against one wall. Their shelves were stuffed to overflowing with a jumble of literary disks and uneven stacks of manuscript hard copy. The other walls were adorned with two-dimensional and holographic photographs of famous writers, most of whom I recognized on sight. At the far end of the salon were a simple dining table and one chair. On the table's surface sat a burnished goblet. I walked over and picked it up.

My bowling trophy.

Baffled, I set it back down and went to have a look around the house.

The first few doors along the hallway revealed nothing. Many of the bedchambers were empty or contained only a bit of carpeting and the occasional stained mattress. One room next to the kitchen was converted into a small greenhouse. The air was oppressively humid. Under the hot glare of incandescent lights there grew little flats of herbs and various legumes, some with delicate vines that spiraled the lengths of their thin support sticks. I noticed with interest three bushy pot plants thriving in a corner, and wondered if I should help myself to a few of the aromatic leaves--a bracer for my frazzled nerves--or wait to ask for their caregiver's permission. It mattered little in either event. I was not in possession of a pipe or rolling papers. And I wanted to stay on my toes. This was definitely unknown territory. God only knew what surprises were waiting for me on the top floor of the house. I gave the marijuana one last glance and closed the door behind me.

Standing again in the hall, I peeked 'round a corner into the galley kitchen. It also was sparingly equipped. An ancient kettle rested upon an equally primitive oven range. An old refrigerator chugged and coughed in one corner. The tap above the sink was stopped up with a metal seal. Beside it sat a relatively modern water purifier, a plate with knife and fork, and a spotted glass.

Curious. I turned and made my way to the stairs.

Taking them two at a time, I mounted the landing and discovered dozens of pulpboard boxes stacked against the far wall. One of the cartons was open and I looked inside. It was half filled with inexpensively printed chapbooks entitled, simply, Preservation Society Manifesto. I scooped one of the booklets off the top of the pile and slipped it into my pocket.

There were only three doors here, behind one of which was the toilet. I gave the two remaining rooms a quick inspection--they were empty--and walked down to the opposite end of the hall. It halted abruptly before another steep staircase.

I had never been in this part of the house. These steps, I assumed, led directly to the attic. I climbed them to the top and found an unpainted, wooden door slightly ajar. From behind it came the rapid clickety-click-click of typing on a keyboard. Then a cough. I caught my breath and cautiously pushed my way into the loft.

There was a single bed, neatly made up, and a dresser in the nearest corner. The door swung open further to reveal a shabbily dressed man at a computer terminal, his back to me. The ancient hinges groaned. He stopped his work and turned in my direction.

It took me a couple of seconds to realize who he was; I almost didn't recognize him for his beard.

"There you are," my older self called. And then, squinting through his bleary spectacles: "My God, look at your nose. That must hurt like the bloody dickens."

My brain suddenly shut itself off. I could only stand there with my mouth open.

"It's all right," he motioned to me. "I won't harm you. Come in. Please."

I stumbled from the doorway, stammering, "What, what the bloody hell--"

He nodded pensively. "This will take a little time to explain. But you're tired and hurt. Let's get you a clean shirt, and go down to the kitchen to make some tea."

II

He handed me a dainty china cup on a chipped saucer. My arm quivered from exhaustion, and a brown curl of tea slopped over the rim. I peered suspiciously into the steaming liquid.

"You didn't spike it with some kind of sedative, did you?" I asked him warily.

My older self looked at me as if he didn't quite understand what I was saying. Then he threw back his head in a loud guffaw.

"Right, right," he continued to chortle. "That was a long time ago; I'd nearly forgotten. But you must understand, it wasn't I who drugged you. Well, it was--but not really."

I gave him a muddled stare. "You've lost me."

"Have I? I'm sorry. It's really very simple, when you think about it. The man who hosted your first excursion to the future no longer exists. Or at least I never became that person, thanks to the way in which you changed your life."

He frowned, pulling at the whiskers on his chin. "I remember him drugging me that night at my compartment. And I remember leaving him here, in this house, when Glenda and I made off to Columbus. But that's the last I ever saw of him. It's as if he just disappeared. And believe me, I'm not sorry he's gone. Weak-minded bastard that he was."

I smirked into my cup. "There's no need for insults. After all, he was a part of us both."

"Very true," he agreed. "But I can't help thinking of him as a separate personality. There was so very little about him that I found familiar. Just as I must seem quite alien to you." He sighed. "Time has a funny way of making us strangers to ourselves."

"I can't argue with that!"

"Would you like something to eat?" he asked abruptly.

"Absolutely."

From one of the cupboards he extracted a tin of dry-looking sugar biscuits. He dropped a handful of the wafers onto his plate and extended them to me. I seized one--I hadn't eaten in what seemed like eons--and wolfed it down. He raised his eyebrows and passed me the entire platter. I ate greedily, then tucked away the second helping he offered.

"Better?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Think nothing of it." He poured himself a mug of tea. "Why don't we retire to the living room? My furnishings aren't much to speak of, but they're comfortable. I'm sure you'd like to relax. There's something I want to discuss with you. And you must have a thousand questions for me."

I gratefully accepted the invitation, though I was more attracted by his promise of rest. I hadn't slept in days; and this strange turn of events had left me feeling quite unsettled.

We carried our cups down the hall to the salon. He switched on his reading lamp, and lowered himself with difficulty into the chair. A touch of arthritis, I noted. Or maybe just poor health. He didn't look as if he exercised much. I took a seat on the couch.

"So," he said, "you're probably wondering how you came to be here."

I almost snorted a mouthful of hot tea through my broken nose. A white bolt of lightning shot up my sinuses as a result, and blue spots whirled crazily before my eyes. It took more than a minute for the pain to subside. My other self regarded me sympathetically.

"That may qualify as the understatement of the century!" I told him when I was recovered enough to speak. "I wasn't expecting to survive this trip."

He took off his spectacles and began to clean them with a gray handkerchief he extracted from his pants pocket.

"Yes. An odd form of protest, that--launching yourself, and Schlesinger, into the depths of nonexistence. It was a gutsy act, to be sure. But I'm afraid it wouldn't have worked very well. There is, after all, no such time or place as oblivion; so your thinking of nothing when you entered the temporal rip actually contravened the principles under which the Shiv operates. You simply would have stepped back into Mrs. Dibbs' office. Which is why I was compelled to intervene."

I shook my head. "But--"

"How?" He balled up the handkerchief and shoved it back into his pocket. "There are still many things about the Shiv that you don't understand. I've been studying it for years, and I'm only now uncovering some of its more obscure secrets. Basically, I diverted your temporal signal, and you were deposited here."

"And Schlesinger?"

My other self curled his upper lip with distaste. "That son of a bitch? He's in a permanent orbit around Earth. Hardly a fitting death for such a cold-hearted killer, if you ask me. But the end result is all that really matters."

I stared into my cup, digesting the information I'd been given. He was right: I too would have preferred a more grisly fate for the bastard. But I moved that thought aside. I was not in the business of exacting vengeance out of spite, no matter how the thug had deserved it.

"Is that the way things went in your time line? Were you returned to Mrs. Dibbs' office?"

He rubbed his eyes and grimaced. "Yes. You can imagine my surprise when that happened. If I hadn't been so consumed with the resolution of my predicament, I might have had a nervous breakdown on the spot. And as it stands," he added grimly, "I only delayed the inevitable."

I let him trail off without demanding more of an explanation. I saw no point in reopening what was obviously an old wound. Besides, my own grip on reality was loosening quickly, so I was hardly in a position to comment. If I didn't get some sleep--and soon--I'd most likely find myself wearing clothes pegs for earrings, and quoting cereal box blurbs as if they were Shakespearean sonnets.

"So--"

"Did I complete my mission for the Society?" he said, anticipating my question. "Unfortunately, I was left with little choice. Schlesinger made me do it at gunpoint; and it sickens me to think of my compliance. What I originally believed to be the purpose of this mission--that is, to rally public opinion against the PSP and all it represents--has its merits, in my book. Ghastly product, that. But to fulfill Mrs. Dibbs' perverted ambitions; and under such loathsome conditions " He shuddered. "These days, the only quality we have left that makes us truly human--"

"Is our right to choose," I interjected almost automatically. It suddenly struck me that we were completing too many of each other's sentences. Was it telepathy? I didn't think so. But it was an interesting phenomenon I hadn't experienced with my other, older self.

He replaced his spectacles, and blinked through the thick glass. "Precisely. Take away personal choice, and we're no better off than a herd of cattle. But as Mrs. Dibbs told me long ago, whatever you do can just as easily be undone, with the Shiv at your disposal."

I nodded, remembering. That conversation was only a few minutes in my past.

"This is why you brought me here. Isn't it?"

"Yes." He leaned forward in his chair and asked, "Do you recall what that other Neil told you before the two of you drove out to the Society meeting?"

I thought back to the time, but my memory of it was fuzzy.

"Not specifically," I admitted. "We spoke of a good many things that day."

"He said you were here, in this uncertain future of yours, to find out what one man could do to effect change."

"Yes, that's right. I remember."

"Well, you'll soon have your answer to that question," he muttered cryptically.

"What do you mean?"

"You'll see. In the meanwhile, I need to take my medicine; and you should have a bit of a nap."

"But--"

"Sleep," he insisted. "Really, you'll need it where you're going."

He reached to put out the light. Without another word, he pushed himself awkwardly from his chair and left me alone in the dark.

Confused, and a little perturbed by his abrupt exit, I closed my eyes and settled into the couch for a few minutes of shut-eye.

III

"Neil!"

I jumped awake. My older self stood over me, smiling.

"Did, did I--"

He nodded. "Considering what you've been through, it's no wonder you slept most of the afternoon. How do you feel?"

I was very groggy, and my nose hurt.

"I'm okay," I lied, swallowing. The inside of my mouth tasted like an old copper penny.

"Excellent. I'm making supper. Think you can stomach my cooking?"

I gave him a scowl. "If it's anything like my own, we should probably order out for pizza."

He laughed. "Touché. Actually, I've gotten pretty good over the years. I make a mean pesto. And with fresh ingredients, too. Come with me."

I got up stiffly from the couch and followed him down the hall. He ceremoniously opened the door to his greenhouse--assuming, no doubt, that I had never laid eyes on the place. A shade of disappointment crossed his face when I told him I'd already seen it.

"Of no matter," he grumbled. "It does a man proud to grow his own food. Now, where did I put the basil? A great pesto requires fresh basil, you know."

"And pine nuts," I added. "What do you use for pine nuts?"

"Cockroaches."

When he saw I was about to faint, he added quickly: "That was a joke."

"Oh. Good!"

I closed the door behind me and stepped awkwardly over a patch of radishes. He retrieved a rusted pair of scissors from a shelf, and made his way to the crop of basil thriving beneath one of the incandescent lamps.

"You've grown some handsome pot plants," I noted, hoping he might offer me a recuperative toke.

My older self adjusted his spectacles. "Thank you. But those aren't for recreational purposes which is unfortunate. I've developed many of the more painful symptoms of glaucoma; and smoking marijuana is a natural method of relieving the intraocular pressure."

He stooped to harvest his succulent herbs.

"I can't afford the more modern therapies," he said, grunting as he worked. "Hardly anyone can. But that's the tenor of our times. These days the rich are so arrogant and corrupt that nothing is accomplished on official levels, except to appease their incessant whining for more power. The rest of us have been left to fend for ourselves. It's almost pathetic, the way people will labor endlessly for these contemptuous bastards--and then actually thank them for the crumbs they are thrown. This is probably why the Society has, for many of its members, become more of a commune-type arrangement. We have very little use for politicians or economic oligarchies. We live in a kind of socialized anarchy: fending for ourselves, educating our children; tending our own flocks, as it were. Which to my mind is a preferable state of affairs. Means you can't blame others for your lot in life."

"If you say so," I replied dubiously.

"I've been living here for about seven months," he continued. "I gave up my compartment when the house was vacated by its previous tenants. The artificial atmosphere still functions, though most of the other conveniences--its neural nets, for instance; or the matter processor--were never installed. I grow these vegetables, and do a bit of writing. Nothing fancy, but it suits my present needs."

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. "One man, alone in this house? Seems a pretty solitary existence, if you ask me."

"Not really." He bunched the basil leaves together in his hand and replaced the scissors where he found them. "Friends visit from time to time. And we hold the Society meetings here. I think I chose this house as our headquarters just for the sheer irony of it."

I stared at him with incomprehension, and he chuckled apologetically. "Sorry. I'm leaving too many holes in my narrative, aren't I? Well, to make an excessively complicated story mercifully short: Mrs. Dibbs abandoned the Society and set up shop somewhere else, after I informed the other members of her scheme. As you might imagine, they were pretty pissed."

"I'm surprised she didn't have you killed for your troubles."

He nodded. "Me too. I guess she didn't find us much of a threat. All of the Shivs in our possession were implanted with a special heat sink that was set to overload by remote signal. I managed to remove the sink from one of the devices before she keyed in the self-destruct sequence; and I used it to divert your temporal beam. As far as I know, she still believes we are not capable of traveling through time."

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. "How did you bisect the Shiv? Sandra tried for weeks without success."

"Oh, it was through no ingenuity on my part, let me assure you. I dropped it accidentally while I was poking it with a screwdriver, and the thing just popped open. The outer casing has four pressure points incorporated into its design. Push them in the right order, et voilà."

"And the Society? If Mrs. Dibbs abandoned it--"

"Questions, questions!" he interrupted with a wave of his hand. "Our Manifesto will answer them all. Have you seen it? I'll get you a copy."

"I have one already." I pulled the thin book from my pocket.

"Check out the colophon page," he instructed me. I flipped over to the end of the pamphlet and read the inscription.

"Published by Erdogan Press?" I glanced at him, and he beamed proudly.

"Has a nice ring to it, wouldn't you say?"

"It does indeed," I smiled. "So the whole dog and pony show's in your capable hands, is it?"

He shook his head. "Not really. All of the members have their duties to perform, and an equal role in the decision-making process. I'm kind of the glue that holds the whole, crazy mess together. You'll find out more when you read it. Have a seat in the living room and go through it, if you like. I'll fix our dinner."

"Okay."

We parted company in the hall. I returned to my couch and opened the book to its first page.

It began with a phrase that had lost its meaning a long, long time ago:

"We, the people "

IV

His Manifesto was extravagant with the language of emotional persuasion, yet tempered by a careful logic. I recognized some of my own style in his prose; and a shade of Marx's dour rationalism, a hint of Thomas Paine's pyrotechnics. But for the most part he had developed a voice that was his own. I was impressed. It never occurred to me that I might continue with my writing; or that I'd be able to do it with such flair.

I put aside the booklet and thought about what I had read. There was a lengthy description of the Syndicate's many sins. I knew them only too well, and so I skipped those paragraphs. What pricked my attention was his statement of the Preservation Society's aims. These were, in brief, to reverse Mrs. Dibbs' ongoing temporal manipulations; to affect social change through personal enlightenment (he placed a heavy emphasis on studies of the liberal arts); and to uphold the dignity of human life. I wondered how radically his methods departed from those of the Syndicate. And was the good Dr. Andersson, inventor of the Shiv, still involved? There was no mention.

My gaze drifted from the pamphlet to the bookcases leaning against the far wall, and the stacks of manuscript hard copy caught my eye. I got up to investigate.

Most of the pages, I discovered, were minutes from the Society meetings. I glanced through them, but they held nothing of any real interest. My older self hadn't exaggerated: it was a crazy mess. The conversations between the members strayed to any conceivable topic except the one at hand; and he spent most of his energy gently guiding them back to the matters that were tabled for discussion.

Their repair work on the time stream was proceeding slowly. But they had no method of gauging the success of their missions. Several members complained on more than one occasion that they feared their efforts were for naught. My other self assured them the work had its value; though even in the terse lines recorded by the Society secretary I could sense he was losing faith in the process.

I scanned the records for evidence of Glenda's participation. Her name never came up.

Except on the back of one sheet, where a poem had been scrawled in my own hand. I strained to piece it together--it had been rigorously, almost savagely, edited--and what emerged was a love song of such elegant beauty, I knew at once who inspired it:

Where your soft and ample breasts converge

Is the seat of my most tentative philosophy.

Your perfume, by alchemy of our desire,

Breeds sweet and mysterious narcotic,

Sends me deliriously spinning.

I am lost, lost in this undiscovered country

Of your warm and generous bosom!

Let the cruel ministrations of age consume me

Piecemeal, as fire consumes my tobacco,

As sulfurous smoke consumes my living lungs.

What is my body to our eternal moment of delight?

Time itself whispers to a stop when you enfold me.

My fingertips trace the delicate circles of your areolae;

And together we marvel how this most intimate knowledge

Transmutes simple flesh into nuggets of the purest gold.

I carried the poem down the hall to the kitchen, rereading it as I walked. The wonder of these lines astonished me. My poetry had always been so spare, so intensely cynical. And yet, here I found an almost romantic sensibility that had been curiously restrained by a classical obsession with form. The internal half-rhymes and careful alliterative resonances struck a near-perfect symmetry with his quiet eroticism. My own epigrammatic barbs, by comparison, seemed trivial and weak.

My other self hummed softly as he cooked. A huge metal pot of pasta bubbled on one of the back burners. He patiently stirred his pesto; and when I entered the kitchen the aroma I received--even through the crusted packing in my nostrils--was enough to instantly set my stomach to grumbling. He looked up from his preparations, and saw the sheet of paper in my hand.

His expression changed.

"So, you managed to dig up one of my little secrets, eh?" he mumbled. "The old man composes love poetry. Hardly what you would have expected, I'm sure."

I shook my head and read some of the lines once again. "It's, it's beautiful," I breathed. "Have you written others?"

"Yes." He shrugged. "But they're nothing. Just whimsical nonsense."

"I wouldn't say that. Not at all. Why haven't you published?"

He tapped his wooden spoon on the edge of the sauce pan, then laid it to rest on the stove top. He turned to me, wiping his hands on a towel.

"I write for my own pleasure," he said simply.

"When did you do this?"

"I don't know. A couple of years ago, I guess. It's odd, the things that pop into your head without warning."

I looked at him. His eyes met mine, but I think he was seeing something else; something that was far away, almost beyond his field of vision.

"You still love her," I said. It wasn't a question.

He folded the towel, draped it over the handle on the oven door. Then he went back to his cooking.

"I've had a long time to consider many things," he told me. "When you reach my age, you can look back down the road that leads to where you are now; and if you have luck, you might see where you took that wrong turn; where you went left instead of right. Do you mind if I offer some constructive criticism?"

I blinked. "Uh, no. Not exactly."

He tasted some of the pesto from the tip of his spoon, and resumed his stirring. "You're a fine one for introspection, Neil. Always have been. But you have no ability to see into the souls of others. To you, people are merely an agglomeration of surface features; grains of dialog beaded together to form a pretty necklace; gestures that signify little more than what you observe. Glenda had--and still has, no doubt--a very strong personal ethic. I didn't realize this until our relationship was too far gone to repair. She went with you to Columbus because, at the time, she thought she was doing the right thing. Yet she learned to care for you, despite your shortcomings; and this became her new morality, her new guiding principle. All you could see, however, was her deceit. And the funny thing is, it was your own spiritual bankruptcy that betrayed you."

I failed to understand how his criticism was in any way constructive, but I kept quiet and accepted it with humility. To be sure, he wasn't telling me anything I didn't already know.

He surveyed my doleful expression and said, "Don't despair. There's still hope for your salvation." Then, almost as an afterthought: "Unfortunately, you can't get to heaven unless you first spend time in hell. Which leads me, reluctantly, to the purpose of our meeting."

"And that is?" I asked cautiously. Something in the pit of my stomach sent out a general distress signal.

He paused, as if searching for the appropriate words. I didn't like the sound of his silence.

Finally he blurted out: "We--that is, the other Society members and I--would like you to assassinate Mrs. Dibbs."

He let out a shuddering sigh, obviously relieved that he'd found the nerve to speak his mind. For a moment I watched him quietly, then pursed my lips and gave a solemn nod.

"I had a feeling you were going to say that," I muttered.

"Then you must already know what your answer will be."

And the funny thing was, I did. But before I had a chance to reveal it, my knees buckled involuntarily and I fell in a heap against the wall.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I

I don't know what happened in the minutes that followed my collapse. It didn't seem as if I had passed out. But I suddenly found myself lying on the couch with a wet face cloth folded across my forehead. My older self was at my side, his cool fingers clasped around my wrist.

"Your pulse is pretty erratic," he intoned. "I suspect your system has had as much as it can take for one day. I'll prepare a bed so you can recuperate."

"That won't be necessary. I'm okay."

He eyed me suspiciously. "Are you sure? It'd be disastrous if you fainted at a crucial moment."

"Yes, I'm positive. Don't worry."

I sat up, feeling slightly disoriented. The face cloth dropped onto my lap, and I passed it to my host. He looked at it in his hand, as if accepting it from me went against his better judgment.

"Really," I assured him. "I'm quite all right now. "

"If you say so," he grumbled.

"Your request came as a bit of a shock. I half expected it. But I guess I wasn't really prepared for it."

"Yes. You'll forgive me for being blunt. I didn't know if there were a more roundabout way to introduce the subject."

"After suffering Mrs. Dibbs' methods, I've come to appreciate the direct approach. I'm afraid, however, that you may have the wrong man for the job--much as I'd like to do it. I mean, it's one thing to run a batch of placebos through R-MegaDawn's shipping channel. It's entirely another matter--"

"To murder a human being in cold blood?" He bit his lower lip and nodded. "I'm well aware of that fact. It's a hell of a thing to kill someone. Even if she deserves it."

I watched his face in the dim light cast by his reading lamp. The difficulty of his task was written plainly in his eyes, and I commiserated with him. I didn't know which one of us was in the more unenviable position.

"So you've a fairly weighty decision to make," he plodded on, "whether or not you will do us this one great service. I have no intention of forcing the matter upon you. But let me say this: there are times when killing becomes necessary; and this is definitely one of them. Mrs. Dibbs' scheme is so far beyond morality or law, and her manipulations have caused such misery for so many, that we must abandon our own personal ethics to stop her."

"There has to be another way," I insisted. "I'm no assassin. I couldn't possibly--"

"Couldn't you?" he glowered. "You've seen what we live with every day of our lives. This same cesspool of an existence awaits you. You can't run from it. You can't pretend it won't happen. It will happen! Act now, and we have an opportunity to restore much of what that woman has destroyed. Hesitate, and I guarantee you this conversation will repeat itself in fifteen years."

I let my gaze wander to various, indistinct points around the room. Nothing I looked at seemed to register in my consciousness. It was like wading through waist-deep mud. I simply could not generate enough momentum to complete my thoughts, to render the decision I knew I must make in his favor.

I could never kill.

But in my revulsion I understood this wasn't true. I was already guilty of that sin. Sandra was dead. And so was the mime. Their executions burned like negative film images in my mind's eye: the clouds of dust sifting into a mound at my feet; the human shape, writhing in flames, at my hand.

I shook my head to dislodge the visions, and failed.

"Everything I've done in my own self interest has come with such a heavy price," I muttered wretchedly. "Now it's time to settle the bill. And here I am, quibbling over the terms of payment. "

"I'd rather regret something I did, than something I didn't do." He snorted. "So much for my words of wisdom. I'm sure you didn't really need to hear that. I'm afraid that's the extent of my talents as a motivational speaker." He hesitated, then said: "Let me show you a book I was given many years ago. It might help to clarify this situation for you."

He stood up and went to retrieve a thick, leather-bound volume from one of the flimsy shelves. Returning to my side, he gingerly opened it to a page that had been marked--presumably for my benefit--and handed it over for my inspection. I glanced down at the illustrations

And immediately swallowed back my rising gorge.

There was one picture of a little boy who had no skull. His empty eyes stared in different directions; and his head had a squashed look to it, like butterscotch pudding in a plastic bag. Another infant's torso was split open down the middle. His entrails hung from his belly in a black bunch, reminding me of blood sausage on display at a butcher's counter. The last photo on the page was that of a small girl with thin wisps of blonde hair, her purple heart dangling like a plum on the outside of her chest.

Nauseated, I snapped the cover shut with a bang. My other self jumped, then gently but firmly pried the publication from my white-knuckled grip.

"Please be careful," he admonished. "Paper books are a rarity in this time."

I coughed up a meager apology, but he ignored it.

"This particular medical reference," he continued, "was issued about two decades ago. I wish I could say these children are accidents of nature, but they're not. More than sixty percent are born with abnormalities of one kind or another. It's easy to reduce our environmental catastrophe to an abstraction, because it exists on such a grand scale. But these" --he patted the volume's leather hide-- "these are the victims. The ugly reality. Whenever I doubt the work our Society does, I glance through these pages. And I know we have to persevere, no matter what the cost."

He handed it back to me but I held him off. "I've seen quite enough, thank you."

"I'm afraid you haven't even begun to see." He shoved it directly under my nose. I averted my eyes.

"Look at it!" he ordered.

"Enough!" I flung out my arm and accidentally knocked the heavy tome from his hands. It skittered noisily across the floor. Horrified, he hurried after it, scooping it up into his arms and hugging it to his chest as if he were saving a holy relic from further desecration.

"You talk of settling your bills," he spat, almost to the point of tears. "Aren't your high moral standards a fair price if these children never find their ways into this this repugnant list of atrocities?"

I regarded him in silence. He tenderly passed his hand across the leather cover.

"All I ask is that you read it. Carefully. Then decide what you have to do."

He placed the book on the arm of the sofa and made for the door, mumbling something about our dinner getting cold. When he was gone, I turned my attention to the obscenity he had left behind. It lay by my fingertips, staring vacantly at the ceiling like a tombstone toppled onto its back. Hesitantly, I riffled its pages with my thumb, then flipped it open. It fell conveniently upon the little girl with the malformed heart.

Conveniently?

Or was it intentionally so? I lifted the book for a closer inspection.

Wedged into the seam where the pages met at their spine, I found a lock of hair maybe four or five centimeters in length and corseted with a dainty, pink ribbon. The tuft was fair in color and silken to the touch; indeed, it almost felt as if it weren't there at all: a feather wafting delicately against the skin. It had probably been collected from the head of a very young child.

I paused, then returned to the photograph. Yes. There were similarities. But four-color reproduction was a dying art, even in my day. I couldn't say for sure if the clipping had come from this tiny, unfortunate creature. Hell, it might even have been a snippet from Glenda's satiny mane, kept as a remembrance of better days.

Which sent a shiver scribbling up my spine. To whom did the hair belong?

I thought about this for a very long time. Then decided it must be an unhappy coincidence.

II

I've yet to recall a more joyless supper. The food, as promised, was excellent. But I couldn't purge from my memory the ugliness of those stillborn children; and I found, within a few bites of my meal, that I'd lost my appetite. My other self seemed to have forgotten the whole matter, and ate energetically while I watched. We cleared our plates from the table when he was done. I put the kettle on for another pot of tea.

A few minutes later there came a buzzing sound from somewhere down the hall. My older self looked up from his dish washing, and seized a towel to wipe his soapy hands.

"There's the door," he said. I hurried behind him to the air lock. He opened a control hatch and thumbed a green button with STERILIZE printed on it in white block letters.

We waited patiently--or, to be precise, my other self waited patiently and I fidgeted--while the decontamination chamber did its work. Finally, I heard the sound of scraping metal as the air lock retracted. The hallway door swung aside, and three people clad in heavy environment suits shuffled in.

One of the figures held up its hand in greeting, which my other self acknowledged with a slight nod of his head. Then they busied themselves with the removal of their outfits. There were two men and one woman, all in their early fifties. The woman--a black-haired beauty with large, sand-colored eyes and a kind face--was the first to undress, and she went to hang her equipment in the nearby closet. The men left their things scattered messily on the floor. I found this a bit presumptuous, but my other self seemed not to mind, so I held my tongue.

"Neil," the woman smiled. She leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

"Nahirika," he said. "That's a lovely perfume you're wearing. Ted, how are you?" He extended his hand, and the taller of the two men shook it heartily, answering, "I'm fine, thanks. Good to see you again." The second man--a misshapen troll with a pinched, pink face and white hair--came forward and handed over a package wrapped in aluminum shipping foil.

"I brought the gun," he grunted.

My other self glanced quickly at me, then accepted the box and said, "Yes, well thank you, Jacques. We'll talk about this later."

The man stiffened. His bleary eyes were set with a grim obstinacy. "No. There can be no more delays. We will speak of this now."

"Uh, it really isn't a good time."

"With you, there never seems to be a good--"

The one named Ted clapped Jacques on the shoulder. The troll whirled around, his nostrils flaring.

"Jacques, I know it's hard, but try to remember your manners. If Neil says we'll talk later, then we'll talk later." To my other self he said: "Now, what about a drink, old man? I was roasted alive in that suit!"

"Absolutely. Scotch?"

"Sounds fine."

"Nahirika?"

The woman nodded. "Yes, scotch will do very nicely, thank you."

He paused. "Jacques?"

The man's face grew a shade pinker. He glared at me with disgust, then turned and stomped off to the salon.

"Miserable little shit," I heard Ted mutter under his breath. My other self looked at him, but said nothing. He held out his arm toward the living room, and his two remaining guests proceeded quietly down the hall.

The kettle started to whistle. I slipped into the kitchen to take it off the burner. While I prepared my tea, I listened as my older self and his three visitors began to talk in low voices. I couldn't make out everything they were saying. One of the men--I think it was that Jacques character--kept reminding them of the time. Or was he talking about timing? None of his companions seemed very interested in what he had to contribute to the conversation. He was told several times to shut up. There was a long period in which I could hear nothing. Then Nahirika said, "It is decided."

That was probably my cue. I carried my tea down the darkened hallway to the salon. Everyone watched me come in. Nahirika and Ted were seated on the couch. My older self had taken his usual spot on the lounge chair. Jacques was stewing by himself at the dining table. I leaned against the closest of the bookcases and cradled the hot mug in my palms. No one said a word.

At last, my older self cleared his throat and fastidiously removed a small clump of fuzz from the front of his shirt. "Have you come to a decision? I'm afraid we'll need one now."

I nervously sipped from my tea. "Yes, I've made up my mind."

"And?" Jacques growled impatiently. The others glanced at him, then back at me. I began to squirm uncomfortably.

"And," I answered slowly, "I'm still not sure I know how to murder another human being. But--"

Jacques swore. He shot out his right arm, and from under his sleeve a nasty-looking pistol snapped into his palm. Before I could react he charged from his seat, held the weapon to my head and cocked the firing bolt. Startled, I tried to back away. But he had me pinned in the corner.

"Jacques!" my other self shouted.

"Shut up!" His red face was next to mine, and his rank breath was hot against my cheek. To me he snarled: "You point the gun and you shoot it. Do you have any other stupid fucking questions?"

I gasped and frantically shook my head.

His thin lips twisted into a maniacal grin. He released the firing bolt and lowered his pistol.

"Took you by surprise, didn't I? There's your first and most important lesson in killing. The rest comes naturally."

The others were immediately on their feet. My older self seized Jacques by the shoulders, and Ted wrenched the gun from his gnarled hand. Jacques shook himself free, spitting obscenities, and skulked back to his seat at the table.

"That was entirely unnecessary!" Nahirika yelled at him. Then, turning to me, she asked, "Are you all right?"

Furious beyond words, I pushed past her and stormed into the hall.

I heard my other self call, "Neil!" But I marched into one of the empty bedrooms and slammed the door as hard as I could.

Screw them! Screw them all! I didn't need this shit! For Christ's sake, I was going to say I'd help them anyway. But after this, it'd be one frigid fucking day in hell before I lifted a finger for those fruitcakes.

I sat down on the cold floor and clenched my fists to keep my hands from shaking. This was outrageous! How could anyone be expected to tolerate such such savagery?

Someone tapped hesitantly at the door.

"Neil?"

It was Nahirika. I refused to answer.

"Neil, may I speak with you for a moment?"

"Go away!"

I searched my pockets for my Shiv, and realized I had left it upstairs in my other self's room. Damn!

"Please?" she pleaded.

I heard the worry in her voice, and felt like an ass for yelling at her. Really, she'd done me no disservice. I decided to hear her out.

"Okay," I relented. "But just you. That fucker Jacques stays in the hall, if you don't mind."

"Ted is watching him," she assured me. "I am alone."

The door eased opened, and she slipped inside.

"Leave the lights off. I prefer to be in the dark."

"Nonsense." She flipped the switch by the door. I had to cover my eyes from the glare.

"There," she said. "That's better."

She sat down next to me. We said nothing to each other for several minutes. Finally, I looked over at her and mumbled, "So, what is it you want?"

Rather than answer, she slipped her hand under my arm and rested her head on my shoulder. I was taken a little by surprise, so naturally I recoiled. She immediately released me from her embrace.

"Forgive me," she apologized. "It is not easy for me to differentiate between you and your older self. Of course, you do not know me now. But you and I have been friends for a long time. Almost fourteen years."

"Really?"

"Yes. We met just before " She paused.

"Before?"

She removed a strand of hair from her eyes and shook her head. "Nothing. It is enough to say that I have shared many of your most intimate secrets, and some of your darkest moments. In a way, we have been like lovers; and I had hoped we would one day formalize our relationship."

Oh great! Just what I needed: a proposal of marriage. I frowned.

"Why are you telling me this?"

Nahirika gave a sad smile and looked at her small hands resting on her lap. "I understand your hesitancy with regard to this assignment. You are concerned about our sanity. Oh, do not bother to deny it: I know you almost as well as you know yourself. But I am a doctor. You must accept my assurance that we are all more or less in our right minds--with the obvious exception of Jacques, which I am sure you realize by now. He is a very bitter and disturbed man; and for the moment we need him."

"He has a supply of firearms?"

"Yes. Without him, we would have no other way of obtaining the weapons we need in our struggle against Mrs. Dibbs. Such items are now expressly forbidden on Earth. Which makes Jacques a regrettable necessity. Ordinarily, we are quite selective about whom we allow to enter the Society. Our work must always be above reproach."

"Even when it comes to murder?"

She used her hands to smooth out her sari--a nervous habit, by the look of it--then nodded.

"I'm afraid that is also a regrettable necessity. I must urge you to decide in our favor. It is most important that we proceed with all haste. Lately Mrs. Dibbs has become bold, even by her own standards. Her campaigns are growing increasingly destructive. We are afraid she might eventually create a paradox of such immense proportions that it will permanently rupture the temporal stream--if such a thing is even possible; none of us knows for certain. In our time, she surrounds herself with a near-impenetrable security force. But she awaits you in the past, unguarded at her office on Columbus. No one else will ever have an opportunity to get so close, and at a point in linear history before many of her most catastrophic manipulations will have taken place."

"None of this is news to me, Nahirika," I said evenly. "Why did you really come here?"

She looked away. Was she crying? I couldn't say. She remained absolutely still. But when she spoke, her voice was tight with the effort of her control.

"You are right, of course. I could never hide anything from you. I suppose I wanted you to know what we ourselves are willing to sacrifice for the success of your mission."

"Sacrifice? I'm not sure I understand."

"No, you would not. " She turned and lay the flat of her palm on my arm. I could feel the warmth of her touch through my shirt. It was a simple expression of tenderness; and though I could not return her affection, I believed I would hurt her terribly to reject it yet again. She stared at the floor.

"If you assassinate Mrs. Dibbs," she whispered, "everything we know will change. More to the point, the founding of the Society might become unnecessary; and you and I will probably never meet. While this means little to you, it saddens me to think of a world in which we could not could not "

"What? Love each other?"

She laughed bitterly. "It sounds ridiculous. I suppose there was never really a chance for us. Your heart has always belonged to that Glenda person, wherever she may be. But a foolish old woman has the right to her dreams, is this not true?"

I took her hand in mine, and kissed it gently. She smiled. Those eyes, such a wonderful shade of brown. They were truly captivating.

"I'm sorry," I told her as kindly as I could. "If events had worked themselves out any differently --"

She leaned back against the wall and sighed. "They did work out differently. But that is our predicament, is it not? To coin a phrase from one of your favorite poets: 'The time is out of joint.'"

Shakespeare. Well, I'll be damned. She knew Shakespeare.

"'O cursed spite,'" I muttered, finishing the quotation, "'that ever I was born to set it right!'"

"Exactly."

I held her in silence a while longer. Then we went to join the others in the living room.

III

I'll say this for Jacques: he was a towering asshole, but he knew how to handle a weapon. Within minutes of his instruction, I believed I could take apart and reassemble that pistol with one hand tied behind my back. He must have had military training.

I was given two extra power packs, in case I found myself in the middle of a firefight; a knife with a frighteningly long, serrated blade, for the unlikely possibility of hand-to-hand combat; and a single PSP, for the very real possibility that I would be taken prisoner and tortured for information.

I raised an accusatory eyebrow at my older self, and he shrugged. "I never said I wanted the pill abolished. Just restricted from over-the-counter sales."

"Hmm. That's cutting it to a fine edge, wouldn't you say?" I remarked acidly.

"Not really, no."

I gave my equipment a final inspection. It wasn't really necessary, but I needed to do something with my hands.

"Personally, I'd love to stick around and argue the clumsier points of your rationale, but I have a rather pressing date with destiny."

My other self grinned. "How very noble of you."

"I like to think so."

I paused for a moment to size him up, this man who would be me in a little under two decades. He stood there in his shabby clothes and thick spectacles, looking more like a vagrant than a revolutionary. There was obviously room for improvement; but on the whole, I liked what I saw. He was a writer and a thinker: a tall man, despite the fragility of his bones, and with his comrades at his side. For the first time I sensed the purpose in his life. It was palpable, like an energy radiating from him in all directions.

The strength of conviction, I reflected. I had possessed such a quality once, when poetry was the driving force of my life. I would possess it again. That much was clear to me now.

And it suddenly struck me how very wide awake I felt, how keenly my perceptions were operating. It was probably the adrenaline coursing through my veins. I certainly had no idea what I was getting myself into, or if I'd be able to pull the trigger when the moment came. But at the time it seemed as if I had been roused from a long sleep. It was exhilarating, a head-spinning rush no hallucinogen could provide.

"See you in fifteen years?" I called to my older self.

"No offense," he said, "but I hope not."

"Yeah me too."

Ted gave me my Shiv, and we shook hands. A pity we would never get to know each other better: he seemed like a good guy. Jacques had retreated into his corner. But even he had a crooked smile on his pink face.

I pressed the red button. The temporal rip opened with a resonating clap. From the corner of my eye, I caught Nahirika as she turned to my older self and gave him a loving kiss.

A kiss goodbye? Perhaps.

So this was the picture of what might have been. I stored the brief moment in my memory, grateful that I had captured it before my departure. If ever I were again to lose my way, this would be my road sign, my internal compass

From the midst of his embrace, my older self looked up and waved.

I would have returned it, but my free hand was clamped to my holstered gun.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I

It was as if I had never left.

Mrs. Dibbs was still seated at her desk, reading from her portable viewer. Three cubes of ice orbited lazily in the glass of scotch by her right hand. Her green head lifted when I stepped into the office. She did not seem particularly surprised that I had come back without my guard.

"That was fast. You were only gone a few minutes."

I pocketed my Shiv and walked toward her. "Actually, I've been away for hours. All the time in the world to make a few painful but necessary adjustments to my life."

"Indeed." She considered me silently, her fingers laced together, her flabby white arms resting on her desktop. "Am I to assume that Mr. Schlesinger is no longer in my employ?"

I gave her a terse nod.

"That's too bad," she went on unemotionally. "I suppose his family will have to be compensated for their loss, too. Such a shame. I will miss him. His methods were horribly unsophisticated, but he did his job well. Which is more than I can say for you." She pointed to my sidearm. "I see you brought along a gun. Will you use it to assassinate me?"

I blinked. What the hell was going on? Clearly she was on to me, yet she wasn't making any threatening moves. My eyes darted quickly from one corner of the room to another, searching for evidence of a potential ambush. I saw nothing that suggested danger.

Which in itself suggested danger. I proceeded with caution.

"Uh, well I thought I might, yes."

"You must be very brave," she remarked, her voice thick with sarcasm. "But are you bold enough to vaporize a defenseless woman? That is the question which is foremost in my mind. I'm willing to bet you are not."

"I wouldn't be so quick to make that wager," I huffed. Her extravagant self-confidence had thrown me off my stride. I struggled inwardly to regain it.

"No? We shall see. I suggest you fire now, before I come to my senses and call for help."

I stared at her incredulously. This was all too surreal--even for me. She must be bluffing, convinced that I didn't possess the strength of will to do her in. I hesitantly removed my gun from its holster and pointed it at her. She didn't even flinch.

"Very good," she praised. "All that's left is the killing. You may proceed when ready. I won't try to escape."

My forefinger curled around the trigger.

And inexplicably my arm began to tremble. Fat beads of sweat burst painfully from the pores of my brow. I took a couple of deep breaths to calm my nerves. But as each excruciating second crawled past, I became more and more distraught. Before long, I was quaking so badly that I thought my gun might rattle itself to pieces in my hand.

Mrs. Dibbs' pouchy face contorted into a slow, wry grin. She hoisted herself up from her chair and stepped around the desk, her left arm outstretched.

"I told you your sentimentality made you weak," she scoffed. "It takes a certain kind of inner--oh, what's the word? Potency? Yes, I like that. It takes a certain kind of inner potency to explore what lies beyond your moral boundaries; an attribute you evidently do not possess. Now be a good boy and give me the gun."

"I don't think so."

I retreated, blinking away the salty perspiration that stung the corners of my eyes. My pistol was trained uncertainly at her chest.

She took another step closer.

"Give me the gun!" she demanded, her face clouding with rage.

"No!" I caught my breath and with my last wisp of determination squeezed off a round of silence.

Nothing happened!

I pulled the trigger again. Still nothing.

What was wrong with this bloody thing? I gave my weapon a quick examination, and noticed its energy indicator light flashing red. The power pack was empty. I gaped at the ugly device, now a useless hunk of metal in my palm.

Mrs. Dibbs chuckled. "You'll find it has been deactivated. Another of Mr. Schlesinger's ingenious security contraptions. He installed it not a week ago, and already it's proved to be indispensable. Personally, I don't understand the technology. But it works, and that's all I really care about."

I seized one of the backup power packs from my ammo belt. It too was completely drained. So was the third. Damn it to bloody hell! I had not wanted to use the knife. But now it appeared as if I had little choice. I let the gun slip from my hand. It bounced quietly on the carpeted floor.

"Well, that's a neat trick," I muttered, pushing the panic from my voice.

"I like to think so," she replied evenly. "Shall I show you another?"

I remained silent. I was becoming painfully aware of the PSP tucked away in my pocket.

She went back to her desk and reached for the intercom. All she said into it was, "Now, please."

No one replied.

Momentarily the office door swung open, and to my gut-wrenching astonishment Glenda appeared.

I almost fell over backwards.

"I'm so sorry, Neil," she cried fearfully. "I never got on that shuttle. Ed made me call you from a holoform studio."

It felt like a grenade had detonated in my brain. I thought I was having a stroke. My plan of attack lay before me in ruins. And I hadn't been back a full five minutes.

The room started to spin. I held onto myself. I had to stay focused.

"So," Mrs. Dibbs' voice wandered through the rubble of my thoughts. "Are you ready to discuss my terms, Mr. Erdogan?"

II

The holoform fire spit and popped in its artificial hearth. Mrs. Dibbs used a cast-iron poker to stir the fading embers, sending a flurry of orange sparks up the flue that led to nowhere. The flames surged for a moment, then retreated. She replaced the poker and returned to her leather swivel chair. Glenda stood in the corner by the door.

"I think you'll find that my proposal is unsuitably fair-minded," Mrs. Dibbs said to me. She slid open one of the desk drawers and pulled out a snub-nosed plasma rifle. Glenda cringed when the muzzle swung in her direction. "Release the PSP shipment to R-MegaDawn's distribution channel, and I'll allow the two of you to go free. Refuse, and Ms. Watson suffers a particularly slow and excruciating death. Of course the same fate will await you, should you continue to decline my more-than-generous offer."

"How do I know you'll keep your word?"

The green-haired woman shrugged. "You don't. But uncertainty is the essence of life--at least, it is for most others. Considering the fragility of your position, I think you should accept."

I looked over at Glenda.

"Don't do it, Neil," she warned in a low voice.

Mrs. Dibbs glared at her. "Never test my resolve, young lady! You'll find I have very little patience for such cheek."

Glenda ignored her.

"Don't do it," she said again.

A blue-white bolt of hot plasma belched from the gun. Glenda crumpled to the floor. Horrified, I tried rushing to her aid. But Mrs. Dibbs held me off with the weapon. Glenda stirred slowly. Her eyes fluttered and she sat up, moaning softly.

"That was the first stun setting," the woman informed me. She used her thumb to flip a small switch. "This is number two. Shall we see what happens?"

Glenda looked up at me and shook her head. I stayed where I was.

"Mr. Erdogan? The choice is yours."

I did not answer.

She sighed--such a flimsy show of regret!--and pulled the trigger. Glenda let out a bone-chilling howl and went into convulsions on the floor. I could only watch her helplessly.

"How can you permit this to continue?" Mrs. Dibbs implored me, as if I were the cause of Glenda's torment.

I gritted my teeth and stared at the witch, my fists twisted into a white-knuckled clench.

"All you have to do is assent to my wishes, and Ms. Watson's pain ends. Don't you see how easy that is? Give me your answer."

I said nothing.

Mrs. Dibbs fired again. This time Glenda bit her tongue in her seizure, and blood gushed from her mouth in a foamy spray. I closed my eyes. Her grunts and yelps stung my ears, pierced me to the core.

"Really, Mr. Erdogan," the woman scolded. "I would never have suspected you could be so heartless. Let's see what the third setting will do."

I could stand this display no longer.

"All right!" I exploded. "I'll do it! God help me, I'll do it! Now stop!"

Mrs. Dibbs smiled: an evil, lopsided, yellow-toothed smile. The sight of it made me sick to my stomach.

She had won. I could never swallow the PSP. That would leave Glenda at her mercy. And my knife was useless against the overwhelming power of her plasma rifle.

I had failed. Miserably. I hung my head in shame.

Glenda's paroxysms subsided. Weakly, she propped herself up onto her elbows and passed the back of her hand across her lips. It came away with a wet, red smear.

"Are you okay?" I inquired. It seemed like such an idiotic thing to ask. Obviously she wasn't okay. But I had to know how badly she'd been damaged.

She looked up at me and whispered something that sounded like, "You're a shit!"

I blinked. "What?"

She choked and spit a bubbly wad of crimson saliva onto the carpet.

"Do you mind?" Mrs. Dibbs complained. "I had that imported from South America."

Glenda shot her a vicious scowl, then repeated to me in a louder voice: "The Shiv. Use the goddamned Shiv."

I stared at her, perplexed. The Shiv? What would the Shiv do? Was she bidding me to escape while I still had the chance?

"I can't leave you," I told her.

She grimaced and shook her head. "That's not what I mean, stupid."

Then what did she ?

In a flash I got it, all at once.

Before Mrs. Dibbs could withdraw to safety I yanked the device from my pocket, aimed it at her, and pressed the red button. A temporal rip cracked open at her side, buzzing her shoulder with its electric edge. Her arm convulsed involuntarily, and she lost her grip on the gun. The weapon tumbled to within Glenda's grasp. I saw her painfully reach for it. Mrs. Dibbs was still dazed from the shock, and did not move fast enough to recover it. Glenda snared the rifle with both hands. She held it up, and squinted back the tears that fogged her vision.

Mrs. Dibbs stood very still. For once she looked frightened.

The black hole sizzled and snapped in mid-air, then began to waver. It was a hungry mouth that needed to be fed. I knew the field would collapse in on itself within minutes, unless someone stepped through it.

So why not appease its appetite? Why not indeed?

As if reading my mind, the green-haired woman followed my gaze to the temporal rip, and her mouth fell open.

"Please--" she began.

I smiled at her.

"The time for clemency has long passed," I said with a gratifying sense of retribution.

"But--"

"I'll only say this once: get in!"

III

"What are you waiting for?" Glenda shouted. "Do it!"

Wide-eyed with fear, Mrs. Dibbs glanced at me, awaiting the moment of her execution. But I had already made my mistake. I had hesitated.

Again.

I cursed my inaction. In seconds her arrogance had returned. She reached for her tumbler of scotch on the polished desktop.

"Don't move!" I ordered, waving the Shiv at her.

The woman paused, then decided she was in no immediate danger. She brought the glass to her lips, winked at me and took a drink. The pink dewlap hanging from her jaw quivered as she swallowed.

"Just a sustaining sip," she teased. "No need for alarm."

"Put that down and keep your hands at your sides!"

She acquiesced, but not before stealing a second mouthful of the amber liquid.

"Why are you so upset, Mr. Erdogan?" she asked, leisurely setting the tumbler to one side. "You obviously have the upper hand. I am completely overcome. But I sense you would rather make a deal than resort to violence. Am I right?"

"I think not."

She raised an eyebrow. "Really? What if I were to make you an offer? Three percent of the fortune I have amassed in my atemporal pockets. Enough money to purchase two of my orbiting colonies, plus sufficient funds to secure a comfortable retirement for yourself and your lovely, er, plaything. That should set your mouth to watering, if I'm not mistaken."

"Don't listen to her," Glenda warned. Holding the rifle steady, she pulled herself to her feet and limped over to my side. The temporal rip buzzed like a swarm of angry hornets.

Mrs. Dibbs' eyes never left mine. "Don't interfere, deary. We're in the midst of negotiations. Aren't we, Mr. Erdogan?"

"I know Neil," Glenda spat. "He'd never take your dirty money."

"Really?" The woman raised an eyebrow. "On the contrary, I would say you are the one who doesn't know our friend here. Not in the slightest. He and I are of the same species: predators, conquerors. Look at him! In the past few hours he's managed to do away with two of my most talented assassins. Now he's ready to spare my life in exchange for a handsome fee. I find it all rather refreshing. Such opportunism is a rare quality these days, among so many sheep."

"Neil?" I felt Glenda's hand on my shoulder. I did not turn to meet her eyes.

"Mr. Erdogan?" the woman called. "My offer remains open. I could use a man like you on the executive council."

I glanced briefly at her. She stood before the desk, her gaudy robes ballooning ridiculously about her swollen midriff, a tumbler of scotch by her liver-spotted hand. And at her fingertips was an empire that stretched throughout the solar system to the ends of time itself.

So this is ultimate power, I mused. A fat, middle-aged lush with bad hair and ugly clothes. Hardly the type to inspire epic poetry or a Wagnerian opera. She was almost pathetic in her tastelessness.

And yet, how easy it might be to fall in at her side and learn the arts of omnipotence, now that I was invited to do so. How easy to slip beneath her veil of amorality, to act without the pricking of conscience. To blot out God's face with the pad of my thumb. I was sorely tempted.

But not so much that I could lose myself entirely to this hag.

My time was upon me. I accepted the rifle from Glenda and pointed it at the evil bitch.

She looked at the gun in my hand, and sighed. "I thought we'd settled this matter. Would you mind aiming that thing in some other direction?"

"Yes," I said. "As a matter of fact, I would."

She paused. "I see. And what do you propose to do with it, now that you have me in your line of fire?"

"Not much, really," I answered languidly. "The temporal rip seems a more fitting end for a woman of your perverse stature. I thought you might make a colorful addition to the frigid landscape of the moon. Or perhaps Venus. Its atmosphere, being as inhospitable as it is, would crush, incinerate and asphyxiate you in seconds. Although it is too much like hell; I have no doubt you would flourish under such conditions. So which will it be? I leave the decision to you."

Her mouth twisted into a sneer. "Neither, you treasonous--"

"Wrong answer!" I shouted over her. "There is no middle ground here. Your choice is fire or ice. So I ask again: which will it be?"

The woman's composure visibly deteriorated. To her credit, she still managed to meet my gaze with proud defiance.

"You haven't the strength of will," she mocked me. "Killing with premeditation demands such a quality. Your sentimentality makes you weak."

"I'm getting tired of that old song," I snapped. "You said so yourself: we are the same breed of animal now. Like you, my heart is stone; gravel runs through my veins. But unlike you, Mrs. Dibbs, I know the price of hubris. Read your Shakespeare. His tragedies are littered with the bodies of arrogant men. Just as the moon's surface will soon be polluted with yours."

An expression of panic whitened her face. She looked around for some means of defense. In no particular hurry, I stepped forward and held the barrel of the gun to her head. She backed away, coming dangerously close to the temporal rip. As if sensing a meal, its buzzing rose to a crescendo. She looked behind her and cringed.

"Get in," I ordered.

She did not move. I advanced upon her, and viciously seized her by the hair. Her eyes widened with terror.

I snarled, "Get in!"

With the full force of my wrath I flung her at the sizzling hole.

Instinctively she threw out her arms to check her fall, but caught the edges of the rip instead. There was a loud hiss, as of steam escaping from under the lid of a pot. Her body shook violently, locked in the field's high voltage embrace. Her jaw dropped open in a silent shriek. Her flesh blackened and peeled away like burnt paper

Then silence. The hole shivered and disappeared. Mrs. Dibbs toppled over; her corpse, now a desiccated husk, thudding stiffly to the floor. I stood over the charred, smoking remains and pocketed my Shiv. A good thing my nose was plugged. The stink might have been overwhelming.

Her glass of scotch waited on the desk. I reached for it, leaving a ring of water glinting on the polished wood, and raised it up in a bitter toast.

Good night, foul queen, I bade her in my thoughts; and swarms of demons drag thee to thy doom!

IV

For a moment neither of us stirred. Then I heard a snuffle from behind me, and I turned. Glenda was staring at the woman's scorched body, a blood-smeared hand over her mouth. I let the rifle drop to the floor and went to her.

"Are you all right?"

She nodded. Her face was very pale. Her lower lip began to tremble behind her slender fingers, and she burst into tears. She raised her hand to hide her eyes. Tentatively, I reached for her and pulled her into my arms. She sobbed openly against my chest.

"It's okay," I comforted her.

She continued to weep. She had to get it all out of her, so I waited patiently. When she was through, she wiped her eyes and looked up at me.

"The worst is behind us now," I told her.

"Is it?"

"I think so, yes." I wrapped my arm around her shoulder for support, and dug into my pocket for the Shiv.

"Where are we going?"

"Home. I just want to get home." I paused, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. "Are you ready?"

She studied me for a moment. "I could ask you the same question."

"Yeah," I muttered, more to myself than to her. "So you could."

Which meant nothing, and I knew it. But I did not care to elaborate. And Glenda didn't press me for an explanation.

EPILOGUE

I

It was all a rather confusing business, in the end. I don't know what happened when Mrs. Dibbs was found murdered. There were rumors that a terrorist group had claimed responsibility for her assassination, and some of these were reported in the interactive media. Eventually the citizens of Litton, ever hungry for new and interesting diversions to fill the long hours of their leisure, turned their collective attention elsewhere. And the green-haired woman--their oppressor, even if they knew nothing of their oppression--was quickly forgotten.

No one interrogated us about her death. Which comes to me even now as a monumental relief. I assume the other council members were too preoccupied with their own petty power struggles to worry about me. Without Mrs. Dibbs' controlling influence, you see, they went quite mad.

I think I gave you a fairly good taste of what they were like: a bunch of dime-store despots, the whole lot of them. They carved up her empire like the proverbial side of beef. I didn't hear if they tried to open the atemporal cavities. But I doubt they did. That money will probably sit there until some idiot comes up with a scheme that'll stop time long enough for them to divide and spend it.

I do know, however, that three of the colonies were liquidated. Columbus' administrative co-ops banded together and bought the place for themselves--and, of course, for the people they represented. It's still the garden it was when we moved there, although property taxes are pretty high to cover the cost of the purchase. Glenda and I live happily in our small apartment. We are thankful for what we have, and do not plan to leave it soon.

As for my original mission--the release of the PSP shipment--I never did complete it. Or, to be precise, I haven't completed it yet.

The decision, after all, is mine. If there's one privilege I've learned to hold most dear, it must be my freedom to choose the roads I travel; and to travel the roads that lead me home.

Life is about making choices. Without that simple right we have nothing. My older self understood this, which is why he left the Shiv in my care. He knew one day I would return to it; and perhaps one day I will. R-MegaDawn's little white pills are wrong. Those authorization forms await my thumbprint; the paradox summons me to its resolution. Time demands its small compensation.

But not now. That is another story; and I have this particular narrative to put in order first.

II

Lately I've been having this dream.

In it I am running, running with a small child through a field of long waving grass; the grass waving in the cool breeze that dries the sweat from my face. There are no worries, no intrigues, no deadlines to meet. Only the long, bright summer days and evenings of unimaginably wonderful sunsets widening themselves before us without end.

The town cemetery, with its perfectly chiseled monuments and its immaculately tended lawns, graces a tree-crowded knoll to our left. To our right is a pond fed by clean, cold spring water, its surface sprinkled by new fish jumping, their arched backs glinting in the late afternoon sun.

I'm going to get you, I call.

The child shrieks with delight and pumps her small legs as fast as they will go, the long grass whipping at her smooth brown calves.

Here I come, I call to her. Here I come.

But before I can catch her an old tree root winds itself around her foot, sends her tumbling to the earth

And as if by magic I am there, scooping her high into the sunshine. She laughs, wrapping her little arms about my neck. She smells like warm skin and fresh air. She kisses me on the cheek and wriggles herself free. Then she is off, running wildly ahead of me; and I know then that everything will be all right. I will always be there for her. I will always be there to catch her when she falls.

My eyes flutter open as the child runs away. The dream ends.

If I have had a particularly exhausting day, I return easily to my sleep. Most times, however, I will lie in bed for hours and listen to Glenda slumbering at my side. Her breathing is a gentle accompaniment to my own. Her hair brushes softly against my shoulder.

I drape my arm about the narrow of her waist. My hand surrounds the warm, firm swelling of her abdomen. The tiny life inside her moves beneath my hand.

Morning comes slowly. The sounds of the gradually awakening city mingle with the beating of our three hearts.