"Check."

            "We were roused out-I was roused out; you were already up-I was roused out too soon late Friday morning.., and learned that City Hall did not like me. But you and Auntie sprung me-sprang me?-sprung me ... and we left for Luna City so fast I left my toupee hanging in the air."

            "You don't wear a toupee." "Not anymore, I don't; it's still hanging there. We arrived L-City circa sixteen hundred that same Friday. You and I had a difference of opinion-"

            "Richard! Please don't dig up my past sins." "-which was soon cleared up as I saw the error of my ways and craved pardon. We slept that night at the Raffles; it was still Friday the fourth of July when we went to bed. We had started that day many klicks west of there, with freedom fighters getting gay with guns. Still with me?"

            "Yes. Somehow in my memory it feels much longer." "A honeymoon is never long enough and we're having a busy one. The next morning, Saturday the fifth, we retained Ezra, then we went to the Warden's Complex... came back and were waylaid at the entrance to the Raffles. So we left the Raffles hurriedly, in a cloud of corpses, escaping by courtesy of Gay Deceiver and the Time Corps. Most briefly we were in the land of my innocent youth, loway where the tall corn grows. Then we blinked to Tertius. Beloved, at this point my groundhog calendar becomes useless. We left Luna Saturday evening the fifth; we arrived here in Tertius a few minutes later, so for our purposes I designate the Tertian day of our arrival as equivalent to Saturday, five July, 2188, and I so name it. Never mind what Tertian citizens call it; it would only confuse me. Still with me?" "Well... all right." "Thank you. I woke up the next morning-Sunday July sixth-with two feet. For Tertius the lapse of time was, I concede, thirty-seven days. You tell me that for you it was about two years, a most unlikely story-I'd rather believe in unicorns and virgins. For Gretchen it was five or six years, which I am forced to stipulate because she is now eighteen or nineteen and knocked up; I have to believe it. But for me it was just over one night, Saturday to Sunday.

            "That 'Sunday' night I slept with Xia, Gretchen, Minerva, Galahad, Pixel, and possibly Tom, Dick, and Harry and their sheilas Agnes, Mabel, and Becky."

            "Who are they? The girls, I mean; I know those boys. Too well."

            "You poor, sweet, innocent child; you are too young to know. Surprisingly I slept well. Which brings us to yesterday, designated by strict numbering as Monday July seventh. Last night we spent catching up on our honeymoon... and thank you bolshoyeh, mistress mine."

            "You are welcome, sirrah. But the pleasure was shared. I now see how you arrived at that date. Both by dirtside calendar and your biological clock-the basic clock, as every timejump-er knows-today is Tuesday the eighth of July. Happy Anniversary, darling!"

            We stopped to swap some spit and Hazel cried and my eyes got watery.

            Breakfast was swell. That's all the description I can give it because Gwen Hazel decided to treat me to Tertian cooking and consulted with Dora under a hushfield, and I et what was sot before me, as the Iowa farmer had carved on his tombstone. And so did Pixel, who had some specials that looked like garbage to me but tasted like ambrosia to him, as proved by his behavior.

            We had just finished our second cups of-no, it was not coffee-and were about to slip over to the Long mansion for my "special treat," i.e., for me to meet my new daughter, Wyoming Long... when Dora spoke up:

            "Advisory notice: Time line, date, time, and location. Official. Please prepare to set your timepieces on the tick." Hazel looked surprised, hurriedly grabbed her handbag, dug into it, pulled out a something I had not seen before. Call it a chronometer. "We are in a stationary orbit around Tellus, Sol in, in time line three, coded 'Neil Armstrong.' The date is Tuesday the first of July-"

            "My God! We're back where we started! Our wedding day!"

            "Quiet, dear! Please!"

            "-Gregorian. Repeat: Time line three, Sol ID, July first, 2177 Gregorian. At the tick it will be zone five, oh nine forty-five. Tick! Those equipped to receive sonic close correction, wait for the tone-"

            It started with a low note and squealed on up until it hurt my ears. Dora added: "Another time tick and sonic correction will be offered in five minutes, ship's time or Tellus zone five time, which are now matched for local legal time designated 'daylight time' for interception point on this time line. Hazel hon, private to you."

            "Yes, Dora?" "Here are Richard's shoes-" (Plunk, they hit the bed. Out of nowhere.) "-and his other two suits-" (Plop.) "-and I packaged the small clothes and stockings with them. Shall I add a couple of jumpsuits? I took Richard's measurements while you slept. These aren't washables; these are Hercules cloth, won't take dirt, can't wear out."

            "Yes, Dora, and thank you, dear. That's thoughtful of you. I hadn't yet bought him anything but city clothes."

            "I noticed." (Plop-another package.) Dora went on, "We've been loading and unloading all night. The last of the stragglers left at oh nine hundred but I told Captain Laz about your anniversary breakfast, so she refused to let Lazarus disturb you. Message from Lazarus: If it suits your convenience, will both of you kindly get off your dead duffs and report to THQ. End of message. Transmission from the bridge, live":

            "Hazel? Captain Laz speaking. Can you two leave the ship by ten hundred? I told my hard-nosed brother that ten was the departure time he could expect."

            Hazel sighed. "Yes. We'll leave for the car pocket at once."

            "Good. Felicitations to both of you from me and Lor and Dora. Many happy returns of the day! It has been a pleasure to have you aboard."

            We were at the car pocket with two minutes to spare, me loaded with packages and cat, and getting used to new shoes- well, one old, one new. I learned that the "car pocket" referred to our old friend Gay Deceiver; the end of a short passage led right into her starboard door. Again I missed seeing those spacewarp bathrooms; Hazel's grandsons piloted us, and we were told to take the back seats. Pol got out to let us get in.

            "Hi, Grandma! Good morning, sir."

            I said good morning and Hazel kissed both her grandsons in passing, no seconds lost, and we settled down and strapped in. Cas called out, "Report seat belts."

            "Passengers' seat belts fastened," Hazel reported.

            "Bridge! Ready for launch."

            Laz answered, "Launch at will."

            Instantly we were out in the sky and weightless. Pixel started to struggle; I caged him with both hands. I think it was weightlessness that startled him... but how could he tell? He didn't weigh anything to start with.

            Earth was off to starboard, apparently full, although one can't tell that close up. We were opposite the middle of North America, which told me that Laz was a more than competent pilot; had we been in the usual twenty-four-hour orbit, concentric with Earth's equator, we would have been over the equator at ninety west, i.e., over the Galapagos Islands. I guessed that she had selected an orbit tilted at about forty degrees and timed for ten hundred ship's time-and made a mental note to check it later, if and when I ever got a look at the ship's log.

            (A pilot can't help second-guessing every other pilot; it's an occupational disease. Sony.)

            Then we were suddenly in atmosphere, down thirty-six-thousand klicks in a tick. Gay spread her wings, Cas tilted her nose down, then leveled off, and we again had weight, at one gee-and Pixel liked this change still less. Hazel reached over and took Pixel, soothed him; he quieted down-I think he felt safer with her.

            With her wings raked in for hypersonic, the only way I had seen her. Gay is mostly a lifting body. With her wings spread, she has lots of lift area and she glides beautifully. We were a thousand meters up, give or take, and over farm country on a fine summer day-clear, save for anvil cumuli here and there on the horizon. Glorious! A day to feel young again-

            Cas said, "I hope that translation did not bother you. Had I left it up to Gay, she would have put us on the ground in one jump; she's nervous about anti-aircraft fire."

            "I am not nervous. I'm rationally careful."

            "Right you are. Gay. She does have reason to be careful. The Pilots' Precautionary Notice for this planet on this time line at this year states that one must assume AA weapons around all cities and larger towns. So Gay blinks down below the AA radar-"

            "You hope," said the car.

            "-so mat we will show up simply as a subsonic private plane on air-control radar, if there is any. None, that is, where we are."

            "Optimist," the car sneered.

            "Quit hitching. Have you spotted your squat?"

            "Long since. If you'll quit yacking and give me permission, I'll take it."

            "At will. Gay."

            I said, "Hazel, I had counted on getting acquainted with my new daughter about now. Wyoming."

            "Don't fret, dear; she will never know we were away. That's the way to handle it until a child is old enough to understand."

            "She won't know, but I will. I'm disappointed. All right, let's table it."

            The scene blinked again and we were on the ground. Cas said, "Please check to see that you aren't leaving anything behind." As we got out and stood clear. Gay Deceiver disappeared. I stared through the space she had occupied. My Uncle Jock's house was two hundred meters away.

            "Hazel, what date did Dora say this is?"

            "Tuesday July first, 2177."

            "That's what I thought I had heard. But when I thought it over I decided that I must have been mistaken. I now see that she wasn't fooling: '77. Eleven years in the past. Sweetheart, that ratty old barn there is standing where we landed last Saturday, three days ago. You wheeled me from there toward the house in Ezra's wheelchair. Hon, that bam we're looking at was torn down years back; that's just its ghost. This is bad."

            "Don't fret about it, Richard. In timejumping it feels that way, the first time you get involved with a loop."

            "I've already lived through 2177! I don't like paradoxes."

            "Richard, treat it just as you would any other place, any other time. No one else will notice the paradox, so ignore it yourself. The chance of being recognized when you are living paradoxically is zero for any era outside your own normal lifetime... but usually only one in a million even if you timejump close to home. You left this area quite young, did you not?"

            "I was seventeen: 2150."

            "So forget it. You can't be recognized."

            "Uncle Jock will know me. I've been back to see him a number of times. Although not recently. Unless you count our quick visit three days ago."

            "He won't remember our visit three days ago-"

            "He won't, huh? Sure, he's a hundred and sixteen years old. Or will be eleven years from now. But he's not senile."

            "You're right; he's certainly not senile. And Uncle Jock is used to time loops. As you have guessed by now, he's in the Corps and quite senior. In fact he's the major stationkeeper for North America in time line three. Last night's evacuation of THQ was made to this station. Didn't you realize that?"

            "Hazel, I didn't even touch second. Twenty minutes ago I was sitting in our stateroom-Dora was parked on the ground on Tertius, so I thought-and I was trying to decide whether to have another cup, or to take you back to bed. Since then I've been running as fast as I can to try to catch up with my own confusion. Unsuccessfully. I'm just an old soldier and harmless hack writer; I'm not used to such adventures. Well, let's go. I want you to meet my Aunt Cissy."

            Gay had put us down across the road from Uncle Jock's place. We walked down the road a piece, me carrying packages and swinging my cane. Hazel with her handbag and carrying the kitten. Some years back Uncle Jock had placed a much stouter fence around his farm than was usual in Iowa in those days. It was not yet built when I left home and enlisted in 2150; it was in place by the time I visited in... 2161 ? That's about right.

            The fence was heavy steel mesh, two meters high and with a six-strand cradle of barbed wire on top of that. I think the barbed wire was added later; I did not recall it.

            Inside the cradle were copper wires on ceramic insulators. About every twenty meters there was a sign:

            DANGER!!! Do Not Touch Fence Without Opening Master Switch #12

            At the gate was another sign, larger:

            INTERBUREAU LIAISON AGENCY Bio-Ecological Research Division District Office Deliver Radioactive Materials To Gate Four-Wedns. Only 7-D-92-10-3sc

            YOUR TAXES AT WORK

            Hazel said thoughtfully, "Richard, it does not look as if Uncle Jock lives here this year. Or this is the wrong house and Gay missed her clues. I may have to call for help."

            "It's the right house and Uncle Jock did-does-live here this year. If this year is 2177, on which I'm keeping an open mind. That sign smells like Uncle Jock; he always did have funny ideas about privacy. One year it was piranhas and a moat."

            I found a push button to the right of the gate and pressed it. A brassy voice, so artificial that it had to be an actor, announced: "Stand one-half meter from pickup. Display your clock badge. Face pickup. Turn ninety degrees and show profile. These premises are guarded by attack dogs, gas, and snipers."

            "Is Jock Campbell at home?"

            "Identify yourself."

            "This is his nephew Colin Campbell. Tell him her father found out!"

            The brassy voice was replaced by one I recognized. "Dickie, are you in trouble again?"

            "No, Uncle Jock. I simply want to get in. I thought you were expecting me."

            "Anyone with you?"

            "My wife."

            "What's her first name?"

            "Go to hell."

            "Later, don't rush me. I need her first name." "And I won't play games; we're leaving. If you see Lazarus

            Long-or Dr. Hubert-tell him that I'm sick of childish games and won't play. Good-bye, Uncle."

            "Hold it! Don't move; I have you in my sights." I turned away without answering and said to Hazel, "Let's start walking, hon. Town is a far piece down the road but somebody will come along and give us a lift. People around here are friendly."

            "I can phone for help. The way I did from the Raffles " She lifted her handbag.

            "Can you? Wouldn't the call be relayed right back to this house no matter where or when or what time line? Or have I failed to understand any of it? Let's start hoofing it. My turn to carry that fierce cat."

            "All right."

            Hazel did not seem to be troubled over our failure to get into Uncle Jock's place, or Time Headquarters, whichever As for me, I was happy, light-hearted. I had a beautiful, lovable bnde. I was no longer a cripple and I felt years younger than my calendar age. If I still had a calendar age. The weather was heavenly in a fashion that only Iowa knows. Oh, it would be hot later in the day (it takes hot sun to grow good corn) but now, at about ten-fifteen, it was still balmy; by the time it was really hot I would have my bride-and the kitten-indoors. Even if we had to stop at the next farmhouse. Let's see... the Tanguays? Or had the old man sold out by 2177? No matter

            I was not worried by my lack of local legal money, my lack of tangible assets of any sort. A beautiful summer day in Iowa leaves no room for worry. I could work and would-spreading manure if that was the sort of work available. And I would soon spread manure of another sort, moonlighting nights and Sundays. In 2177 Evelyn Fingerhut had not yet retired, so pick some new pen names and sell him the same old tripe. The same stories-just file off the serial numbers.

            File off the serial numbers, change the body lines a bit. give it a new paint job, switch it over the state line, and it's yours!- that's the secret of literary success. Editors always claim to be looking for new stories but they don't buy them; they buy "mixture as before." Because the cash customers want to be entertained, not amazed, not instructed, not frightened.

            If people truly wanted novelty, baseball would have died out two centuries back... instead of being ever popular. What can possibly happen in a baseball game that everyone has not seen many times before? Yet people like to watch baseball- shucks, I'd enjoy seeing a baseball game right now, with hot dogs and beer.

            "Hazel, do you enjoy baseball?"

            "Never had a chance to find out. When the drugs against acceleration came along, I went dirtside for my law degree but never had time to watch baseball even in the idiot box. I worked my way through law school and was I busy! That was when I was Sadie Lipschitz."

            "Why were you? You said you didn't like that name." "Sure you want to know? The answer to 'Why' is always 'Money.'"

            "If you want me to know, you'll tell me."

            "Scoundrel. That was right after Slim Lemke Stone died and- What in the world is that racket?"

            "That's an automobile." I glanced around for the source of the noise.

            Starting about 2150 or a little earlier (I saw my first one the year I signed up) supreme swank for an Iowa fanner was to own and drive a working replica of a twentieth-century "automobile" personal transport vehicle. Of course not a vehicle moved by means of internal explosions of a derivative of rock oil: Even the People's Republic of South Africa had laws against placing poisons in the air. But with its Shipstone concealed and a sound tape to supply the noise of a soi-disant "1C' engine, the difference between a working replica and a real "automobile" was not readily apparent.

            This one was the swankest of all replicas, a Tin Lizzy, a "Ford touring car. Model T, 1914." It was as dignified as Queen Victoria, whom it resembled. And it was Uncle Jock's... as I had suspected when I heard that infernal banging.

            I said to Hazel, "Here, you take Pixel and soothe him; he's certainly never heard anything like this. And ease well off to the side of the road; these wagons are erratic." We continued on down the road; the replica pulled alongside us and stopped.

            "Need a lift, folks?" Uncle Jock asked. Up close the racket was horrible.

            I turned and grinned at him, and answered, mouthing my words so that they couldn't possibly be heard above the noise:

            "Four score and seven years ago did gyre and gimble in the wabe."

            "How's that again?"

            "Billiards will never replace sex, or even tomatoes."

            Uncle Jock reached down and switched off the sound effects. I said, "Thanks, Uncle. The noise was scaring our kitten. It's mighty nice of you to turn it off. What were you saying? I couldn't hear you over the engine noise."

            "I asked if you wanted a lift."

            "Why, thank you. Going into Grinnell?"

            "I planned to take you back to the house. Why did you run away?"

            "You know why. Did Dr. Hubert or Lazarus Long or whatever name he's using this week put you up to it? If so, why?"

            "Introduce me first, if you please, nephew. And pardon me for not getting down, ma'am; this steed is skittish."

            "Jock Campbell you old goat, don't you dare pretend that you don't know me! I'll have your rocks for castanets. Believe!"

            For the first time that I can remember. Uncle Jock seemed shocked and baffled. "Madam?"

            Hazel saw his expression, said hastily, "Are we inverted? I'm sorry. I'm Major Sadie Lipschitz, Time Corps, DOL, assigned to Overlord. I met you first in Boondock about ten of my subjective years ago. You invited me to visit you here, and I did, in year 2186 as I recall. Click?"

            "Click, a clear inversion. Major, I'm happy indeed to meet you. But I'm happier still to learn that I will meet you again. I'm looking forward to it."

            Hazel answered, "We had a good time, I promise you. I'm married to your nephew now... but you're still an old goat. Get down out of that toy wagon and kiss me like you mean it."

            Hastily Uncle unclutched his rotor and got down; Hazel handed Pixel to me, which saved his life. After a while the old goat said, "No, I have not met you before; I could not possibly forget."

            Hazel answered, "Yes, I have met you before; I'll never forget. God, it's good to see you again. Jock. You haven't changed. When was your last rejuvenation?"

            "Five subjective years ago-just long enough to marinate. But I wouldn't let them youthen my face. When was yours?"

            "Same subjective, about. Wasn't due for it yet but I needed cosmetic because I planned to marry your nephew. So I took a booster along with it. Turned out I needed it; he's a goat, too."

            "I know. Dickie had to enlist because they were closing in on him from all sides." (An outright lie!) "But are you sure your name is Sadie? That's not the name Lazarus gave me as a test word."

            "My name is whatever I want it to be, just as it is with Lazarus. My, I'm glad they moved THQ to your place last night! Kiss me again."

            He did and finally I said mildly, "Not on a public road, folks, not in Poweshiek County. This is not Boondock."

            "Mind your own business, nephew. Sadie, headquarters was not moved here last night; that was three years ago."

            XXVIII

            "The majority is never right."

                                    L. LONG 1912-

            We rode back to the house, Hazel up front with Uncle Jock, Pixel and me back with the packages. As a favor to Pixel, the replica Model T moved as silently as a ghost. (Do ghosts really move silently? How do such cliches get started?) The gate opened to Uncle Jock's voice and no lethal defenses were actuated. If there were any. Knowing Uncle Jock I suspect that there were-but not the ones posted.

            We were met on the front veranda by Aunt Til and Aunt Cissy. While Uncle Jock went inside, my aunts welcomed my bride into the family with all the warmth of country manners. Then I passed the kitten to Hazel and I was greeted by them much as Hazel had greeted Uncle but with no time loop to confuse us. Golly, it was good to be home! Despite my some-rimes stormy adolescence the happiest memories of my life were associated with this old house.

            Aunt Cissy looked older today, in 2177, than I recalled her looking the last time I had seen her-2183, was it? Was this a clue as to why Aunt Til had always looked the same age? An occasional trip to Boondock could work wonders.

            Were all three-no, all four, including Aunt Belden-serving fifty-year enlistments with the Fountain of Youth as one of the perks?

            Was Uncle Jock metabolically about thirty while maintaining the face and neck and hands of an old man in order to support a charade? (None of your business, Richard!)

            "Where's Aunt Belden?"

            "She's gone to Des Moines for the day," Aunt Til answered. "She'll be home for supper. Richard, I thought you were on Mars?"

            I consulted a calendar in my head. "Come to think about it,I am."

            Aunt Til looked at me keenly. "Are you looped?"

            Uncle Jock came back out just in time to say, "Stop it! That sort of talk is forbidden. You all know it; you all are subject to the Code."

            I said quickly, "I'm not subject to the Code, whatever it is. Yes, Aunt Til, I'm looped. Back from 2188."

            Uncle Jock fixed me with a look that used to scare me when I was ten or twelve. "Richard Colin, what is this? Dr. Hubert gave me to understand that you were under orders to report to Time Headquarters. Just this minute I stepped inside and phoned him about your arrival. But no one goes to Headquarters who is not sworn in and ruled by the Code. Leastwise, if he did, he wouldn't come out again. You said earlier that you weren't in trouble but you can stop lying now and tell me about it. I'll help you if I can; blood is thicker than water. So let's have it."

            "I'm not in any trouble that I know of. Uncle, but Dr. Hubert keeps trying to hand me some. Are you seriously suggesting that reporting to Time Headquarters could result in my not coming out alive? I'm not swom into the Time Corps and I am not subject to its code. If you are serious, then I should not report to the Time Corps' headquarters. Aunt Til, is it all right for us to spend the night here? Or would that embarrass you? Or Uncle Jock?"

            Without consulting Uncle Jock even by eye. Aunt Til answered, "Of course you'll stay here, Richard; you and your darling bride are welcome tonight and as long as you'll stay and whenever you come back. This is your home and always has been." Uncle shrugged, said nothing.

            "Thanks! Where shall I drop these packages? My room? And I need to make arrangements for this fierce feline. Is there a sandbox around from the last litter? And, while Pixel has had his breakfast, I think he could use some milk."

            Aunt Cissy stepped forward. 'Til, I'll take care of the kitten. Isn't he a pretty one!" She reached for Pixel; Hazel passed him over.

            Aunt Til said, "Richard, your room has a guest in it, a Mr. Davis. Mmm, I think, this being July, that the north room on the third floor would be the most comfortable for you and Hazel-"

            "'Hazel'!" Uncle Jock interjected. "That was the test word Dr. Hubert gave me. Major Sadie, is that one of your names?"

            "Yes. Hazel Davis Stone. Now Hazel Stone Campbell."

            "'Hazel Davis Stone,'" Aunt Til put in. "Are you Mr. Da-vis's little girl?"

            My bride suddenly perked up. "Depends. A long time ago I was Hazel Davis. Is this 'Manuel Davis'? Manuel Garcia O'Kelly Davis?"

            "Yes."

            "My papa! He's here?"

            "He'll be here for supper. I hope. But- Well, he has duties."

            "I know. I've been in the Corps forty-six years subjective and Papa about the same, I think. So we hardly ever see each other, the Corps being what it is. Oh, goodness! Richard, I'm going to cry. Make me stop!"

            "Me? Lady, I'm just waiting for a bus. But you can use my handkerchief." I offered it to her.

            She accepted it, dabbed at her eyes. "Brute. Aunt Til, you should have spanked him oftener."

            "Wrong aunt, dear. That was Aunt Abigail, now gone to her reward."

            "Aunt Abby was brutal," I commented. "Used a peach switch on me. And enjoyed it."

            "Should have used a club. Aunt Til, I can't wait to see Papa Mannie. It's been so long."

            "Hazel, you saw him right here- Right there," I said, pointing at a spot halfway to the old barn, "only three days ago." 1 hesitated. "Or was it thirty-seven days? Thirty-nine?"

            "No, no, Richard! Neither. By my time, subjective, it's over two years." Hazel added, to the others, "It's all still new to Richard. He was recruited, his subjective time, just last week."

            "But I wasn't recruited," I objected. "That's why we're here."

            "We'll see, dear. Uncle Jock, that reminds me- I want to tell you something and I must bend the Code a bit to do so. That doesn't worry me; I'm a Loonie and never obey laws I don't like. But are you really so regulation that you won't listen to 'coming attractions' talk?"

            "Well-" Uncle Jock said slowly. Aunt Til snickered. Uncle Jock turned to her and said, "Woman, what are you laughing at?"

            "Me? I wasn't laughing."

            "Mmrrph. Major Sadie, my responsibilities and duties require a certain latitude in interpreting the Code. Is this something I need to know?"

            "In my opinion, yes."

            "That's your official opinion?"

            "Well, if you put it that way-"

            "Never mind. Perhaps you had better tell me and let me be the judge."

            "Yes, sir. On Saturday the fifth of July eleven years forward,

            2188, THQ will transfer to New Harbor on time line five. You will go along. All your household, I think."

            Uncle Jock nodded. "That is exactly the sort of loop-derived information the Code is designed to suppress. Because it can so easily create positive feedback and result in heterodyning and possible panic. But I can take it calmly and make good use of it. Uh... may I ask why the move? As it seems unlikely that I would go along-and surely not my household. This is a working farm, no matter what it conceals."

            I interrupted. "Uncle, I'm not bound by any silly code. Those West Coast hotheads finally quit talking and seceded."

            His eyebrows shot up. "No- Really? I didn't think they

            would ever get off the pot."

            "They did. May Day '88. By the day Hazel and I were here, Saturday July the fifth, the Angeleno Phalanges had just captured Des Moines. Bombs were dropping all around here. You may think-today-that you wouldn't pull out. But I know that you were about to do so then; I was there. Will be there. Ask Dr. Hubert-Lazarus Long. He thought this place was too dangerous to hang around any longer. Ask him." "Colonel Campbell!"

            I knew that voice; I turned and said, "Hi, Lazarus." "That sort of talk is strictly forbidden. Understand me?" I took a deep breath, then said to Hazel, "He'll never learn"- then to Lazarus, "Doc, you've been trying to make me stand at attention ever since we first met. It won't work. Can't you get that through your head?"

            Somewhere, somewhen, Lazarus Long had had some sort of formal training in emotional control. I could now see him calling on it to help him. It took him about three seconds to invoke whatever it was he used, then he spoke quietly, in a lower register:

            "Let me try to explain. Such talk is dangerous to the person you talk to. Making predictions, I mean, from knowledge gained from a loop. It is an observed fact that, again and again, it turns out to be a disservice to the person you inform when you tell him something in his future that you have learned in your past.

            "As to why this is true, I suggest that you consult one of the mathematicians who deal with time-Dr. Jacob Burroughs, or Dr. Elizabeth Long, or anyone from the Corps' staff of mathematicians. And you should consult the council of historians for examples of the harm it does. Or you could look it up in our headquarters library-file 'Cassandra' and file 'Ides of March,' for starters, then see file 'Nostradamus.'"

            Long turned to Uncle Jock. "Jock, I'm sorry about this. I pray that you will not let the troubles of '88 make your household gloomy during the forward years till then. I never planned to bring your nephew here not yet trained in the disciplines of Time-I never planned to bring your nephew here at all. We do need him, but we expected to recruit him at Boondock with no need to bring him to Headquarters. But he refused to enlist. Do you want to try to change his mind?"

            "I'm not sure I have any influence over him, Lafe. How about it, Dickie? Want to hear what a good deal a career in the Time Corps can be? You could say that the Time Corps supported you throughout your childhood-you could say it because it's true. The sheriff was about to auction this farm right out from under us... when I joined up. You were just a tad ... but you may remember a time we ate corn bread and not much else. Then things got better and stayed better-do you remember? You were about six."

            I had some long thoughts. "Yes, I remember. I think I do. Uncle, I'm not against joining. You're in it, my wife is in it, several of my friends are in it. But Lazarus has been trying to sell me a pig in a poke. I've got to know what it is they want   | me to do and why they want me to do it. They say they want me for a job with the chances only fifty-fifty that I get out of it alive. With those odds there is no point in talking about retirement benefits. I don't want some chairwarmer in Headquarters being that casual about my neck. I must know that it makes sense before I'll accept those odds."

            "Lafe, just what is this job you have for my boy?" "It's Task Adam Selene in Operation Galactic Overlord."

            "I don't think I've heard of it." "And now you should forget it, as you don't figure into it and it has not been mounted as of this year."

            "That makes it difficult for me to advise my nephew. Shouldn't I be briefed?"

            Hazel intervened. "Lazarus! Knock it off!" "Major, I'm discussing official business with the THQ stationkeeper."

            "Pig whistle! You are again trying to chivvy Richard into risking his life without his knowing why. When I agreed to try to do so, I had not yet met Richard. Now that I know him- and admire him; he is sans pew et sans reproche-I'm ashamed that I ever tried. But I did try... and almost succeeded. But you barreled your way in... and mucked it up, as was predictable. I told you then that the Circle would have to convince him, I told you! Now you are trying to get Richard's closest relative-his father in all that counts-to pressure him in your place. Shame on you! Take Richard to the Circle. Let them explain it... or let him go home! Quit stalling! Do it!"

            What I had always thought of as a closet in Uncle's den turned out to look like an elevator inside. LAzarus Long and I went into it together; he closed the door and I saw that, where an elevator usually has floor numbers with touchplates for each number, there was a display of lighted symbols-signs of the Zodiac I thought, then changed my mind, as there is no bat in the Zodiac, no black widow spider, certainly no stegosaurus.

            At the bottom, by itself, was a snake eating its own tail- the world snake, Ouroboros. A disgusting symbol at best.

            Lazarus placed his hand over it.

            The closet, or elevator cage, or small room, changed. How, I am not certain. It simply blinked and was different. "Through here," Lazarus said, and opened a door on the far side.

            Stretching from that door was a long corridor that would never fit inside my uncle's house. But views I could see through windows that lined that long passageway did not fit his farm, either. The land looked like Iowa, yes-but Iowa untouched by the plow, never cleared for farming.

            We stepped into this passage and were at once at its far end. "Through there," Lazarus said, pointing.

            An archway melted out of a stone wall. The passage beyond it was gloomy. I looked around to speak to Lazarus; he was gone.

            I said to myself, Lazarus, I told you not to play games with me... and turned around to go back down the long passage, back through Uncle Jock's den, find Hazel and leave. I had had it, fed up with his games.

            There was no passage behind me.

            I promised Lazarus a clop in the head and followed the only available route. It remained gloomy but always with a light a little farther ahead. Shortly, five minutes or less, it ended in a small, comfortable lounge, well-lighted from nowhere. A brassy uninflected voice said, "Please sit down. You will be called."

            I sat down in an easy chair and laid my cane aside. A small table by it held magazines and a newspaper. I glanced at each one, looking for anachronisms, but found none. The periodicals were all ones that I recalled as available in Iowa in the seventies; they carried dates of July 2177 or earlier. The newspaper was the Grinnell Herald-Register, dated Friday, June 27, 2177.

            I started to put it down, as the Herald-Register is not exactly exciting. Uncle subscribed to a daily printout from Des Moines and, of course, the Kansas City Star, but our local paper was good only for campus notes, local notices, and the sort of "news" and "society" items that are published to display as many local names as possible.

            But an ad caught my eye: On Sunday, July twentieth, one night only, at Des Moines Municipal Opera House, the Halifax Ballet Theater will present Midsummer Night's Dream, with the sensational new star Luanna Pauline as Titania.

            I read it twice... and promised myself that I would take Hazel to see it. It would be a special anniversary: I had met Mistress Gwendolyn Novak at Golden Rule's Day One Ball, Neil Armstrong Day, July twentieth a year ago (never mind that silly time loop) and this would make a delightful reprise of the gala eve of our wedding day (without, this time, some unmannerly oaf crashing our party and dying at our table).

            Would a one-gravity performance be disappointing after having seen the Queen of Fairies cutting didoes high in the air? No, this was a sentimental journey; it would not matter. Besides, Luanna Pauline had made (would make, will make) her reputation dancing in one gravity-it would be a fascinating contrast. We could go backstage and tell her that we saw her dance Titania at one-third gravity in the Circus Room of Golden Rule. Oh, certainly-when Golden Rule does not yet exist for another three years! I began to understand why the Code had limitations on loose talk.

            Never mind. On Neil Armstrong Day I would gift my beautiful bride with this sentimental celebration.

            While I was looking at the Herald-Register, an abstract

            design on the wall changed to a motto in glowing letters:

            A Stitch in Time Saves Nine Billion

            While I watched, it changed to:

            A Paradox Can Be Paradoctored

            Then:

            The Early Worm Has a Death Wish

            Followed by:

            Don't Try TOO Hard; You Might Succeed

            I was trying to figure out that last one when it suddenly changed to "Why Are You Staring at a Blank Wall?"-and it was a blank wall. Then on it appeared, large, the World Snake, and, inside the circle it made by its nauseating way of eating, letters were chasing themselves. Then they leveled out into a straight line:

            Making Order Out of Chaos Then under that:

            THE

            CIRCLE OF OUROBOROS

            This was displaced by another archway; that brassy voice said: "Please enter."

            I grabbed my cane and went through the archway and found myself translated to the exact center of a large circular room. There is such a thing as too much service.

            There were a dozen-odd people seated around the room on a dais about a meter high-a theater in the round, with me in the leading role... in the sense in which an insect pinned to the stage of a microscope is the star of the show. That brassy voice said, "State your full name."

            "Richard Colin Ames Campbell. What is this? A trial?"

            "Yes, in one sense."

            "You can adjourn court right now; I'm not having any. If anyone is on trial, it is all of you-as I want nothing from you but you seem to want something from me. It is up to you to convince me, not the other way around. Keep that clear in your mind."

            I turned slowly around, looking over my "judges." I found a friendly face, Hilda Burroughs, and felt enormously better. She threw me a kiss; I caught it and ate it. But I was enormously surprised, too. I would expect to find this tiny beauty at any gathering requiring elegance and grace... but not as a member of a group that had been represented to me as being the most powerful council in all history and any universe.

            Then I recognized another face: Lazarus. He nodded; I returned his nod. He said, "Please don't be impatient. Colonel. Allow protocol to proceed."

            I said, "Protocol is either useful or it should be abolished. I am standing and all of you are seated. That is protocol establishing dominance. And you can stuff it! If I don't have a chair in ten seconds I am leaving. Your chair will do."

            That invisible robot with the brassy voice placed an upholstered easy chair back of my knees so fast that I had no excuse to leave. I sank back into it and put my cane across my knees. "Comfortable?" Lazarus inquired.

            "Yes, thank you." "Good. The next item is protocol, too-introductions. I do not think you will find it objectionable."

            The brassy voice started in again, naming members-"Companions"-of the Circle of Ouroboros, governing body of the omniversal Time Corps. Each time one was named, my chair faced that companion. But I felt no movement.

            "Master Mobyas Toras, for Barsoom, time line one, coded 'John Carter.'"

            "Barsoom"? Poppycock! But I found myself standing up and bowing in answer to a gentle smile and a gesture suggesting a blessing. He was ancient, and hardly more than skin and bones. He wore a sword but I felt sure that he had not wielded one in generations. He was huddled in a heavy silk wrap much like that worn by Buddhist priests. His skin was polished mahogany, more strongly red than any North American "redskin"-in short he looked exactly like the fictional descriptions in the tales of Barsoom... a result easy to achieve with makeup, a couple of meters of cloth, and a prop sword.  So why did I stand up? (Because Aunt Abby had striped my calves for any failure whatever in politeness to my elders?

            Nonsense. I knew that he was authentic when I laid eyes on him. That my conviction was preposterous did not alter it.)

            "Her Wisdom Star, Arbiter of the Ninety Universes, composite time lines, code 'Cyrano.'"

            Her Wisdom smiled at me and I wiggled like a puppy. I'm no judge of wisdom but I am certain that males with high blood pressure and any history of cardiac problems or T.I.A. should not be too close to her. Star, Mrs. Gordon, is as tall or taller than I, weighs more and all of it muscle but her breasts and that slight layer that smooths female body lines. She was wearing too little for Poweshiek County, quite a lot for Boondock.

            Star may not be the most beautiful woman in all her many universes but she may be the sexiest-in a sultry. Girl Scout fashion. Just walking through a room she is in should change a boy into a man.

            "Woodrow Wilson Smith, Senior of the Howard Families, time line two, code 'Leslie LeCroix.'" Lazarus and I again exchanged nods.

            "Dr. Jubal Harshaw, time line three, code 'Neil Ann-strong.'"

            Dr. Harshaw raised his hand in a half salute and smiled; I answered the same way-and made a note to buttonhole him, back in Boondock perhaps, about the many legends of the "Man from Mars." How much was truth, how much was fiction?

            "Dr. Hilda Mac Burroughs, time line four, code 'Ballox O'Malley.'" Hilda and I exchanged smiles.

            "Commander Ted Smith, time line five, code 'DuQuesne.'" Commander Smith was a square-jawed athlete with ice-blue eyes. He was dressed in an undecorated gray uniform, carrying a bolstered hand gun, and wearing a bejeweled heavy bracelet.

            "Captain John Sterling, time line six, code "Neil Armstrong alternate time line.'" I looked at my boyhood hero and considered the possibility that I was asleep and having a vivid dream. Hazel had told me and told me again that the hero of her space opera was real... but not even the repeated use of the code phrase "Operation Galactic Overlord" had convinced me... and now here he was: the foe of the Overlord.

            Or was it he? What proof?

            "Sky Marshal Samuel Beaux, time line seven, code 'Fair-acre.'" Marshal Beaux was over two meters tall, massed at least a hundred and ten kilos, all of it muscle and rhinoceros hide. He was dressed in a midnight black uniform and a frown, and was as beautiful as a black panther. He stared at me with jungle eyes.

            Lazarus announced, "I declare quorum. The Circle is closed. Dr. Hilda Burroughs now speaks for the Circle."

            Hilda smiled at me and said, "Colonel Campbell, I have been conscripted to explain to you our purposes and enough of our methods to enable you to see how the job you are being asked to do fits into the master plan, and why it must be done. Don't hesitate to interrupt, or to argue, or to demand more details. We can continue this discussion from now until lunch-time. Or for the next ten years. Or for a truly long time. As long as necessary."

            Sky Marshal Beaux cut in with: "Speak for yourself, Mrs. Burroughs. I'm leaving in thirty minutes."

            Hilda said, "Sambo, you really should address the chair. I can't let you leave until you speak your piece, but, if you need to leave, you can speak now. Please explain what you do and why."

            "Why is this man being coddled? I've never been asked to explain my duties to a raw recruit before. This is ridiculous."

            "Nevertheless I ask you to do so." The sky marshal settled back in his chair and said nothing. Lazarus said, "Sambo, I know this is without precedent but all the Companions including the three who are not here have agreed that Task Adam Selene is essential to Operation Galactic Overlord, that Overlord is essential to Campaign Boskone, that Boskone is essential to our Plan Long View... and that Colonel Campbell is essential to Task Adam Selene. The Circle is closed on this, no dissent. We need Campbell's services, given fully and freely. So we must persuade him. You need not go first ... but, if you expect to be excused from the Circle in thirty minutes, you had better speak up." "And if I don't choose to?" "Your problem. You are free to resign; all of us are, anytime. And the Circle is free to terminate you."

            "Are you threatening me?"

            "No." Lazarus glanced at his wrist. "You've stalled for four minutes against the unanimous decision of the Circle. If you expect to comply with the Circle's decision, you are running out of minutes."

            "Oh, very well. Campbell, I am commanding officer of the armed forces of the Time Corps-"

            "Correction," Lazarus Long interrupted. "Sky Marshal Beaux is the chief of staff of-"

            "It's the same thing!"

            "It is not the same thing and I knew exactly what I was doing when I set it up that way. Colonel Campbell, the Time Corps sometimes intervenes in key battles in history. Histories. The Corps' board of historians seeks to identify cusps where judicious use of force might change history in fashions that we believe, in our limited wisdom, would be better for the human race-and this policy strongly affects and is affected by Task Adam Selene, I must add. If the Circle closes on a recommendation by the historians, military action is mounted, and a commander in chief for that operation is selected by the Circle."

            Lazarus turned and looked directly at Beaux. "Sky Marshal Beaux is a highly skilled military commander, perhaps the best in all history. He is usually selected to command. But the Circle picks the commander of each task force. This policy keeps ultimate power out of the hands of military commanders. I must add that the Chief of Staff is an auditor without a vote; he is not a Companion of this Circle. Sambo, do you have anything to add?"

            "You seem to have made my speech."

            "Because you were stalling. You are free to correct, amend, and elaborate."

            "Oh, never mind. You should give elocution lessons."

            "Do you now wish to be excused?"

            "Are you telling me to leave?"

            "No."

            "I'll hang around awhile as I want to see what you do with this joker. Why didn't you simply conscript him and assign him to Task Selene? He's an obvious criminal type; look at his skull, note his attitude toward authority. On my home planet we never use anything as sloppy and unreliable as volunteers ... and we don't have a criminal class because we draft them into the forces as fast as they show their heads. There are no better fighters than the criminal type if you catch 'em young, rule them with iron discipline, and keep them more scared of their sergeants than they can possibly be of the enemy."

            "That will do. Sambo. Please refrain from expressing opinion uninvited."

            "I thought you were the great champion of free speech?"

            "I am. But there is no free lunch. If you want to make a speech, you can hire your own hall; this one is paid for by the Circle. Hilda. Speak up, dear."

            "Very well. Richard, most interventions recommended by our historians and mathematicians are not brute force, but actions far more subtle, carried out by individual field operatives ... such as your gal Hazel, who is a real fox when it comes to robbing a henhouse. You know what we are trying to do in Task Adam Selene; you don't know what it is for, I believe. Our methods of prognosticating the results of a change introduced into history are less than perfect. Whether it's digging in on one side in a key battle, or something as simple as supplying a high school student with a condom some midnight and thereby avoiding the birth of a Hitler or a Napoleon, we can never predict the results as well as we need to. Usually we have to do it, then send a field operative down that new timeline to report the changes."

            "Hilda," said Lazarus, "may I offer a horrible example?" "Certainly, Woodie. But make it march. I plan to finish before lunch."

            "Colonel Campbell, I come from a world identical with yours to about 1939. Divergence, as usual, showed most at the start of space flight. Both your world and mine showed a tendency toward religious hysteria. In mine it peaked with a television evangelist named Nehemiah Scudder. His brand of fire and brimstone and scapegoatism-Jews of course; no novelty-peaked at a time when unemployment also peaked and public debt and inflation got out of hand; the result was a religious dictatorship, a totalitarian government as brutal as my world has ever seen.

            "So this Circle set up an operation to get rid of Nehemiah

            Scudder. Nothing as crass as assassination; the specific method Hilda mentioned was used. A high school boy without a rubber was provided with one by a field operative, and the little bastard who became Nehemiah Scudder was never bom. So time line two-mine-was split and time line eleven was created, allee samee but without Nehemiah Scudder, the Prophet. Bound to be better, right?

            "Wrong. In my time line World War Three, the nuclear war-sometimes known by other names-badly damaged Europe but did not spread; North America under the Prophet had opted out of international affairs. In time line eleven the war started a little sooner, in the Middle East, spread to all the world overnight... and a hundred years later it was still impossible to find any life superior to cockroaches on the land masses of what had once been the cool green hills of Earth. Take it, Hilda."

            "Thank you, too much! Lazarus leaves me with a planet glowing in the dark to show why we need better prediction methods. We hope to use Adam Selene-supervising computer Holmes IV known as 'Mike'-the programs and memories that make him unique-to tie the best computers of Tertius and some other planets into a mammoth logic that can correctly project the results of a defined change in history... so that we won't swap Nehemiah Scudder-who can be endured-for a ruined planet that cannot be endured. Lazarus, should I mention the supersnooperscope?"

            "You just did, so you had better."

            "Richard, I'm way out of my depth; I'm just a simple housewife-"

            A groan went up in that hall. Lazarus may have led it but it seemed to be unanimous.

            "-who lacks a technical background. But I do know that engineering progress depends on accurate instruments, and that accurate instruments ever since the twentieth century-my century-have depended on progress in electronics. My number-one husband Jake Burroughs and Dr. Libby Long and Dr. Deety Carter are whipping up a little doozy combining Jake's space-time twister with television and the ordinary snooper-scope. With it you will be able not only to watch what your wife is doing while you are away overnight but also to watch what she will be doing ten years from now. Or fifty. Or five hundred.

            "Or it could let the Circle of Ouroboros see what would be the result of an intervention before it is too late to refrain. Maybe. With the unique power of Holmes IV-maybe yes. We'll see. But it is as certain as anything can be in this quicksand world that Mike Holmes IV can improve the performance of the Circle of Ouroboros enormously even if the supersnooperscope never comes on line.

            "Since we are trying hard to make things better, more decent, happier for everyone, I hope that you will see that Task Adam Selene is worth doing. Any questions?"

            "I have one, Hilda."

            "Yes, Jubal?"

            "Has our friend Richard been indoctrinated in the concept of the World as Myth?"

            "I barely mentioned it, once, in telling him how we four -Zeb and Deety, Jake and I- were hounded off our planet and erased out of the script. I think Hazel has done better. Richard?" "Not anything I could get my teeth into. Nothing that made sense. And-forgive me, Hilda-I found your story hard to swallow."

            "Of course, dear; I don't believe it myself. Except late at night. Jubal, you had better take it."

            Dr. Harshaw answered, "Very well. The World as Myth is a subtle concept. It has sometimes been called multiperson solipsism, despite the internal illogic of that phrase. Yet illogic may be necessary, as the concept denies logic. For many centuries religion held sway as the explanation of the universe- or multiverse. The details of revealed religions differed wildly but were essentially the same: Somewhere up in the sky-or down in the earth-or in a volcano-any inaccessible place- there was an old man in a nightshirt who knew everything and was all powerful and created everything and rewarded and punished... and could be bribed.

            "Sometimes this Almighty was female but not often because human males are usually bigger, stronger, and more belligerent;

            God was created in Pop's image.

            "The Almighty-God idea came under attack because it explained nothing; it simply pushed all explanations one stage farther away. In the nineteenth century atheistic positivism started displacing the Almighty-God notion in that minority of the population that bathed regularly.

            "Atheism had a limited run, as it, too, explains nothing, being merely Godism turned upside down. Logical positivism was based on the physical science of the nineteenth century which, physicists of that century honestly believed, fully explained the universe as a piece of clockwork.

            "The physicists of the twentieth century made short work of that idea. Quantum mechanics and Schrodringer's cat tossed out the clockwork world of 1890 and replaced it with a fog of probability in which anything could happen. Of course the intellectual class did not notice this for many decades, as an intellectual is a highly educated man who can't do arithmetic with his shoes on, and is proud of his lack. Nevertheless, with the death of positivism, Godism and Creationism came back stronger than ever.

            "In the late twentieth century -correct me when I' m wrong, Hilda-Hilda and her family were driven off Earth by a devil, one they dubbed 'the Beast.' They fled in a vehicle you have met. Gay Deceiver, and in their search for safety they visited many dimensions, many universes... and Hilda made the greatest philosophical discovery of all time."

            "I'll bet you say that to all the girls!"

            "Quiet, dear. They visited, among more mundane places, the Land of Oz-"

            I sat up with a jerk. Not too much sleep last night and Dr. Harshaw's lecture was sleep-inducing. "Did you say 'Oz'?"

            "I tell you three times. Oz, Oz, Oz. They did indeed visit the fairyland dreamed up by L. Frank Baum. And the Wonderland invented by the Reverend Mr. Dodgson to please Alice. And other places known only to fiction. Hilda discovered what none of us had noticed before because we were inside it: The World is Myth. We create it ourselves-and we change it ourselves. A truly strong myth maker, such as Homer, such as Baum, such as the creator of Tarzan, creates substantial and lasting worlds ... whereas the fiddlin', unimaginative liars and fabulists shape nothing new and their tedious dreams are forgotten. On this observed fact, Richard-not religion but verifiable fact-is based the work of the Circle of Ouroboros. Hilda?"

            "Only a short time until we should break for lunch. Richard, do you have any comment now?"

            "You won't like it."

            Lazarus said, "Spill it, Bub."

            "I not only will not risk my life on wordy nonsense, I will do all that I can to keep Hazel from doing so. If you really want, and need, the programs and memories of that out-of-date Lunar computer there are at least two better ways to get them."

            "Keep talking."

            "One way simply uses money. Set up a front organization, an academic fakery. Funnel money into Galileo University as grants, and walk in the front door of the computer room, and take what you want. The other way is to use enough force to do a real job. Don't send an elderly married couple to try to watergate it. You cosmic do-gooders have not convinced me."

            "Let's see your ticket!"

            It was Little Black Sambo, the sky marshal. "What ticket?" "The one that entitles you to unscrew the inscrutable. Show it. You are just a lily-livered coward, too yellow to do your plain duty."

            "Really? Who appointed you God? Look, boy, I'm mighty glad that your skin color matches mine."

            "Why so?" "Because, if it didn't, I would be called a racist for the way I despise you."

            I saw him draw his side arm, but my cane, damn it!, had slid to the floor. I was reaching for it when his bolt hit me, low on the left.

            As he was hit from three sides, two to the heart, one to the head, by John Sterling, by Lazarus, by Commander Smith- three crack gunmen, where one would have sufficed.

            I didn't hurt yet. But I knew I was gut-shot -bad, final bad, if I didn't get help fast.

            But something was happening to Samuel Beaux. He leaned forward and fell off his chair, dead as King Charles-and his body began to disappear. It didn't fade out; it disappeared in swipes, through the middle, then across the face, as if someone had taken an eraser to a chalkboard. Then he was gone completely; not even blood was left. Even his chair was gone.

            And the wound in my gut was gone.

            XXIX

            'There may come a time when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, but I am still betting on the lion."

                                    HENRY WHEELER SHAW 1818-1885

            "Wouldn't it be better," I objected, "to have me pull a sword out of a stone? If you really want to sell the product? The whole plan is silly!"

            We were seated at a picnic table in the east orchard, Mannie Davis, Captain John Sterling, Uncle Jock, Jubal Harshaw, and I-and a Professor Rufo, a bald-headed old coot introduced to me as an aide to Her Wisdom and (impossible!) her grandson. (But having seen with my own bloodshot eyes some of the results of Dr. Ishtar's witchcraft, I was no longer using the word "impossible" as freely as I did a week ago.)

            Pixel was with us, too, but he had long since finished his lunch and was down in the grass, trying to catch a butterfly. They were evenly matched but the butterfly was ahead on points.

            The bright and cloudless sky promised a temperature of thirty-eight or forty by midaftemoon; my aunts had elected to eat lunch in their air-conditioned kitchen. But there was a breeze and it was cool enough under the trees-a lovely day, just right for a picnic; it reminded me of our conference with Father Hendrik Schultz in the orchard of Old MacDonald's Farm just a week ago (and eleven years forward).

            Except that Hazel was not with me.

            That groused me but I tried not to show it. When the Circle opened for lunch. Aunt Til had a message waiting for me. "Hazel left here with Lafe just a few minutes ago," she told me. "She asked me to tell you that she will not be here for lunch but expects to see you later this afternoon... and will be here for supper without fail."

            A damned skimpy message! I needed to discuss with Hazel all the talk and happenings in the closed Circle. Damn it, how could I decide anything until I had a chance to talk it over with my wife?

            Women and cats do what they do; there is nothing a man can do about it.

            "I'll sell you a sword in a stone," said Professor Rufo, "cheap. Like new. Used just once, by King Arthur. In the long run it didn't do him any good and I can't guarantee that it will help you... but I don't mind turning a profit on it."

            Uncle said, "Rufo, you would sell tickets to your own funeral."

            "Not 'would.' Did. Netted enough to buy a round toowitt

            I badly needed... because so many people wanted to be certain

            I was dead."

            "So you cheated them." "Not at all. The tickets did not state that I was dead; they simply called for 'admit bearer' to my funeral. And it was a nice funeral, the nicest I've ever had... especially the climax when I sat up in my coffin and sang the oratorio from The Death ofJesse James, doing all the parts myself. Nobody asked for his money back. Some even left before I reached my high note. Rude creatures. Go to your own funeral and you'll soon learn who your real friends are." Rufo turned to me. "You want that sword and stone? Cheap but it has to be cash. Can't let you have credit; your life expectancy isn't all that good. Shall we say six hundred thousand imperial dollars in small bills? No denomination higher than ten thousand."

            "Professor, I don't want a sword in a stone; it's just that this whole silly business sounds like the 'true prince' nonsense of pre-Armstrong romances. Can't do it openly with money, can't do it safely with enough force to hold the losses down to zero, has to be me and my wife with nothing but a scout knife. That's a crummy plot; even a confessions book would reject it. It's logically impossible."

            "Five hundred fifty thousand and I pick up the sales tax."

            "Richard," Jubal Harshaw answered, "it is logic itself that is impossible. For millennia philosophers and saints have tried to reason out a logical scheme for the universe... until Hilda came along and demonstrated that the universe is not logical but whimsical, its structure depending solely on the dreams and nightmares of non-logical dreamers." He shrugged, almost spilling his Tuborg. "If the great brains had not been so hoodwinked by their shared conviction that the universe must contain a consistent and logical structure they could find by careful analysis and synthesis, they would have spotted the glaring fact that the universe-the multiverse-contains neither of logic nor justice save where we, or others like us, impose such qualities on a world of chaos and cruelty."

            "Five hundred thousand and that's my last offer."

            "So why should Hazel and I risk our necks?" I added, "Pixel! Leave that insect alone!"

            "Butterflies are not insects," Captain John Sterling said soberly. "They are self-propelled flowers. The Lady Hazel taught me that many years ago." He reached down and gently picked up Pixel. "How were you getting him to drink?"

            I showed him, using water and my fingertip. Then Sterling improved on it, offering the kitten a tiny puddle in the palm of his hand. The kitten licked at it, and then was lapping cat-property, curling his dainty tongue down into the spoonful of water.

            Sterling bothered me. I knew his origin, or thought I did, and thus had trouble believing in him even as I spoke with him. Yet it is impossible not to believe in a man when you see him, and hear him, crunching celery and potato chips.

            Yet he had a two-dimensional quality. He neither smiled nor laughed. He was unfailingly polite but always dead serious. I had tried to thank him for saving my life by shooting what's-his-name; Sterling had stopped me. "My duty. He was expendable; you are not."

            "Four hundred thousand. Colonel, are there any deviled eggs down there?"

            I passed the stuffed eggs to Rufo. "Shall I tell you what to do with your sword in a stone? First, pull out the sword, then-"

            "Let's not be crude. Three hundred and fifty thousand." "Professor, I wouldn't have it as a door prize. I was simply making a point."

            "Better take an option, at least; you'll need it for the boff opening when they shoot this as a stereoseries."

            "No publicity. That's one of the conditions imposed on me. If I do it."

            "No publicity until after. Then there has to be publicity; it must wind up in the history books. Mannie, tell 'em why you have never published your memoirs of the Revolution."

            Mr. Davis answered, "Mike sleeping. Not have people bother him. Nyet."

            Uncle Jock said, "Manuel, you have an unpublished autobiography?"

            My stepfather-in-law nodded. "Necessary. Prof dead, Wyoming dead, Mike dead maybe. Am only witness true story of Loonie Revolution. Lies, lots of lies, by cobbers not there." He scratched his chin with his left hand, the one I knew to be artificial. Or so I heard. This hand looked just like his right hand. A transplant? "Stored with Mike before out to Asteroids. We rescue Mike-then publish maybe." Davis looked at me. "Want to hear how I met my daughter Hazel?"

            "Yes indeed!" I answered, and Sterling strongly agreed.

            "Was Monday thirteen May, 2075, in L-City. Talk-talk in Stilyagi Hall, how to fight Warden. Not revolution, just sad stupid talk-talk, unhappy people. Skinny little girl sat on floor down front. Orange hair, no breasts. Ten, maybe eleven. Listens every word, claps hard, dead serious.

            "Yellow Jackets, Warden's cops, break in, start killing. Too busy to keep track of skinny redheads. Jackets kill my best friend... when see her in action. Throws self through air, rolled in ball, hits Yellow Jacket in knees, down he goes. I break his jaw with left hand-not this hand; number-two-and step over him, dragging my wife Wyoming-not wife then-with me. Skinny flametop is gone, don't see her some weeks. But, friends, hard rock truth. Hazel as little girl fought so hard and smart that she saved her Papa Mannie and her Mama Wyoh both from Warden's finks long before she knew she was ours."

            Manuel Davis smiled wistfully. "Did find her, Davis Family opted her-daughter, not wife. Still a baby. But not baby when counts! Worked hard to free Luna every day, every hour, every minute, danger don' stop her never. Fourth o' July, 2076, Hazel Meade Davis youngest comrade signing Declaration of Independence. No comrade rated it more!"

            Mr. Davis had tears in his eyes. So did I.

            Captain Sterling stood up. "Mr. Davis, I am humbly proud to have heard that story. Mr. Campbell, I have enjoyed your hospitality. Colonel Campbell, I hope you decide to fight with us; we need you. And now, if I may be excused, I must leave. As the Galactic Overlord does not take long lunch hours, I must not."

            Uncle Jock said, "Shucks, John, you've got to have some R and R now and then. Come go dinosaur hunting with me again. Time spent in the Mesozoic won't affect your quest; the Overlord will never know you're away. That's the greatest beauty of timejumping."

            "I would know that I was away. But I do thank you. I enjoyed that hunt." He bowed and left.

            Dr. Harshaw said quietly, "There goes real nobility. When at last he destroys the Overlord, he will be erased. He knows it. It doesn't stop him."

            "Why must he be erased?" I demanded.

            "Eh? Colonel, I know that this is new to you... but you are, or have been, a fabulist yourself, have you not?"

            "Still am, as far as I know. Finished a long one and sent it off to my agent just ten days ago. Must get back to work soon- got a wife to support."

            "Then you know that, for plot purposes, especially in adventure stories, heroes and villains come in complementary pairs. Each is necessary to the other."

            "Yes, but- Look, lay it on the bar. This man who just left is truly the character that Hazel-and her son, Roger Stone- created for their series The Scourge of the SpacewaysT'

            "Yes. Hazel and her son created him. Sterling knows it. Look, sir, all of us are fictions, someone's fabulist dreams.

            But usually we do not know it. John Sterling knows it, and is strong enough to stand up to it. He knows his role and his destiny; he accepts it."

            "He doesn't have to be erased." Dr. Harshaw looked puzzled. "But you are a writer. Uh...a literary writer perhaps? Plotless?"

            "Me? I don't know how to write literature; I write stories.

            For printout or three-dee or even bound books, but all sorts. Sin, suffer, and repent. Horse opera. Space opera. War. Murder. Spies. Sea stories. Whatever. Hazel and I are going to revive her classic series, with Captain Sterling in the lead role. As always. So what's this noise about 'erasing' him?"

            "You are not going to let him destroy the Galactic Overlord? You should, you must, as the Overlord is every bit as evil as Boskone."

            "Oh, certainly! First thirteen weeks. Should have happened years back."

            "But he couldn't. The series was dropped with both hero and villain still alive. Sterling has been forced to fight only a holding action ever since."

            "Oh. Well, we'll fix that. Overlord delenda est!"

            "Then what does Sterling do?" I started to answer, suddenly realized that the question was not inquiry but Socratic. For each fine cat, a fine rat. A hero of Sterling's stature must oppose a villain as strong as he is. If we kill off the Overlord, then we must dream up Son of Overlord, with just as many balls, teeth just as long, disposition just as vile, and steam coming out of his ears.

            "I don't know. We'll think of something. Age him, maybe, and put him to pasture as commandant of the Star Patrol Academy. Some such. No need to kill him off. A job like that would not require a villain as horrendous as the Overlord." "Wouldn't it?" Harshaw asked quietly. "Uh- Maybe you would like to take over the series?" "Not me. I'm semi-retired. All I have now is The Stone-bender Family, a series strictly for laughs, no substantial villain required. Now I know the truth of the World as Myth I will never again create a real villain... and I thank Klono that I never have, not really, as I have only a limited belief in villainy."

            "Well, I can't answer without Hazel anyhow; I'm the junior writer, in charge of punctuation and filling in weather and scenery; she controls plot. So I must change the subject. Uncle Jock, what was this you were saying to Captain Sterling about hunting dinosaurs? One of your jokes? Like the time you sawed off ten square klicks of the Ross Ice Shelf and towed it to Singapore, swimming sidestroke."

            "Not sidestroke all the way; that's not possible."

            "Come off it. Dinosaurs."

            "What about dinosaurs? I like to hunt them. I took John Sterling with me once; he got a truly magnificent tyrannosaurus rex. Would you like to try it?"

            "Are you serious? Uncle, you know I don't hunt. I don't like to shoot anything that can't shoot back."

            "Oho! You misunderstood me, nephew. We don't kill the poor beasties. Killing a dinosaur is about as sporting as shooting a cow. And not as good meat. A dinosaur more than a year old is tough and tasteless. I did try them, years back, when some thought was being given to using dinosaur meat to quench a famine on time line seven. But the logistics were dreadful and, when you come right down to it, there is little justice in killing stupid lizards to feed stupid people; they had earned their famine. But hunting dinosaurs with cameras, that's real fun. It even gets sporting if you go after the big carnivores and happen to flush a bull who is feeling edgy and sexy-it improves your running. Or else. Dickie, there is a spot down about Wichita where I can promise you triceratops, several sorts of pterodactyls, duckbills, thunder lizards, and maybe a male stegosaurus all in one day. Once this caper is over we'll take a day off and do it. What do you say?"

            "Is it that easy?"

            "With the installed equipment the Mesozoic is no farther away than is THQ or Boondock. Time and space are illusions; the Burroughs irrelevancy gear will plunk you down in the middle of a herd of feeding and fornicating flapdoodles before you can say sixty-five million years."

            "The way you phrased that invitation seemed to imply that you assume that I have closed on Task Adam Selene."

            "Dickie, the equipment does indeed belong to the Time Corps... and it is expensive, how expensive we don't discuss. It was built to support Plan Long View; its recreational use is incidental. Yes, I implied that. Aren't you going to do it?"

            Mannie Davis looked at me, with no expression. Rufo stood up, said loudly, "I've got to mosey along; Star has a chore for me. Thanks and thanks for the last time. Jock. Nice meeting you. Colonel." He left quickly. Harshaw said nothing.

            I let out a deep breath. "Uncle, I might do it if Hazel insists. But I'm going to try to talk her out of it. Nothing has been offered me that convinces me that I am wrong about the two options I offered. Either of them is a more sensible approach to recovering the programs and memories that embody Holmes IV or Mike... and I am glad to stipulate that they should be recovered. But my methods are more logical."

            Harshaw said, "It is not a matter of logic. Colonel." "It's my neck. Doctor. But in the long run I'll do what Hazel wishes... I think. It's just-" "Just what, Dickie?"

            "I hate to go into action with inadequate intelligence! Always have. Uncle, for the past week or ten days-hard to figure it, the way I've bounced around-I've been haunted by unexplained and, well, murderous nonsense. Is the Overlord you talk about after me? Does the fact that I'm mixed up in this account for the endless near misses? Or am I getting paranoid?"

            "I don't know. Tell me about them." I started to do so. Shortly Harshaw took out a pocket notebook, started taking notes. I tried to remember all of it: Enrico Schultz and his weird remark about Tolliver and his mention of Walker Evans. His death. If it was his death. Bill. The curious behavior of the management of Golden Rule. Those rolligons and the killers in each. Jefferson Mao. The muggers at the Raffles- "Is that all?"

            "Isn't that enough? No, not quite. What cargo was Auntie carrying? How did we get chivvied into flying a heap that durn near killed us? What were Lady Diana and her fat-headed husbands doing away out there in the wilds? If I could afford it I would spend endless money on sherlocks to dig out what was going on, what was truly aimed at me, what was just my nerves, what was simply coincidence."

            Harshaw said, "There are no coincidences. One respect in which World as Myth is far simpler than earlier teleology is the simple fact that there are no accidents, no coincidences."

            Uncle Jock said, "Jubal? I don't have the authority." "And I do. Yes." He stood up. "Both of us, I think." My uncle stood up, too. "Dickie boy, you wait right here; we'll be gone five minutes or so. Errand to do."

            As they left, Davis stood up, "Excuse, please? Need change arm."

            "Sure, Papa Mannie. No, no. Pixel! Beer is not for baby cats."

            They were gone seven minutes by my Sonychron. But not, quite apparently, by their time. Uncle had grown a full beard. Harshaw had a new, pink knife scar across his left cheek. I looked at them. "Ghosts of Christmas past! What happened?"

            "Everything. Is there any beer left there? Cissy," he said, not raising his voice, "could we have some beer? And Jubal and I have not eaten in some time. Hours. Days, maybe."

            "Right away," Aunt Cissy's disembodied voice answered. "Dear? I think you ought to take a nap."

            "Later."

            "Just as soon as you have eaten. Forty minutes."

            "Quit nagging me. Could I have tomato soup? For Jubal, too."

            "I'll fetch soup and more of your picnic. Forty-five minutes until your nap; that's official. Til says so."

            "Remind me to beat you."

            "Yes, dear. But not today; you're exhausted."

            "Very well." Uncle Jock turned to me. "Let's see, what'U you have first? Those rolligons? Your friend Hendrik Schultz handled that one; you can be sure it's thorough. He has turned out to be an ichiban field investigator. You can forget paranoia on that one, Dickie-two opponents, the Time Lords and the Scene Changers... and both of them after you as well as each other. You have a charmed life, son-bom to be hanged."

            "What do you mean?-Time Lords and Scene Changers? And why me?"

            "May not be their own names for themselves. The Lords and the Changers are groups doing the sort of thing the Circle does... but we don't see eye to eye with them. Dickie, you don't think that in all the universes to the Number of the Beast or more, we of the Circle would be the only ones to catch on to the truth and attempt to do something about it, do you?"

            "I don't know anything about it, one way or another."

            "Colonel," put in Dr. Harshaw, "a major shortcoming of World as Myth lies in the fact that we contend with... and often lose to... three sorts of antagonists: villains by design such as the Galactic Oveiiord, and groups like us but with different intentions-bad in our opinion, perhaps good in theirs-and the third and most powerful, the myth makers themselves-such as Homer and Twain and Shakespeare and Baum and Swift and their colleagues in the pantheon. But not those I have named. Their bodies have died; they live on by the immortal corpus of myth each has created... which does not change and therefore does not imperil us.

            "But there are living myth makers, every one of them dangerous, every one of them casually uncaring as he revises a myth and erases a character." Harshaw smiled grimly. "The only way one can live with the knowledge is to realize first that it is the only game in town and second that it does not hurt. Erasure. Being X'd out of the story."

            "How do you know that it doesn't hurt?"

            "Because I refuse to entertain any other theory! Shall we get on with our report?"

            "Dickie boy, you asked, 'Why me?' For the same reason Jubal and I left a pleasant lunch to work our tails off and to set many others to arduous and dangerous investigation in several time lines. Because of Task Adam Selene and your key part in it. Near as we can tell, the Time Lords want to kidnap Mike while the Scene Changers want to destroy him. But both groups want you dead; you're a menace to their plans."

            "But at that time I had not even heard of Mike the Computer."

            "Best time to kill you, wouldn't you say? Cissy, you are not only beautiful, you are pleasant to have around. Besides your hidden talents. Just put it down; we'll serve ourselves."

            "Blagueur et gros menteur. You still must nap. Message from Til. You are not to come to the dinner table until you shave off that beard."

            'Tell that baggage that I will starve before I will be henpecked."

            "Yes, sir. And I feel the same way she does about it."

            "Peace, woman."

            "So I volunteer to shave you. And to cut your hair."

            "I accept."

            "Right after your nap."

            "Begone. Jubal, did you have any of this jellied salad? It is something Til does exceptionally well... although all three of my owners are fine cooks."

            "Will you put that in writing?"

            "I told you to disappear. Jubal, living with three women takes fortitude."

            "I know. I did so, for many years. Fortitude plus angelic disposition. And a taste for lazy living. But a group marriage, such as our Long Family, combines the advantages of bachelorhood, monogamy, and polygamy, with the drawbacks of none."

            "I won't argue it but I'll stick with my three Graces as long as they'll let me hang around. Now let's see- Enrico Schultz. No such character."

            "So?" I answered. "He made some horrid stains on my tablecloth."

            "So he had another name. But you knew that. Best hypothesis makes him a member of the same gang as your friend Bill... who was a smiling villain if one ever smiled, as well as a consummate actor. We call them The Revisionists. Motivation had to be Adam Selene. Not Walker Evans."

            "Why did he mention Walker Evans?"

            'To shake you up, maybe. Dickie, I didn't know about General Evans until you brought the matter up, since that debacle is still in my future. My normal future. I can see how it weighs on your mind. Will weigh on your mind. Remember, I didn't know that you had been invalided out of the Andorran Contract Crusaders until you told me.

            "Anyhow- All of the 'Friends of Walker Evans' are dead except you and one who went to the Asteroids and can't be found. This is as of July tenth, 2188, eleven years forward. Unless you want to talk to any alive on some date not quite so forward."

            "Can't see any reason to."

            "So it seemed to us. Now Walker Evans himself. Lazarus handled this... and a spot of world-changing, partly to show you what can be done. No attempt was made to revise the battle. It would be difficult, in 2177, to revise a battle in 2178 without utterly changing your life. Either kill you that year, or not lose your leg and you stay in the service-yes, I now know about your leg although it's forward from here. Either way, you don't go to Golden Rule, you don't marry Hazel... and we aren't sitting here, talking about it. World-changing is touchy, Dickie-best done in homeopathic doses.

            "Lazarus has two messages for you. He says that you should feel no personal guilt over that debacle. To do so would be as silly as a subordinate of Custer feeling guilty over Little Big Horn... to which he adds that Custer was a far more brilliant general than Evans ever was. Lazarus speaks as one who has held every rank from private to commander in chief, in experience spread over many centuries and seventeen wars.

            "That's the first message. The second is this: Tell your nephew that, yes, it horrifies nice people. But it happens. Only those who go out beyond the end of street lights and of pavements know how such things can happen. He says that he is certain that Walker Evans would not hold it against you. Dickie, what's he talking about?"

            "Had he wanted you to know, he would have told you." "Reasonable. Was General Evans a man of good taste?" "What?" I stared at my uncle-then answered reluctantly:

            "Well, no, I would not say so. I found him tough and a bit stringy."

            "Now we have it out in the open1-"

            "Yes, damn you!" "-and I can tell you the rest, the world-changing. A field operative hid a couple of ration packs under the General's body. When you moved the body, you found them... and it was just enough that none of the Friends of Walker Evans ever reached that degree of hunger necessary to overcome the taboo. So it never happened."

            "Then why do I remember it?"

            "Do you?"

            "Why-" "You remember finding jettisoned field rations under the body. And how good you felt!"

            "Uncle, this is crazy."

            "That's world-changing. For a time, you have a memory. Then a faded memory of a memory. Then nothing. It never happened, Dickie. You went through one hell of an ordeal and lost a leg. But you did not eat your commanding officer."

            Uncle went on, "Jubal, what do we have left that's important? Dickie, you can't expect to have all your questions answered; no man can expect that. Mmm, oh, yes, those diseases- You had two of them; the rest was hype. You were cured in about three days; then they kept you in a controlled-memory field and put a new leg on you... and did something else. Haven't you felt better lately? Brisk? More energetic?"

            "Well... yes. But it dates from the day I married Hazel, not from Boondock."

            "Both, probably. During the month they had you available Dr. Ishtar gave you a booster. I learned that they shifted you from the rejuvenation clinic to the hospital just the day before they let you wake up. Oh, they really swindled you, boy; they gave you a new leg and made you thirty years younger. I think you ought to sue them."

            "Oh, knock it off. How about that heat bomb? More hype?"

            "Maybe, maybe not. Not decided, just the time tick spiked. The thing is-"

            Harshaw intervened. "Richard, we think now that we may be able to finish Task Adam Selene before a heat bomb would be necessary. There are some plans. So the heat bombing right now is in the status of Schrodinger's Cat. The outcome depends on Task Adam Selene. And vice versa. We'll see."

            "These plans- You're assuming that I'll come around."

            "No. We're assuming that you won't."

            "Humm... If you are assuming that I won't, why are you two bothering to tell me all this?"

            Uncle said in a tired voice, "Dickie boy, thousands and thousands of man-hours have gone into satisfying your childish demand to have the veil lifted from the unknown. You think we are simply going to burn the results? Sit back down and pay attention. Mmm, stay out of Luna City and Golden Rule after June of 2188; there are warrants out for you for eight murders."

            "Eight! Who?"

            "Mmm, Tolliver, Enrico Schultz, Johnson, Oswald Progant, Rasmussen-"

            "Rasmussen!"

            "Do you know him?"

            "I wore his fez for ten minutes; I never laid eyes on him."

            "Let's not waste time on these murder charges. All they mean is that someone is out to get you, both in L-City and in Golden Rule. With three timejumping groups after you, that's not surprising. You want them cleared up; they can be cleared up later. If needed. If you don't just go to Tertius and forget it. Oh, yes-those code groups. Not a message, just a prop to get you to open that door. But you didn't let yourself be killed quietly the way you were supposed to. Dickie, you're a troublemaker."

            "Gosh, I'm sorry."

            "Any more questions?"

            "Go take your nap."

            "Not yet. Jubal. Now?"

            "Certainly." Dr. Harshaw got up and left.

            "Dickie."

            "Yes, Uncle."

            "She loves you, boy; she really does. God knows why. But mat does not mean that she will tell you the truth or always act in your interest. Be warned."

            "Uncle Jock, it never does any good to warn a man about his wife. Would you accept any advice from me about Cissy?"

            "Of course not. But I'm older than you are and much more experienced."

            "Answer me." "Let's change the subject instead. You don't like Lazarus Long."

            I grinned at him. "Uncle, the only thing that persuades me that he might be as old as he is reputed to be is that it would take more than one ordinary lifetime to grow as cantankerous and generally difficult as he is. He rubs me the wrong way every time. And the bastard makes it worse by putting me under obligations to him. This foot- From a clone of his- did you know that? And that dustup you heard about this morning. Lazarus shot that bloke what's-his-name who tried to kill me. But Captain Sterling and Commander Smith did, too, and probably quicker. Or maybe not. Either way I had to thank all three of them. Damn it, I'd like to save his life just once to balance the books. The bastard."

            "No way to talk, Dickie. Abby would have trounced you."

            "So she would have. I take it back." "Besides- Your own parents never were married."

            "So I've often been told. Colorfully."

            "I mean it literally. Your mother was my favorite sister. Much younger than I. Pretty child. I taught her to walk. Played with her when she was growing up, spoiled her every way I could. So, naturally, when she was in what used to be called 'trouble' she came to her big brother. And to your Aunt Abby. Dickie, it was not that your father wasn't around; it was that your grandfather disliked him, disliked him as intensely as- well, as you dislike Lazarus Long.

            "I don't mean Mr. Ames. You got his name but he met and married Wendy after you were bom. And we took you and raised you. Your mother was going to come for you, after a year-she said Ames deserved that much-but she didn't live that long. So Abby was your mother in every way but biology."

            "Uncle, Aunt Abby was the best mother a boy could want. Look, those peach switchings were good for me. I know it."

            "I'm pleased to hear you say so. Dickie, I love all your aunts ... but there will never be another Abby. Hazel reminds me of her. Dickie, have you made up your mind?"

            "Uncle, I'll fight it all the way. How can I okay letting my bride risk a caper that she stands only a fifty-fifty chance of coming out of alive? Especially when nobody has even tried to show me why my ways aren't better?"

            "Just asking. The mathematicians are testing another team- since you're unwilling. We'll see. Your father was stubborn and your grandfather was stubborn; it's no surprise that you are stubborn. Your grandfather-my father-said flatly that he would rather have a bastard in the family than Lazarus Long. So he had one. You. And Lazarus went away and never knew about you.

            "Not surprising that you and your father don't get along; you're too much alike. And now he's going to take your place, on the team for Task Adam Selene."

            XXX

            ""0ur revels now are ended."

                                    WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 1564-1616

            Dying isn't difficult. Even a baby kitten can do it. I'm sitting with my back to the wall in the old computer room of the Warden's Complex in Luna. Pixel is cradled in my left arm. Hazel is on the floor, by us. I'm not sure Pixel is dead. He may be asleep. But I am not going to disturb him to find out; he's a badly hurt baby at best.

            I know Hazel is still alive because I'm watching her respiration. But she is not in good shape. I do wish they would hurry.

            I can't do much for either of them because I don't have anything to work with and I can't move much. I'm shy one leg and I don't have a prosthetic. Yes, that same right leg- Lazarus's leg-burned off just about at the transplant line. Guess I shouldn't gripe-being a bum job it's cauterized, not much blood. Hasn't really begun to hurt much yet, either. Not that white pain like a blow torch. That comes later.

            I wonder if Lazarus knows he's my father? Did Uncle ever tell him?

            Hey, this makes Maureen, that wonderful, beautiful creature, my grandmother!

            And- Maybe I had better back up.

            I'm a bit light-headed.

            I'm not even sure this is being recorded. I'm carrying a battle recorder but it's a tiny Tertius type I'm not familiar with. Either it was on and I turned it off or it was off and I turned it on. I'm not sure Pixel is dead. Did I already say that? Maybe I had better back up.

            It was a good team, the best, with enough fire power that I felt that our chances were good. Hazel was in command, of course-

            Major Sadie Lipschitz, strike team leader

            Brevet Captain Richard Campbell, XO

            Comet Gretchen Henderson, JO

            Sergeant Ezra Davidson

            Corporal Ted Bronson aka W. W. Smith aka Lazarus Long aka Lafayette Hubert, M.D.-additional duty, medical officer

            Manuel Davis, civilian special field operative

            Lazarus insisted on being called 'Ted Bronson" when he was designated a corporal for this task force. It's an insiders' joke, I think; I was not let in on it.

            Comet Henderson had been back on duty several months after having her baby boy. She was slender-solid and tan and beautiful and the combat ribbons on her pretty chest looked at home there. Sergeant Ezra always did look like a soldier, once he had legs, and his ribbons showed it, too. A good team.

            Why was I breveted to captain? I asked that question right after Hazel swore me into the Corps-got a silly or reasonable answer depending on your bias. Because (said Hazel) in every history book in which this was mentioned, I had been second in charge. The histories did not name others, but they did not say that we acted alone, so she decided on more fire power and picked her team. (She decided. She picked. Not Lazarus. Not some THQ brain trust. That suited me.)

            Gay Deceiver was manned by its first team, too-Hilda, commanding; Deety, XO and astrogator; Zeb Carter, chief pilot; Jake Burroughs, copilot/irrelevancy gear-and Gay herself, conscious, sentient, and able to pilot herself... not true of any other irrelevancy craft except Dora (who was too big for this job).

            The skipper of the car, Hilda, was under the command of the strike force team leader. I would have expected a hitch here ... but Hilda had proposed it. "Hazel, it's got to be that way. Everybody must know who's boss. When it hits the fan, we can't stop to chat."

            A good team. We had not trained together but we were professionals and our CO made everything so clear that we didn't need drill. "Attention to orders. The purpose of this force is to capture items selected by Davis, and to return them and Davis to Tertius. There is no other purpose. If we have no casualties, fine. But if all of us are killed while Davis and his selections reach Tertius, our task is accomplished.

            "This is the plan. Hilda places us at the north wall, star-boardside to, on the tick, after THQ advises that warp is ready to activate. Leave car in this order: Lipschitz, Campbell, Hen-derson, Davidson, Bronson, Davis. Place yourselves fore and aft in the bathrooms to exit in that order.

            "The computer room is square. Lipschitz to southeast corner, Henderson to southwest corner, Campbell to northwest comer, Davidson to northeast comer. Diagonal pairs cover all four walls, so two such pairs doubly cover all walls. Bronson is bodyguard to Davis, no fixed post.

            "As Davis works, filled boxes will be placed in car. Henderson and Davidson will move items to car as directed by Davis, and assisted inside by Deety. Car commander and pilots will remain ready to scram and will assist only by passing items back. Bronson will not repeat not move baggage; his sole task is bodyguard to Davis.

            "When Davis tells me task is finished, we return to the car with all speed, in reverse order-Davis, Bronson, Davidson, Henderson, Campbell, Lipschitz. Hilda, you will give order to scram anytime after Davis and the stuff he came for is aboard, depending on tactical situation. If there is trouble, don't wait for anyone. Use your judgment, but your judgment must tell you to save Mannie and his items no matter who gets left behind.

            "Questions?"

            How long have I been doping off? My Sonychron was an early casualty. The team Hazel picked was- No, I said that. I think I did.

            What happened to Tree-San?

            The time tick selected was right after Hazel left the computer room on Saturday July fifth. The group picking the tick reasoned that if they were laying for us to arrive at the Raffles, then that antagonist (Time Lords?) would not be looking for us in the computer room. No way to do it earlier than that;

            Hazel had reported that "Adam Selene" was in the computer room when she was there.

            We cut it mighty sharp, almost too sharp; when Hazel was getting out of Gay, she stopped suddenly with me right behind her-waited briefly, then moved out.

            She paused because she saw her own back, leaving the room.

            I must get word to Aunt Til that Hazel and I can't make it home for supper.

            My head aches and my eyes bother me.

            I don't know how Pixel got aboard Gay. How that baby does get around!

            Jubal Harshaw says, "The only constant thing in these shifting, fairy-chess worlds is human love." That's enough.

            Pixel moved a little. It's been nice to have both feet for a few days.

            "Richar'?"

            "Yes, beloved?"

            "Gretchen's baby. You his fame'."

            "Huh?"

            "She tol' me, mon's ago."

            "I don't understand."

            "Par'dox."

            I started to question her about it; she was asleep again. The compress I had placed on her wound was seeping. But I didn't have anything more, so I didn't touch it.

            Won't see Aunt Belden this trip. Too bad.

            What happened to my files? Still in my other foot?

            Hey! Tomorrow is the day "we're all dead" ifTolliver isn't.

            The first hour went by with no incident whatever. Mannie worked steadily, changed arms once, started filling boxes. Gretchen and Ezra carried them to the car, passed them in, resumed their posts between trips. Most of this seemed to be programs that Mannie was bleeding off into his own cubes, using equipment he had fetched. I could not see. Then he started filling boxes more quickly, loading them with cylinders. Adam Selene's memories? I don't know. Maybe I watched too much.

            Mannie straightened up, said, "Does it! Done!" I heard an answering, "Blert!"

            And they hit us.

            I was down at once, lower leg gone. I saw Mannie fall. I heard Hazel shout, "Bronson! Get him aboard! Henderson, Davidson-those last two boxes!" I missed the next, as I was firing. The whole east wall was open; I traversed it with my heater at full power. Somebody else was firing, on our side, I think.

            Then it was quiet.

            "Rich'r'?"

            "Yes, dearest."

            "'S been fun."

            "Yes. love! All of it."

            "Rich'r'... that light, end tunnel."

            "Yes?"

            "I'll wait... there."

            "Honey, you're going to outlive me!"

            "Look for me. I'll-"

            When that wall opened, I think I saw what's-his-namc. Could the bloke who erased him write him back into the story? To clip us?

            •   •   •

            Who was writing our story? Was he going to let us live?

            Anyone who would kill a baby kitten is cruel, mean cruel. Whoever you are, I hate you. I despise you!

            I dragged myself awake, realized that I had fallen asleep on watch! I had to pull myself together, because they might be back. Or, Glory Be! Gay Deceiver will be back. I couldn't figure out why Gay wasn't back. Trouble spiking the right time tick? Could be anything. But they won't just leave us here.

            We saved Mannie and the stuff he picked out. We won. damn you all!

            Had to see what weapons, ammo, were left. I didn't have anything more. My beam gun was exhausted, I knew. But my side arm? Don't remember firing it. All gone. Must look around.

            "Dear?"

            "Yes, Hazel?" (She's going to ask me for water and I haven't got any!)

            "I'm sony people were eating." "What's that?"

            "I had to kill him, dearest; he was assigned to kill you."

            I placed the little cat on Hazel. Maybe he moved, maybe not-maybe both of them were dead. I managed to pull myself up onto my foot, by holding on to a computer rack, then let myself down again. Despite long practice in hopping at one-sixth gee I found that I was neither strong enough nor did I have good balance-and I was separated from my cane, for the first time in years. It was, I thought, in Gay's forward bathroom.

            So I crawled, careful of my right leg. It was beginning to hurt. I found no weapons with charges. At painful last, I was back with Gwen and Pixel. Neither stirred. I couldn't be sure.

            A week isn't a long honeymoon and it's an awfully short married life.

            I explored her handbag, which I should have done earlier. She had carried it, slung over one shoulder to the other hip, even into battle.

            That handbag was much bigger inside than out. I found twelve chocolate bars. I found her little camera. I found her deadly little lady's gun, that Miyako-fully loaded, eight in the clip, one in the chamber.

            And, down in the bottom, I found the dart projector that had to be there. I almost missed it, it was styled to look like a toilet kit. Four darts were still in it.

            If they come back-or a fresh gang, I don't care-I'm going to get us a baker's dozen.