12

Chic Strikerock leaned back against his seat and said expansively, ‘I just don’t know, Vince. Maybe I can get you a job with Maury, maybe not.’ He was thoroughly enjoying the situation.

They were on their way together, he and Vince, up the autobahn by car, heading towards Frauenzimmer Associates. Their centrally controlled but private vehicle spun along, expertly guided; they had nothing to worry about in that department and it left them free for more important considerations.

‘But you’re hiring all sorts of people,’ Vince pointed out.

‘I’m not the boss, though,’ Chic said.

‘Do what you can,’ Vince said. ‘Okay? I really would appreciate it. After all, Karp is going to be methodically ruined, now. That’s obvious.’ He had a peculiar, miserable, hangdog expression which Chic had never seen before. ‘Of course, anything you say is all right with me,’ he murmured.

‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’

Pondering the matter, Chic said, ‘I think also we should settle this business about Julie. This is as good a time as any.’

His brother’s head jerked; Vince stared at him, his face twisting. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Call it a tie-in deal,’ Chic said.

After a long pause Vince said wooden, ‘I see.’

‘But’ -- Vince shuddered -- ‘I mean, you said yourself -- ‘

‘The most I’ve ever said is that she makes me nervous. But I feel a lot more psychologically secure, now. After all, I was about to be fired. That’s all changed; I’m part of an expanding, growing company. And we both know it. I’m on the inside and that means a lot. Now I think I can handle Julie. In fact I ought to have a wife. It helps ensure status.’

‘You mean you intend to formally marry her?’

Chic nodded.

‘All right,’ Vince said, at last. ‘Keep her. Frankly I don’t give a damn about it. It’s your business. Just as long as you get me on at Maury Frauenzimmer’s place; that’s all I care about.’

Strange, Chic thought. He had never known his brother to be that concerned with his career, to the exclusion of any other topic. He made a mental note of it; perhaps it meant something.

‘I can offer Frauenzimmer a lot,’ Vince said. ‘For example, I happen to know the name of the new der Alte. I picked up some scuttlebutt at Karp’s, before I left. You want to know it?’

Chic said, ‘What? The new what?’

‘The new der Alte. Or don’t you understand what this contract is that your boss has got away from Karp?’

Shrugging, Chic said, ‘Sure. I know. I was just startled.’

His ears rang from shock. ‘Listen,’ he managed to say, ‘I don’t care if it’s going to be called Adolf Hitler van Beethoven.’ The der Alte; so it was a sim. He felt really good, knowing that. This world, Earth, was a fine place to live in, at long last, and he meant to make the most of it. Now that he was truly a Ge.

‘It’s name is going to be Dieter Hogben,’ Vince said.

‘I’m sure Maury knows what it’ll be,’ Chic said nonchalantly, but inside he was still nonplussed. Utterly.

Bending, his brother turned on the car radio. ‘There’s some news about it already.’

‘I doubt if there would be so soon,’ Chic said.

‘Quiet!’ His brother turned up the volume. He had a news bulletin. So everyone, throughout the USEA, would be hearing it, now. Chic felt a little disappointed.

‘ ... a mild heart attack which doctors revealed occurred at approximately three A.M. and which has given rise to widely-held fears that Herr Kalbfleisch may not live to serve out his term of office. The condition of der Alte’s heart and circulatory system is the subject of speculation, and this unexpected cardiac arrest comes at a time when -- ‘ The radio droned on. Vince and Chic exchanged glances and then suddenly both of them burst into laughter. Knowingly and intimately.

‘It won’t be long,’ Chic said. The old man was on his way out; the first of a series of public announcements had now been made. The process ran a regular course, easily predictable. First, the mild, initial heart attack, coming out of the blue, thought at first to be merely indigestion, this shocked everyone but at the same time it prepared them, got them used to the idea. The Bes had to be approached in this manner; it was a tradition, and it functioned smoothly, effectively. As it had each time before.

Everything’s settled, Chic said to himself. The disposal of der Alte, who gets Julie, what firm my brother and I are working for ... there are no loose ends, troublesome and incomplete.

And yet. Suppose he had emigrated. Where would he be now? What would his life consist of? He and Richard Kongrosian ... colonists in a distant land. But there was no use thinking about that because he had turned that down; he had not emigrated and now the moment of choice had passed. He shoved the thought aside and turned back to the matter at hand.

‘You’re going to find it a lot different, working for a small outfit,’ he said to Vince, ‘instead of a cartel. The anonymity, the impersonal bureaucratic -- ‘

‘Be quiet!’ Vince interrupted. ‘There’s another bulletin.

Again he turned up the car radio.

‘ ... duties, because of his illness, have been assumed by the Vice President, and it is understood that a special election is to be announced shortly. Dr Rudi Kalbfleisch’s condition meanwhile remains -- ‘

‘They’re not going to give us much time,’ Vince said, frowning nervously and chewing on his lower lip.

‘We can do it,’ Chic said. He was not worried. Maury would find a way; his boss would come through, now that he’d been given the chance.

Failure, now that the big break had arrived, simply was not possible. For any of them.

God, suppose he started worrying about that!

Seated in the big blue easychair, the Reichsmarschall pondered Nicole’s proposition. Nicole, sipped iced tea, silently waited, in her authentic Directorate chair at the far end of the Lotus Room of the White House.

‘What you’re asking,’ Goering said at last, ‘is nothing less than that we repudiate our oaths to Adolf Hitler. Is it that you don’t comprehend the Fuhrer Prinzip, the Leader Principle? Possibly I can explain it to you. For example, imagine a ship in which -- ‘

‘I don’t want a lecture,’ Nicole snapped. ‘I want a decision. Or can’t you decide? Have you lost that capacity?’

‘But if we do this,’ Goering said, ‘we’re no better than the July Bomb Plotters. In fact we would have to plant a bomb exactly as they did or will do, however one expresses it.’ He rubbed his forehead wearily. ‘I find this singularly difficult. Why is there such urgency?’

‘Because I want it settled,’ Nicole said.

Goering sighed. ‘You know, our greatest mistake in Nazi Germany was our failure to harness the abilities of women properly. We relegated them to the kitchen and bedroom. They were not really utilized in the war effort, in administration or production or within the apparatus of the Party. Observing you I can see what a dreadful mistake we made.’

‘If you have not decided within the next six hours,’ Nicole said, ‘I will have the von Lessinger technicians return you to the Age of Barbarism and any deal which we might make -- ‘

She gestured a sharp cutting-motion that Goering watched with apprehension. ‘It’s all over.’

‘I simply do not have the authority,’ Goering began.

‘Listen,’ she leaned towards him, ‘you better have. What did you think, what thoughts passed through your mind, when you saw your great bloated corpse lying in the jail cell at Nuremberg? You have a choice: that, or assuming the authority to negotiate with me.’ She sat back, then, and sipped more iced tea.

Goering said hoarsely, ‘I -- will think further about it. During the next few hours. Thank you for the extension of time. Personally, I have nothing against the Jews. I’d be quite willing to -- ‘

‘Then do so.’ Nicole rose to her feet. The Reichsmarschall sat slumped over broodingly, evidently unaware that she had risen. She walked from the room leaving him. What a dismal, contemptible individual, she thought. Emasculated by the power-arrangement of the Third Reich; unable to do anything on his own as a unique individual -- no wonder they lost the war. And to think that in World War One he was a gallant brave ace, a member of Richtofen’s Flying Circus, flying one of those tiny, flimsy, wire and wood aeroplanes. Hard to believe it was the same man ...

Through a window of the White House she saw crowds outside the gates. The curious, here because of Rudi’s ‘illness.’ Nicole smiled momentarily. The watchers at the gate ... keeping the vigil. They would be there from now on, day and night, as if waiting for World Series seat tickets, until Kalbfleisch ‘died.’ And then they would silently drift off. Heaven knew what they came for. Didn’t they have anything else to do? She had wondered about them many times before, at the previous occasions. Were they always the same people? Interesting speculation.

She turned a corner -- and found herself facing Bertold Goltz.

‘I hurried here as soon as I heard,’ Goltz said, lazily. ‘So the old man’s strutted his little period and now is to be hustled off. He didn’t last very long, this one. And Herr Hogben will replace him, a certain mythical, non-existent construct with that apt appellation. I was over at the Frauenzimmer Werke; they’re going great guns, there.’

‘What do you want here?’ Nicole demanded.

Goltz shrugged. ‘Conversation, perhaps. I eternally enjoy chatting with you. Actually, however, I have a distinct purpose: to warn you. Karp und Sohnen has an agent in the Frauenzimmer Werke already.’

‘I’m aware of that,’ Nicole said. ‘And don’t refer to the Frauenzimmer firm as a “Werke.” They’re too small to be a cartel.’

‘A cartel can be small in size. What matters is that they hold a monopoly; there’s no competition -- Frauenzimmer has it all. Now Nicole, you had better listen to me; better have your von Lessinger technicians preview events vis-à-vis the Frauenzimmer people. For the next two months or so at the very least. I think you’ll be surprised. Karp is not going to give up that easily; you should have thought of that.’

‘We keep the situation in -- ‘

‘No you don’t,’ Goltz said. ‘You have nothing under control. Look ahead and you’ll see. You’re becoming complacent, like a big fat cat.’ He saw her touch the emergency button at her throat and he smiled broadly. ‘The alarm, Nicky? Because of me? Well, I guess I’ll stroll on. By the way: congratulations on stopping Kongrosian before he could emigrate. That was a genuine coup on your part. However -- you don’t know it yet, but your snaring of Kongrosian has dragged a little more than you anticipated into existence. Please make use of your von Lessinger equipment; it’s so uniquely valuable in situations like this.’

Two grey-clad NP men appeared at the end of the corridor. Nicole signalled brusquely to them and they scrambled to get out their guns.

Yawning, Goltz vanished.

‘He’s gone,’ Nicole said to the NP men, accusingly. Of course Goltz was gone; she had expected it. But at least this had terminated the conversation; she was rid of his presence.

We ought to go back, Nicole thought, to Goltz’s babyhood and destroy him then. But Goltz had anticipated them. He was long since back there, at the time of his birth and onward into childhood. Guarding himself, training himself, crooning over his child-self; through the von Lessinger principle Bertold Goltz had become, in effect, his own parent He was his own constant companion, his own Aristotle, for the initial fifteen years of his life, and for that reason the younger Goltz could not be surprised.

Surprise. That was the element which von Lessinger had nearly banished from politics. Everything now was pure cause and effect. At least, so she hoped.

‘Mrs Thibodeaux,’ one of the NP men said, very respectfully, ‘there is a man from A.G. Chemie to see you. A Mr Merrill Judd. We brought him up.’

‘Oh yes,’ Nicole said, nodding. She had an appointment with him; Judd had some fresh ideas as to how to go about curing Richard Kongrosian. The psych-chemist had approached the White House as soon as he had learned that Kongrosian had been found. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and started towards the California Poppy Room where she was to meet with Judd.

Damn those Karps, Anton and Felix, she thought as she hurried along the carpeted corridor, the two NP men following behind her. Suppose they attempt to sabotage the Dieter Hogben Project -- perhaps Goltz is right: perhaps we’ve got to act against them!

But they were so strong. And so resourceful. The Karps, father and son, were old pros at this business, even more so than she herself.

I wonder what Goltz meant exactly, she thought. About our having dragged more than we anticipated into existence when we regained possession of Richard Kongrosian. Something to do with Loony Luke? There was another one, as bad as the Karps or Goltz; another pirate and nihilist, out for himself at the expense of the state. How complicated everything had become, and still there was the unfinished, nagging business deal with Goering hanging over everything else. The Reichsmarschall simply could not decide and would not, would never finalize, and his indecision was stopping the wheels, keeping her attention fixed there, and at far too great a cost. If Goering did not decide by tonight. He would be, as she had assured him, back in his own time by eight this evening. Involved in a losing war which would eventually -- and he would be acutely aware of it cost him his fat life.

I’ll see that Goering gets exactly what’s due him, she said savagely to herself. And Goltz and the Karps, too. All of them, including Loony Luke. But it must be done carefully, with each matter handled in sequence. Right now she had a more pressing problem, that of Kongrosian.

Swiftly, she entered the California Poppy Room and greeted the A.G. Chemie psych-chemist, Merrill Judd.

In his sleep Ian Duncan had a terrible dream. A hideous old woman with greenish, wrinkled claws scrabbled at him, whining for him to do something -- he did not understand what it was because her voice, her words, blurred into indistinction, swallowed by her broken-toothed mouth, lost in the twisting thread of saliva which found its way to her chin. He struggled to free himself, to wake from his nap, to escape from her ...

‘Chrissake,’ Al’s peevish voice filtered through the layers of semi-consciousness to him. ‘Wake up! We have to get the lot moving; we’re supposed to be at the White House in less than three hours.’

Nicole, Ian realized as he sat up groggily. It was her I was dreaming about; ancient and withered, with dry, shrunken, deathly-stale paps, but still her. ‘Okay,’ he muttered as he rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘I sure as hell didn’t mean to doze off. And I sure paid for it; I had a terrible dream about Nicole Al. Listen suppose she really is old, despite what we saw? Suppose it’s a trick, a projected illusion. I mean -- ‘

‘We’ll perform,’ Al said. ‘Play our jugs.’

‘But I couldn’t live through it,’ Ian Duncan said. ‘My ability to adjust is just too precarious. This is turning into a nightmare; Luke controls the papoola and maybe Nicola is old -- what’s the point of going on? Can’t we go back to just seeing her on the TV screen? That’s good enough for me. I want that, the image. Okay?’

‘No,’ Al said doggedly. ‘We have to see this through. Remember, you can always emigrate to Mars; we have the means right at hand.’

The lot had already risen, was already moving towards the East Coast and Washington, D.C.

When they landed, Harold Slezak, a rotund, genial little man, greeted them warmly; he shook hands with them, putting them at their ease as they walked towards the service entrance of the White House. ‘Your programme is ambitious,’ he burbled, ‘but you can fulfil it, fine with me, with us here, the First Family I mean, and in particular the First Lady herself who is actively enthusiastic about all forms of original artistry. According to your biographical data you two made a thorough study of primitive disc recordings from the early nineteen hundreds, as early as 1920, of jug bands surviving from the US Civil War, so you’re authentic juggists except of course, you’re classical, not folk.’

‘Yes sir,’ Al said.

‘Could you, however, slip in one folk work?’ Slezak asked as they passed the NP guards at the service entrance and entered the White House, the long, quiet corridor with its artificial candles set at intervals. ‘For instance, we suggest “Rockaby My Sara Jane.” Do you have that in your repertoire? If not?’

‘We have it,’ Al said shortly. A look of repugnance appeared on his face and then immediately was gone.

‘Fine,’ Slezak said, prodding the two of them amiably ahead of him. Now may I ask what this creature you carry is?’ He eyed the papoola with something less than active enthusiasm. ‘Is it alive?’

‘It’s our totem animal,’ Al said.

‘You mean a superstitious charm? A mascot?’

‘Exactly,’ Al said. ‘With it we assuage anxiety.’ He patted the papoola’s head. ‘And it’s part of our act; it dances while we play. You know, like a monkey.’

‘Well, I’ll be darned,’ Slezak said, his enthusiasm returning. ‘I see, now. Nicole will be delighted; she loves soft furry things.’ He held a door open ahead of them.

And there she sat.

How could Luke have been so wrong? Ian Duncan thought. She was even lovelier than their glimpse of her at the lot, and in comparison with her TV image she was much more distinct. That was the cardinal difference, the fabulous authenticity of her appearance, its reality to the senses. The senses knew difference. Here she sat, in faded blue-cotton trousers, moccasins on her small feet, a carelessly-buttoned white shirt through which he could see -- or imagined he could see -- her tanned, smooth skin. How informal she was. Ian thought. Lacking in pretense or vain-glory. Her hair cut short, exposing her beautifully-formed neck and ears -- which fascinated him, captured his whole attention.

And, he thought, so darn young. She did not look even twenty. He wondered if by some miracle she remembered him. Or Al.

‘Nicole,’ Slezak said, ‘these are the classical juggists.’

She glanced up, sideways; she had been reading The Times.

Now she smiled in greeting. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘Did you two have lunch? We could serve you some Canadian bacon and butterhorns and coffee as a snack, if you want.’ Her voice, oddly, did not seem to come from her; it materialized from the upper portion of the room, almost at the ceiling. Looking that way, Ian saw a series of speakers and he realized with a start that a glass or plastic barrier separated Nicole from them, a security measure to protect her. He felt disappointed and yet he understood why it was necessary. If anything happened to her’We ate, Mrs Thibodeaux,’ Al said. ‘Thanks.’ He, too, was glancing up at the speakers.

We ate Mrs Thibodeaux, Ian Duncan thought crazily.

Isn’t it actually the other way around? Doesn’t she, sitting here in her blue-cotton pants and shirt, doesn’t she devour us? Strange thought ...

‘Look,’ Nicole said to Harold Slezak. ‘They have one of those little papoolas with them -- won’t that be fun?’ To Al she said, ‘Could I see it? Let it come here.’ She made a signal, and the transparent wall began to lift.

Al dropped the papoola and it scuttled towards Nicole, beneath the raised security barrier; it hopped up, and all at once Nicole held it in her strong, competent hands, gazing down at it intently as if peering deep inside it.

‘Heck,’ she said, ‘it’s not alive; it’s just a toy.’

‘None survived,’ Al explained. ‘As far as we know. But this is an authentic model, based on fossil remains found on Mars.’ He stepped towards her. The barrier settled abruptly in place. Al was cut off from the papoola and he stood gaping foolishly, seemingly very upset. Then, as if by instinct, he touched the controls at his waist. The papoola slid from Nicole’s hands and hopped clumsily to the floor. Nicole exclaimed in amazement, her eyes bright.

‘Do you want one, Nicky?’ Harold Slezak asked her. ‘We can undoubtedly get you one, even several.’

‘What does it do?’ Nicole said.

Slezak bubbled, ‘It dances, ma’am, when they play it has rhythm in its bones -- correct, Mr Duncan? Maybe you could play something now, a shorter piece, to show Mrs Thibodeaux.’ He rubbed his ample hands together vigorously, nodding to Ian and Al.

‘S-sure,’ Al said. He and Ian looked at each other. ‘Uh, we could play that little Schubert thing, that arrangement of “The Trout.” Okay, Ian, get set.’ He unbuttoned the protective case from his jug, lifted it out and held it awkwardly. Ian did the same. “This is Al Miller, here at first jug,’ Al said.

‘And beside me is my partner, Ian Duncan, at second jug. Bringing you a concert of classical favourites, beginning with a little Schubert.’

Bump bump-bump BUMP-BUMP buump bump, babump-bump bup-bup-bup-bup-buppppp ...

Nicole said suddenly, ‘Now I remember where I saw you two before. Especially you, Mr Miller.’

Lowering their jugs they waited apprehensively.

‘At that jalopy jungle,’ Nicole said. ‘When I went to pick up Richard. You talked to me; you asked me to leave Richard alone.’

‘Yes,’ Al admitted.

‘Didn’t you suppose I’d remember you?’ Nicole asked. ‘For heaven’s sake?’

Al said, ‘You see so many people -- ‘

‘But I have a good memory,’ Nicole said. ‘Even for those who aren’t too dreadfully important. You should have waited a little longer before coming here ... or perhaps you don’t care.’

‘We care,’ Al said. ‘We care a lot.’

She studied him for a long time. ‘Musicians are funny people,’ she said aloud, at last. ‘They don’t think like other people, I’ve discovered. They live in their own private fantasy world, like Richard does. He’s the worst. But he’s also the best, the finest of the White House musicians. Perhaps it has to go together; I don’t know, I don’t have any theory about it. Someone should do a definitive scientific study on the subject and settle it once and for all. Well, go ahead with your number.’

‘Okay,’ Al said, glancing quickly at Ian.

‘You never told me you said that to her,’ Ian said. ‘Asking her to leave Kongrosian alone -- you never mentioned that.’

‘I thought you knew; I thought you were there and heard it.’ Al shrugged. ‘Anyhow, I didn’t really believe she’d remember me.’ Obviously it still seemed impossible to him; his face was a maze of disbelief.

They began to play once again.

Bump-bump-bump BUMP-BUMP buuump bump ...

Nicole giggled.

We’ve failed, Ian thought. God, the worst had come about; we’re ludicrous. He ceased playing; Al continued on, his cheeks red and swelling with the effort of playing. He seemed unaware that Nicole was holding her hand up to conceal her laughter, her amusement at them and their efforts. Al played on, by himself, to the end of the piece, and then he, too, lowered his jug.

‘The papoola,’ Nicole said, as evenly as possible. ‘It didn’t dance. Not one little step -- why not?’ And again she laughed, unable to stop herself.

Al said woodenly, ‘I -- don’t have control of it; it’s on remote right now.’ To Ian he said, ‘Luke’s got control of it, still.’ He turned to the papoola and said in a loud voice, ‘You better dance.’

‘Oh really, this is wonderful,’ Nicole said. ‘Look,’ she said, to a woman who had just joined her; it was Janet Raimer -- Ian recognized her. ‘He has to beg it to dance. Dance, whatever your name is, papoola-thing from Mars, or rather imitation papoola-thing from Mars.’ she prodded the papoola with the toe of her moccasin, trying to nudge it into life. ‘Come on, little synthetic ancient cute creature, all made out of wires. Please.’ She prodded it a little harder.

The papoola leaped at her. It bit her.

Nicole screamed. A sharp pop sounded from behind her, and the papoola vanished into particles that swirled. A White House NP man stepped into sight, his rifle in his hands, peering at her and at the floating particles; his face was calm but his hands and the rifle quivered. Al began to curse to himself, chanting the words sing-song over and over again, the same three or four, unceasingly.

‘Luke,’ he said, then, to Ian. ‘He did it. Revenge. It’s the end of us.’ He looked tunelessly old, haggard, worn out.

Reflectively he began wrapping his jug up once more, going through the motions in mechanical fashion, step by step.

‘You’re under arrest,’ a second White House NP guard said, appearing behind them and training his rule on the two of them.

‘Sure,’ Al said listlessly, his head nodding, wobbling vacuously. ‘We had nothing to do with it so arrest us.’

Getting to her feet with the assistance of Janet Raimer, Nicole walked slowly towards Al and Ian. At the transparent barrier she stopped. ‘Did it bite me because I laughed?’ she said in a quiet voice.

Slezak stood mopping his forehead. He said nothing; he merely stared at them all sightlessly.

‘I’m sorry,’ Nicole said. ‘I made it angry, didn’t I? It’s a shame; we would have enjoyed your act. This evening after dinner.’

‘Luke did it,’ Al said to her.

‘ “Luke.” ‘ Nicole studied him. ‘Yes, that’s right; he’s your employer.’ To Janet Raimer she said, ‘I guess we’d better have him arrested, too. Don’t you think?’

‘Anything you say,’ Janet Raimer said, pale and terribly frightened-looking.

Nicole said, ‘This whole jug business ... it was just a cover-up for an action directly hostile to us, wasn’t it? A crime against the state. We’ll have to rethink the entire philosophy of inviting performers here -- perhaps it’s been a mistake from the very start. It gives too much access to anyone who has hostile intentions towards us. I’m sorry.’

She looked sad, now; she folded her arms and stood rocking back and forth, lost in thought.

‘Believe me, Nicole -- ‘ Al began.

Introspectively, to herself, she said, ‘I’m not Nicole. Don’t call me that. Nicole Thibodeaux died years ago. I’m Kate Rupert, the fourth one to take her place. I’m just an actress who looks enough like the original Nicole to be able to keep this job, and sometimes, when something like this happens I wish that I didn’t have it. I have no real authority, in the ultimate sense. There’s a council that governs ... I never see them; they’re not interested in me and I’m not in them. So that makes it even.’

After a time Al said, ‘How -- many attempts have there been on your life?’

‘Six or seven,’ she said. ‘I forget exactly. All for psychological reasons. Unresolved Oedipal complexes or something bizarre like that. I don’t really care.’ She turned to the NP men, then; there were now several squads of them on hand. Pointing to Al and Ian she said, ‘It seems to me they don’t appear as if they know what’s going on. Maybe they are innocent.’ To Harold Slezak and Janet Raimer she said, ‘Do they have to be destroyed? I don’t see why you couldn’t just eradicate a portion of the memory-cells of their brains and then let them go. Why wouldn’t that do?’

Slezak glanced at Janet Raimer, then shrugged. ‘If you want it that way.’

‘Yes,’ Nicole said. ‘I’d prefer that. It would make my job easier. Take them to the Medical Centre at Bethesda and after that release them. And now let’s go on; let’s give an audience to the next performers.’

A NP man nudged Ian in the back with his gun. ‘Down the corridor, please.’

‘Okay,’ Ian managed to murmur, gripping his jug. But what happened? he wondered. I don’t quite understand.

This woman isn’t really Nicole and even worse there is no Nicole anywhere; there’s just the TV image after all, the illusion of the media, and behind it, behind her, another group entirely rules. A corporate body of some kind. But who are they and how did they get power? How long have they had it? Will we ever know? We came so far; we almost seemed to know what’s really going on. The actuality behind the illusion, the secrets kept from us all our lives. Can’t they tell us the rest? There can’t be much more. And what difference would it make now? ‘Goodbye,’ Al was saying to him.

‘W-what?’ he said, horrified. ‘Why do you say that? They’re going to let us go, aren’t they?’

Al said, ‘We won’t remember each other. Take my word for it; we won’t be allowed to keep any recollections like that. So -- ‘ He held out his hand. ‘So goodbye, Ian. We made it to the White House, didn’t we? You won’t remember that either, but that’s still true; we did do it.’ He grinned crookedly.

‘Move along,’ the NP man said to the two of them.

Still -- pointlessly -- holding their jugs, Al Miller and Ian Duncan moved step by step down the corridor, in the direction of the outer door and the waiting black medical van which they knew lay beyond.

It was night, and Ian Duncan found himself at a deserted street corner, cold and shivering, blinking in the glaring white light of an urban pubtrans loading platform. What am I doing here? he asked himself, bewildered. He looked at his wristwatch; it was eight o’clock. I’m supposed to be at the All Souls Meeting, aren’t I? he thought dazedly.

I can’t miss another one, he realized. Two in a row -- it’s a terrible fine; it’s economically ruinous. He began to walk.

The familiar building, The Abraham Lincoln with all its network of towers and windows, lay extended ahead, it was not far and he hurried, breathing deeply, trying to keep a good steady pace. It must be over, he thought. The lights in the great central auditorium were not lit. Damn it, he breathed in despair.

‘All Souls over?’ he said to the doorman as he entered the lobby, his identification held out to the official reader.

‘You’re a little confused, Mr Duncan,’ Vince Strikerock said. ‘All Souls was last night; this is Friday.’

Something’s gone wrong, Ian realized. But he said nothing; he merely nodded and hurried on towards the elevator.

As he emerged from the elevator on his own floor, a door opened and a furtive figure beckoned him. ‘Hey, Duncan!’

It was a building resident named Corley, who he barely knew. Because an encounter like this could be disastrous, Ian approached him with wariness. ‘What is it?’

‘A rumour,’ Corley said in a rapid, fear-filled voice.

‘About your last relpol test -- some irregularity. They’re going to rouse you at five or six A.M. tomorrow and spring a surprise relpol quiz on you.’ He glanced up and down the hall. ‘Study the late 1980’s and the religio-collectivist movements in particular. Got it?’

‘Sure,’ Ian said, with gratitude. ‘And thanks a lot. Maybe I can do the same -- ‘ He broke off, because Corley had scuttled back into his own apartment again and shut the door. Ian was alone.

Certainly very nice of him, he thought as he walked on.

Probably saved my hide, kept me from being forcibly evicted right out of here, forever.

When he reached his apartment he made himself comfortable, with all his reference books on the political history of the United States spread out around him. I’ll study all night, he decided. Because I have to pass that quiz; I have no choice.

To keep himself awake, he turned on the TV. Presently the warm, familiar being, the presence of the First Lady, flowed into existence and began to permeate the room.

‘ ... and at our musical tonight,’ she was saying, ‘we will have a saxophone quartet which will play themes from Wagner’s operas, in particular my favourite, die Meistersinger. I believe we will all find that a deeply rewarding and certainly an enriching experience to cherish. And, after that, I have arranged to bring you once again an old favourite of yours, the world-renowned cellist, Henri LeClerc, in a programme of Jerome Kern and Cole Porter.’ She smiled, and at his pile of reference books, Ian Duncan smiled back.

I wonder how it would be to play at the White House, he said to himself. To perform before the First Lady. Too bad I never learned to play any kind of musical instrument. I can’t act, write poems, dance or sing -- nothing. So what hope is there for me? Now, if I had come from a musical family, if I had had a father or a mother to teach me ...

Glumly, he scratched a few notes on the rise of the French Christian-Fascist Party of 1975. And then, drawn as always to the TV set, he put his pen down and turned his chair so that he faced the set. Nicole was now exhibiting a piece of Delft tile which she had picked up, she explained, in a little shop in Schweinfurt, Germany. What lovely clear colours it had ... he watched, fascinated,’ as her strong, slim fingers caressed the shiny surface of the baked enamel tile.

‘See the tile,’ Nicole was murmuring in her husky voice. ‘Don’t you wish you had a tile like that? Isn’t it lovely?’

‘Yes,’ Ian Duncan said.

‘How many of you would like someday to see such a tile?’

Nicole asked. ‘Raise your hands.’

Ian raised his hand hopefully.

‘Oh, a whole lot of you,’ Nicole said, smiling her intimate radiant smile. ‘Well, perhaps later we will have another tour of the White House. Would you like that?’

Hopping up and down in his chair, Ian said, ‘Yes, I’d like that!’

On the TV screen she was smiling directly at him, it seemed. And so he smiled back. And then, reluctantly, feeling a great weight descend over him, he at last turned back to his reference books. Back to the harsh realities of his daily endless life.

Against the window of his apartment something bumped and a voice called to him thinly, ‘Ian Duncan, I don’t have much time!’

Whirling, he saw outside in the night darkness a shape drifting, an egg-like construction that hovered. Within it a man waved at him energetically, still calling. The egg gave off a dull putt-putt noise, its jets idling as the man kicked open the hatch of the vehicle and lifted himself out.

Are they after me already on this quiz? Ian Duncan asked himself. He stood up, feeling helpless. So soon ... I’m not ready, yet.

Angrily, the man in the vehicle spun the jets until their steady white exhaust-firing met the surface of the building; the room shuddered and bits of plaster broke away. The window itself collapsed as the heat of the jets crossed it.

Through the gap exposed the man yelled once more, trying to attract Ian Duncan’s dulled faculties.

‘Hey, Duncan! Hurry up! I have your buddy already; he’s on his way in another ship!’ The man, elderly, wearing an expensive natural fibre blue pinstripe suit which was slightly old-fashioned, lowered himself with dexterity from the hovering egg-shaped vehicle and dropped feet-first into the room. ‘We have to get going if we’re to make it. You don’t remember me? Neither did Al.’

Ian Duncan stared at him, wondering who he was and who Al was.

‘Mama’s psychologists did a good job of working you over,’ the elderly man panted. ‘That Bethesda -- it must be quite a place.’ He came towards Ian, caught hold of him by the shoulder. ‘The NP’s are shutting down all the jalopy jungles; I have to beat it to Mars and I’m taking you along with me. Try to pull yourself together; I’m Loony Luke you don’t remember me now but you will after we’re all on Mars and you see your buddy Al again. Come on!’

Luke propelled him towards the gap in the wall of the room, the opening which had once been a window, and towards the vehicle -- it was called a jalopy, Ian realized -- drifting beyond.

‘Okay,’ Ian said, wondering what he should take with him. What would he need on Mars? Toothbrush, pyjamas, a heavy coat? He looked frantically around his apartment, one last inspection of it.

Far off, police sirens sounded.

Luke scrambled back into the jalopy, and Ian followed, taking hold of the elderly man’s extended hand. The floor of the jalopy, he discovered to his surprise crawled with bright orange bug-like creatures whose antennae waved at him as he sprawled among them. Papoolas, he remembered. Or something like that.

You’ll be all right now, the papoolas were thinking in unison.

Don’t worry; Loony Luke got you away in time, just barely in time. Relax.

‘Yes,’ Ian agreed. He lay back against the side of the jalopy and relaxed, as the ship shot upwards into the night emptiness and the new planet which lay ahead.

13

‘I certainly would like to leave the White House,’ Richard Kongrosian said peevishly to the NP men guarding him. He felt irritable and also apprehensive; he stood as far from Commissioner Pembroke as possible. It was Pembroke, he knew, who was in charge.

Wilder Pembroke said, ‘Mr Judd, the A.G. Chemie psychchemist, will be here any minute. So please be patient, Mr Kongrosian.’ His voice was calm but not soothing; it had a hard edge which made Kongrosian even more unstrung.

‘This is intolerable,’ Kongrosian said. ‘You guarding me like this, watching everything I do. I simply can’t tolerate being watched: I have paranoia sensitiva; don’t you realize that?’

There was a knock at the door of the room. ‘Mr Judd to see Mr Kongrosian,’ a White House attendant called in Pembroke opened the door of the room, admitting Merrill Judd, who entered briskly, official briefcase in hand. Mr Kongrosian. Glad to meet you face to face, at last.’

‘Hello, Judd,’ Kongrosian murmured, feeling sullen about everything which was going on around him.

‘I have here with me some new, experimental medication for you,’ Judd informed him, opening the briefcase and reaching within. ‘The imipramine hcl -- twice a day, 50 mg each. That’s the orange tablet. The brown tablet is our new methabyretinate oxide, 100 mg per -- ‘

‘Poison,’ Kongrosian broke in.

‘Pardon?’ Alertly, Judd cupped his ear.

‘I won’t take it; this is part of a carefully laid plot to kill me.’ There was no doubt of it in Kongrosian’s mind. He had realized it as soon as Judd had arrived with the official A.G. Chemie briefcase.

‘Not at all,’ Judd said, glancing sharply at Pembroke. ‘I assure you. We’re trying to help you. It’s our job to help you, sir.’

‘Is that why you kidnapped me?’ Kongrosian said.

‘I did not kidnap you,’ Judd said cautiously. ‘Now as to -- ‘

‘You’re all working together,’ Kongrosian said. And he had an answer for it; he had been preparing for the exact moment when the time was right. Summoning his psychokinetic talent he lifted both his arms and directed the power of his attention towards the psych-chemist Merrill Judd.

The psych-chemist rose from the floor, dangled in air; still clutching his official A.G. Chemie briefcase, he gaped at Kongrosian and Pembroke. Eyes protruding, he tried to speak, and then Kongrosian whisked him at the closed door of the room. The door, wooden and hollow-core splintered as Judd swept against it and through it; he disappeared from Kongrosian’s sight then. Only Pembroke and his NP men remained in the room with him.

Clearing his throat, Wilder Pembroke said huskily, ‘Perhaps -- we should see how badly he’s hurt.’ As he started towards the ruined door he added, over his shoulder, ‘I would think that A.G. Chemie will be somewhat upset by this. To put it mildly.’

‘The hell with A.G. Chemie,’ Kongrosian said. ‘I want my own doctor; I don’t trust anybody you bring in here. How do I know he was actually even from A.G. Chemie? He was probably an impostor.’

‘In any case,’ Pembroke said, ‘you hardly have to worry about him, now.’ Gingerly, he opened the remains of the wooden door.

‘Was he truly from A.G. Chemie?’ Kongrosian asked, following him out into the corridor.

‘You talked to him on the phone yourself; it was you who called him into this initially.’ Pembroke seemed angry and agitated, now, as he searched the corridor for a sign of Judd. ‘Where is he?’ he demanded. ‘What in the name of God did you do with him, Kongrosian?’

Kongrosian said, with reluctance, ‘I moved him downstairs to the subsurface laundry room. He’s all right.’

‘Do you know what the von Lessinger principle is?’ Pembroke asked him, eyeing him tensely.

‘Of course.’

Pembroke said, ‘As a member of the higher NP, I have access to von Lessinger equipment. Would you like to know whom you’ll next mistreat by means of your psychokinetic ability?’

‘No,’ Kongrosian said.

‘Knowing would be to your advantage. Because you might want to stop yourself; it will be a manoeuvre you’ll regret.’

‘Who’s the person?’ Kongrosian asked, then.

‘Nicole,’ Pembroke said. ‘You can tell me something if you want. Under what operating theory have you refrained, up until now, from using your talent politically?’

‘ “Politically”?’ Kongrosian echoed. He did not see how he had used it politically.

‘Politics,’ Pembroke said, ‘if I may remind you, is the art of getting other people to do what you want them to, by force if necessary. Your application of psychokinesis just now was rather unusual in its directness ... but nevertheless it was a political act.’

Kongrosian said, ‘I always felt it was wrong to use it on people.’

‘But now -- ‘

‘Now,’ Kongrosian said, ‘the situation is different. I’m a captive; everyone’s against me. You’re against me, for instance. I may have to use it against you.’

‘Please don’t,’ Pembroke said. He smiled tightly. ‘I’m merely a salaried employee of a government agency, doing my job.’

‘You’re a lot more than that,’ Kongrosian said. ‘I’d be interested in knowing how I’m going to use my talent against Nicole.’ He could not imagine himself doing that; he was too awed by her. Too reverent.

Pembroke said, ‘Why don’t we wait and see.’

‘It strikes me as strange,’ Kongrosian said, ‘that you’d go to the trouble of using von Lessinger equipment merely to find out about me. After all, I’m utterly worthless, an outcast from humanity. A freak that should never have been born.’

‘That’s your illness talking,’ Pembroke said. ‘When you say that. And down inside your mind somewhere you know that.’

‘But you must admit,’ Kongrosian persisted, ‘that it’s unusual for someone to use the von Lessinger machinery as you evidently have. What’s your reason?’ Your real reason, he thought to himself.

‘My task is to protect Nicole. Obviously, since you will soon be making an overt move in her direction -- ‘

‘I think you’re lying about that,’ Kongrosian interrupted. ‘I could never do anything like that. Not to Nicole.’

Wilder Pembroke raised an eyebrow. And then he turned and rang the elevator button to begin his trip downstairs to search for the psych-chemist from A.G. Chemie.

‘What are you up to?’ Kongrosian asked. He was highly suspicious of the NP men anyhow, always had been and always would be, and particularly so ever since the NP had shown up at the jalopy jungle and seized him. And this man impelled an even greater suspicion and hostility in him, although he did not understand quite why.

‘I’m just doing my job,’ Pembroke repeated.

And still, for reasons he did not consciously know, Kongrosian did not believe him.

‘How do you now expect to get well?’ Pembroke asked him as the elevator doors opened. ‘Since you’ve destroyed the A.G. Chemie man -- ‘ He entered the elevator, beckoning Kongrosian to join him.

‘My own doctor. Egon Superb; he can still cure me.’

‘Do you want to see him? It can be arranged.’

‘Yes!’ Kongrosian said eagerly. ‘As soon as possible. He’s the only one in the universe who isn’t against me.’

‘I could take you there myself,’ Pembroke said, a thoughtful expression on his flat, hard face. ‘

If I thought it was a good idea ... and I’m not very certain of that, at this point.’

‘If you don’t take me,’ Kongrosian said, ‘I’ll pick you up with my talent and set you down in the Potomac.’

Pembroke shrugged. ‘Doubtless you could. But according to the von Lessinger equipment, you probably won’t. I’ll take the chance.’

‘I don’t think the von Lessinger principle can deal properly with us Psis,’ Kongrosian said irritably as he also entered the elevator. ‘At least, I’ve heard that said. We act as acausal factors.’ This was a difficult man to deal with, a strong man whom he actively did not like. Like -- or trust.

Maybe it’s just the police mentality, he conjectured as the two of them descended.

Or maybe it’s more.

Nicole, he thought. You know darn well I could never do anything to you; it’s utterly out of the question -- my entire world would collapse. It would be like injuring my own mother or sister, someone sacred.

I’ve got to keep my talent in check, he realized. Please, dear Lord, help me keep my psychokinetic ability in check whenever I’m around Nicole. Okay? As the elevator descended he waited, fervently, for an answer.

‘By the way,’ Pembroke broke into his thoughts suddenly. ‘About your smell. It seems to be gone.’

‘Gone!’ And then the implication of the NP man’s remark struck him. ‘You mean you could detect my phobic body odour? But that’s impossible! It can’t actually be -- ‘ He ceased talking, confused. ‘And you say now it’s gone.’ He did not understand.

Pembroke eyed him. ‘I would certainly have noticed it here, cooped up with you in this elevator. Of course, it may come back. I’ll be glad to let you know if it does.’

‘Thank you,’ Kongrosian said. And thought, Somehow this man is getting the upper hand over me. Constantly. He’s a master psychologist ... or is it that, by his definition, he’s a master political strategist?

‘Cigarette?’ Pembroke extended his pack.

Horrified, Kongrosian leaped back. ‘No. They’re illegal too dangerous. I wouldn’t dare smoke one.’

‘Always danger,’ Pembroke said, as he lit up. ‘Right? A constantly dangerous world. You must be ceaselessly careful. What you need, Kongrosian, is a bodyguard. A squad of hand-picked, rigorously-trained NP men, with you at all times.’ He added, ‘Otherwise -- ‘

‘Otherwise you don’t think I have much of a chance.’

Pembroke nodded. ‘Very little, Kongrosian. And I say this on the basis of my use of the von Lessinger apparatus.’

From then on the two of them descended in silence.

The elevator stopped. The doors slid back. They were in the subsurface level of the White House. Kongrosian and Pembroke stepped out into the hall. A man, whom both of them recognized, stood waiting for them. ‘I want you to listen, Kongrosian,’ Bertold Goltz said to the pianist.

Swiftly, in a fraction of a second, the NP Commissioner had his pistol out. He aimed at Goltz and fired.

But Goltz had already vanished.

A piece of folded paper lay on the floor where he had stood. Goltz had dropped it. Stooping, Kongrosian reached for it.

‘Don’t touch that!’ Pembroke said sharply.

It was too late. Kongrosian had it, was unfolding it. It read: Pembroke leads you to your death.

‘Interesting,’ Kongrosian said. He passed the slip of paper to the NP man; Pembroke put his pistol away and accepted it, scrutinizing it, his face distorted with outrage.

From behind them, Goltz said, ‘Pembroke has waited months for you to be taken into custody, here at the White House. Now there isn’t any time left.’

Spinning, Pembroke snatched at his pistol, brought it out and fired. Again Goltz, grinning with scornful bitterness, disappeared. You’ll never get him, Kongrosian realized. Not as long as he has the von Lessinger equipment at his disposal.

Time left for what? he wondered. What’s going to happen? Goltz seemed to know and probably Pembroke knows, too; they have identical equipment available to them.

And, he thought, how does it involve me? Me -- and my talent, which I’ve sworn to keep in check.

Does this mean I’m going to use it? He had no intuition that this was precisely what it meant.

And there was probably little he could do about it.

From outside the house Nat Flieger heard children playing.

They chanted some sort of dirge-like rhythm, unfamiliar to him. And he had been in the music business all his life. No matter how hard he tried he could not make out the words; they were strangely blurred, run-together.

‘Mind if I look?’ he asked Beth Kongrosian, rising to his feet from the creaky wicker chair.

Turning pale, Beth Kongrosian said, ‘I -- would rather you didn’t. Please don’t look at the children. Please!’

Nat said gently, ‘We’re a recording company, Mrs Kongrosian. Anything and everything in the way of music is our business.’ He absolutely could not refrain from going to the window to look; the instinct, right or wrong, was in his blood -- it came before civility or kindness, before all else. Peering out, he saw them, seated in a circle. And they were all chuppers. He wondered which was Plautus Kongrosian. They all looked so much alike to him. Perhaps the little boy in yellow shorts and T-shirt off to the side. Nat motioned to Molly and Jim; they joined him at the window.

Five Neanderthal children, Nat thought. Plucked out of time; a sequence from the past snipped out and pasted here in this day and age, in the present, for us of EME to overhear, to record. I wonder what sort of an album cover our art department will want to put on this. He shut his eyes, no longer wishing to face the scene outside the window.

But we will go ahead, he knew. Because we came here to get something; we can’t -- or at least we don’t want to -- go back with nothing at all. And this is important.

This has to be dealt with, professionally. Perhaps it’s more important even than Richard Kongrosian, good as he is. And we can’t afford the luxury of paying attention to our delicate sensibilities.

‘Jim,’ he said presently. ‘Get out the Ampek F-a2. Right away. Before they stop.’

Beth Kongrosian said, ‘I won’t let you record them.’

‘We will,’ Nat said to her. ‘We’re used to this, in folk music sessions done on the spot. It’s been tested in USEA courts many times and the recording firm has always won.’

He followed after Jim Planck, in order to help assemble their recording gear.

‘Mr Flieger, do you understand what they are?’ Mrs Kongrosian called after him.

‘Yes,’ he said. And continued on.

Presently they had the Ampek F-a2 set up; the organism pulsed sleepily, undulating its pseudopodia as if hungry. The moist weather seemed to have affected it little; it was, if anything, torpid.

Appearing beside them, composed, her face rigid with determination, Beth Kongrosian said in a low voice, ‘Listen to me, please. At night, in fact tonight in particular, there’s going to be a gathering of them. The adults. At their hall, back in the woods very near here, on the red-rock side road they all use; it belongs to them, their organization. There will be a great deal of dancing and singing. What you want exactly. Much more than what you’ll find here with these little children. So please; wait and record that instead.’

Nat said, ‘We’ll get both.’ And signalled Jim to carry the Ampek F-a2 towards the circle of children.

‘I’ll put you up for the night, here in the house,’ Beth Kongrosian said, hurrying after him. ‘Very late, around two in the morning, they sing wonderfully -- it’s hard to understand the words but -- ‘ She caught hold of his arm. ‘Richard and I have been trying to train our child away from this. The children, as young as they are, don’t really participate; you won’t get the real thing from them. When you see the adults -- ‘ She broke off and then finished drably, ‘Then you’ll see what I mean.’

Molly said to Nat, ‘Let’s wait.’

Hesitating, Nat turned to Jim Planck. Jim nodded.

‘Okay,’ Nat said to Mrs Kongrosian. ‘If you’ll take us to their hall, where they meet. And see that we get in.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will. Thank you, Mr Flieger.’

I feel guilty, Nat said to himself. But he said aloud, ‘Okay. And you -- ‘ His guilt overcame him, then. ‘Heck, you don’t have to put us up. We’ll stay in Jenner.’

‘I’d like to,’ Beth Kongrosian said. ‘I’m terribly lonely; I need the company, when Richard’s away. You don’t know what it means to have people from -- the outside come in here for a little while.’

The children, noticing the adults, broke off suddenly, shyly; they peeped at Nat and Molly and Jim wide-eyed. It would probably not have been possible to get them down anyhow, Nat realized. So he had lost nothing by his deal.

‘Does this frighten you?’ Beth Kongrosian asked him.

He shrugged. ‘No. Not really.’

‘The government knows about it,’ she said. ‘There have been many ethnologists and god knows what else sent out here to investigate. They all say it proves one thing; in prehistoric times, during the epoch before Cro-Magnon Man appeared -- ‘ She ceased, helplessly.

‘They interbred,’ Nat finished for her. ‘Like the skeletons found in the caves in Israel indicated.’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Possibly all the so-called sub-races. The races that didn’t survive. They were absorbed by Homo Sapiens.’

‘I’d make a different guess,’ Nat said. ‘It would seem more to me that the the so-called sub-races were mutations which existed for a short while and then dwindled away because they couldn’t adapt as well. Perhaps there were radiation problems in those days.’

‘I don’t agree,’ Beth Kongrosian said. ‘And work they’ve done with the von Lessinger equipment tends to back me up. By your theory they would just be -- sports. But I believe they’re true races ... I think they evolved separately from the original primate, from Proconsul. And at last came together, when Homo Sapiens migrated into their hunting lands.’

Molly said, ‘Could I get another cup of coffee? I’m cold.’

She shivered. ‘This damp air gets me down.’

‘We’ll go back into the house,’ Beth Kongrosian agreed.

‘Yes, you’re not accustomed to the weather up here; I understand. I remember how it was when we first moved here.’

‘Plautus was not born here,’ Nat said.

‘No.’ She nodded. ‘We came here because of him.’

‘Wouldn’t the government have taken him?’ Nat asked.

‘They maintain special schools for radiation survivors.’ He avoided using the exact term; it would have been radiation sports.

‘We thought he would be happier here,’ Beth Kongrosian said. ‘Most of them -- the chuppers, as they speak of themselves -- are here. They’ve come from every part of the world, during the last two decades.’

The four of them re-entered the warm, dry house.

‘He’s actually a lovely-looking little boy,’ Molly said.

‘Very sweet and sensitive-looking, despite -- ‘ She faltered.

‘The jaw and the shambling gait,’ Mrs Kongrosian said matter of factly, ‘haven’t fully formed. That begins in about the thirteenth year.’ In the kitchen she began to heat water for their coffee.

Strange, what we’re going to bring back from this trip, Nat Flieger thought to himself. So different from what we and Leo expected.

He thought, I wonder how it’ll sell.

Amanda Conner’s sweet, pure voice came from the intercom, startling Dr Egon Superb as he sat examining his schedule of tomorrow’s appointments. ‘Someone to see you, doctor. A Mr Wilder Pembroke.’

Wilder Pembroke! Dr Superb sat up rigidly, and laid aside his appointment book reflexively. What did the NP official want this tune? He felt immediate, instinctive wariness and he said into the intercom, ‘Just a minute, please.’

Has he finally come to shut me down? he wondered. Then I must have seen that one, particular patient without realizing it.

The one I exist to serve; or rather, not to serve. The man I’m here to fail with.

Sweat stood out on his forehead as he thought, So now my career, like that of every other psychoanalyst in the USEA, ends. What’ll I do now? Some of his colleagues had fled to Communist countries, but surely they were no better off there. Several had emigrated to Luna and Mars. And a few a surprisingly large ‘few’ -- had applied for work with A.G. Chemie, the organization responsible in the first place for the stricture against them.

He was too young to retire and too old to learn another profession. Bitterly, he thought, so actually I can do nothing. I can’t go on and I can’t quit; it’s a true doublebind, the sort of thing my patients are always getting themselves into. Now he could feel more compassion for them and the messes which they had made of their lives.

To Amanda he said, ‘Send Commissioner Pembroke in.’

The hard-eyed but quiet-spoken NP man, in ordinary street clothes as before, slowly entered the office and seated himself facing Dr Superb.

‘That’s quite a girl you have out there,’ Pembroke said, and licked his lips. ‘I wonder what will become of her. Possibly we -- ‘

‘What do you want?’ Superb said.

‘An answer. To a question.’ Pembroke leaned back, got out a gold cigarette case, an antique from the previous century, lit up with his lighter, also an antique. Blowing smoke he made himself comfortable, crossing his legs. And said, ‘Your patient, Richard Kongrosian, has discovered that he can fight back.’

‘Against whom?’

‘His oppressors. Us, of course. Anyone else who comes along, for that matter. Here’s what I would like to know. I want to work with Richard Kongrosian but I have to protect myself from him. Frankly, I’m afraid of him, at this point, more afraid of him, doctor, than of anyone else in the world. And I know why -- I’ve used von Lessinger’s equipment and I know exactly what I’m talking about. What’s the key to his mind? How can I arrange for Kongrosian to be -- ‘ Pembroke groped for the word; gesturing, he said, ‘Reliable. You understand. Obviously, I don’t want to be picked up and set down six feet underground some morning when we have a minor tiff.’ His face was pale and he was sitting with brittle stiffness.

After a pause Dr Superb said, ‘Now that I know who the patient is that I’m waiting for. You lied about the failing. I’m not supposed to fail. In fact I’m needed vitally. And the patient is quite sane.’

Pembroke regarded him intently but said nothing.

‘You’re the patient. And you were totally aware of it, all along. Through you I’ve been misled. From the beginning.’

After a time Pembroke nodded.

‘And this is not government business,’ Superb said. ‘This is an arrangement of your own. It has nothing to do with Nicole.’ At least not directly, he thought.

‘Be careful.’ Pembroke said. He got out his service pistol and held it loosely in his lap, but with his hand close to it.

‘I can’t tell you how to control Kongrosian. I can’t control him myself; you’ve seen that.’

‘But you would know,’ Pembroke said, ‘assuming anyone would, if I can work with him; you know that much about him.’ He stared at Superb, his eyes clear and unwinking. Waiting.

‘You’d have to tell me what you intend to propose to him.’

Pembroke, picking up his gun and holding it pointed directly at Dr Superb, said, ‘Tell me how he feels about Nicole.’

‘She’s a Magna Mater figure to him. As she is to all of us.’

‘ “Magna Mater.” ‘ Pembroke leaned forward intently.

‘What’s that?’

‘The great primordial mother.’

‘So in other words he idolizes her. She’s like a goddess to him, not mortal. How would he react -- ‘ Pembroke hesitated. ‘Suppose Kongrosian suddenly became a Ge, a real one, possessing one of the most carefully-guarded government secrets. That Nicole died years ago, that this so-called “Nicole” is an actress. A girl named Kate Rupert.’

Superb’s ears buzzed. He studied Pembroke, and knew one thing, knew it for the absolute reality it was. When this interchange was over, Pembroke would kill him.

‘Because,’ Pembroke said, ‘that’s the truth.’ He shoved his gun back into its holster, then, Would he lose his awe of her, then? Would he be able to -- co-operate?’

After a time Superb said, ‘Yes. He would. Definitely so.’

Visibly, Pembroke relaxed. He ceased to tremble and some colour returned to his thin, flat face. ‘Good. And I hope you’re disbursing the truth, doctor, because if you aren’t I’ll make my way back here, no matter what happens, and destroy you.’ All at once he rose to his feet. ‘Goodbye.’

Superb said, ‘Am I now out of business?’

‘Of course. Why not?’ Pembroke smiled composedly.

‘What good are you to anybody? You know that doctor. Your hour has passed. An amusing pun, in that you -- ‘

‘Suppose I tell you what you just now told me.’

‘Oh, please do. It’ll make my job much easier. You see, doctor, I intend to make public that particular Geheimis to the Bes. And, simultaneously, Karp und Sohnen Werke will reveal the other.’

‘What other?’

‘You’ll have to wait,’ Pembroke said. ‘Until Anton and Felix Karp feel themselves ready.’ He opened the office door. ‘I’ll see you again soon, doctor. Thanks for the assistance.’ The door closed behind him.

I have learned, Dr Superb realized, the ultimate secret of the state. I am now at the top rung of Ge society.

And it doesn’t matter. Because there is no way I can use this information as an instrument by which to retain my career. And that is all that counts. As far as I’m concerned.

My career and nothing else. God damn it, nothing!

He felt overwhelming, vicious, raw hatred for Pembroke.

If I could kill him, Superb realized, I would. Right now. Follow after him. ‘Doctor,’ Amanda’s voice sounded from the intercom.

‘Mr Pembroke says that we must close up.’ Her voice wavered. ‘Is that true? I thought they were going to let you go on for a while.’

‘He’s right,’ Superb admitted. ‘It’s all over. You better phone my patients, everyone I have an appointment with, and tell them the story.’

‘Yes, doctor.’ Tearfully, Amanda rang off.

Damn him, Superb said to himself. And there’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing at all.

The intercom came on once again as Amanda said hesitantly, ‘And he also said something else. I wasn’t going to say -- but it was about me. I knew it’d make you angry.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said -- maybe he could use me. He didn’t say how but whatever it is I felt -- ‘ She was silent a moment. ‘I felt sick,’ she finished. ‘In a way I never did before. No matter who was looking at me or talking to me. No matter what anybody said. This -- was different.’

Rising Superb walked to the office door, opened it. Pembroke had left, of course; he saw only Amanda Conners in the outer office, at her desk, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. Superb walked to the front door of the building, opened it and descended the stairs.

He unlocked the trunk of his parked wheel, got out the jack handle. With it, he started down the sidewalk. The shaft of steel felt slippery and cold within his grip as he searched for Commissioner Pembroke.

Far off he saw a shrunken figure. Altered perspective, Dr Superb realized. Makes him look little. But he’s not. Dr Superb walked towards the NP man, holding the jack handle up. The figure of Pembroke grew.

Pembroke was paying no attention to him; he did not see Superb coming. Immobile, with a group of other persons, passers-by, Pembroke was gazing fixedly at the headlines displayed by a peripatetic news machine.

The headlines were huge and ominous and black. As he approached, Dr Superb saw them, made out the words. He slowed, lowered the jack handle, until at last he stood like the others.

‘Karp discloses vast government secret!’ the news machine screeched to everyone within hearing distance. ‘Der Alte a simulacrum! New one already being built!’

The news machine began to wheel off in search of other customers. No one was buying here. Everyone had become frozen. It was dream-like to Dr Superb; he shut his eyes, thinking to himself, I have difficulty believing this. Terrible difficulty.

‘Karp employee steals entire plans for next der Alte simulacrum!’ the news machine, now half a block away, shrilled.

The sound of it echoed. ‘Makes plans public!’

All these years, Dr Superb thought. We’ve worshipped a dummy. A being inert and devoid of life.

Opening his eyes, he saw Wilder Pembroke, bent grotesquely as he strained to hear the departing racket of the news machine; Pembroke took a few steps after it, as if hypnotized by it.

Pembroke, as he departed, dwindled as before. I’ve got to go after him, Dr Superb realized. Make him full-sized, real again so I can do to him what I have to. The jack handle became more slippery, so drenched that he could hardly hold on to it.

‘Pembroke!’ he called.

The figure halted, bleakly smiling. ‘So now you know both of them. You’re uniquely informed, Superb.’ Pembroke walked back up the sidewalk towards him. ‘I have some advice. I suggest that you call a reporting machine and give it your news, too. Are you afraid to?’

Superb managed to say, ‘It’s -- too much, all at once. I have to think.’ Confused, he listened to the yammer of the news machine; it’s voice was still audible.

‘But you will tell,’ Pembroke said. ‘Eventually.’ Still smiling, he brought out his service pistol and aimed it, expertly, at Superb’s temple. ‘I order you to, doctor.’ He walked slowly along the sidewalk, up to Dr Superb. ‘There’s no time left, now, because Karp und Sohnen has made its move. This is the moment, doctor, the Augenblick -- as our German friends say. Don’t you agree?’

‘I’ll -- call a reporting machine,’ Superb said.

‘Don’t give your source, doctor. I’ll come back inside with you, I think.’ Pembroke urged Dr Superb back up the steps of the building, to the front door of his office. ‘Just say that one of your patients, a Ge, revealed it to you in confidence, but you feel it’s too important to be kept quiet.’

‘All right,’ Superb said, Nodding.

‘And don’t worry about the psychological effect on the nation,’ Pembroke said. ‘On the masses of Bes. I think they’ll be able to withstand it, once the initial shock has worn off. There will be a reaction, of course; I expect it to demolish the system of government. Wouldn’t you agree? By that I mean there will be no further der Altes and no more so-called “Nicole,” and no more division into Ge and Be. Because we’ll all be Ges, now. Correct?’

‘Yes,’ Superb said, as step by step he walked through the outer office, past Amanda Conners who stared speechlessly at him and Pembroke.

Half to himself Pembroke murmured, ‘All I’m worried about is Bertold Goltz’s reaction. Everything else seems to be in order but that’s the one factor I can’t quite seem to anticipate.’

Superb halted, turned to Amanda. ‘Get The New York Times reporting machine for me on the phone, please.’

Picking up the phone, Amanda numbly dialled.

Ashen-faced, Maury Frauenzimmer swallowed noisily, put down the newspaper and mumbled to Chic, ‘Do you know which of us leaked the news?’ His flesh hung in wattles, as if death were creeping over him.

‘I -- ‘

‘It was your brother Vince. Whom you just brought in here from Karp. Well, this is the end of us. Vince was acting for Karp; they never fired him -- they sent him.’ Maury crumpled up the newspaper with both hands. ‘God, if only you’d emigrated. If you’d gone he never would have managed to get in here; I wouldn’t have hired him without your say-so.’ He raised his panic-filled eyes and stared at Chic.

‘Why didn’t I let you go?’

Outside the Frauenzimmer Associates factory building a news machine shrilled,’ ... vast government secret! Der Alte a simulacrum! New one already being built!’ It began all over again, then, mechanically controlled by its central circuits.

‘Destroy it,’ Maury croaked at Chic. ‘That -- machine out there. Make it leave, in the name of god.’

Chic said thickly, ‘It won’t go. I tried. When I first heard it.’ The two of them faced each other, he and his boss Maury Frauenzimmer, neither of them able to speak. Anyhow, there was nothing to say. It was the end of their business. And perhaps of their lives.

At last Maury said, ‘Those Loony Luke lots. Those jalopy jungles. The government closed all of them down, didn’t it?’

Chic said, ‘Why?’

‘Because I want to emigrate,’ Maury said. ‘I have to get out of here. So do you.’

‘They’re closed,’ Chic agreed, nodding.

‘You know what we’re seeing?’ Maury said. ‘This is a coup. A plot against the government of the USEA, by someone or a lot of someones. And they’re people inside the apparatus, not outsiders like Goltz. And they’re working with the cartels, with Karp, the biggest of them all. They’ve got a lot of power. This is no street fight. No vulgar brawl.’

He mopped his red, perspiration-soaked face with his handkerchief. ‘I feel ill. Goddamit, we’ve been brought into it, you and me; the NP boys will be here any minute.’

‘But they must know we didn’t intend -- ‘

‘They know nothing. They’ll be arresting everybody. Up and down.’

Far off a siren sounded. Maury, wide-eyed, listened.

14

As soon as she understood the situation Nicole Thibodeaux gave the order for the Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goering, to be killed.

It was necessary. Very possibly the revolutionary clique had ties with him; in any case she could not take the risk.

Far too much was involved.

In a hidden courtyard of the White House a squad of soldiers from the nearby Army base did the required job; she listened absently to the faint, almost inaudible sound of their high-powered laser rifles, thinking to herself that this -- the death of this man -- proved how little power he had held in the Third Reich. For his death caused no alteration in her time, in the present; the event did not produce even a ripple of alteration. It was a commentary on the governmental structure of Nazi Germany.

Next, she called in NP Commissioner Wilder Pembroke.

‘I want a report,’ she informed him, ‘as to exactly what support the Karps are drawing from. In addition to their own resources. Obviously, they wouldn’t have gone ahead with this unless they felt they could count on allies.’ She eyed the top NP official with deliberate, rigorously calculated intensity. ‘How do the National Police stand?’

Wilder Pembroke said calmly, ‘We’re ready to deal with the plotters.’ He did not seem disturbed; in fact, she thought, he was even more self-possessed than usual. ‘As a matter of fact we’ve already begun rounding them up. Karp employees and executives, and the personnel of the Frauenzimmer outfit. And anyone else who’s involved; we’re working on that aspect, using von Lessinger’s equipment.’

‘Why weren’t you prepared for this by means of the von Lessinger principle?’ Nicole asked sharply.

‘Admittedly, this was there. But only as the most meagre possibility. One in a million, of the possible alternative futures. It never occurred to us -- ‘

‘You’ve just lost your job,’ Nicole said. ‘Send in your staff. I’ll choose a new police commissioner from among them.’

Colouring, incredulous, Pembroke stammered, ‘But at every given moment there’s a raft of dangerous alternatives so malign that if we -- ‘

‘But you knew,’ Nicole said, ‘that I was under attack. When that thing, that Martian animal, bit me it should have warned you. From then on you should have been expecting an all-out attack, because that was the beginning.’

‘Shall -- we pick up Luke?’

‘You can’t pick up Luke. Luke is on Mars. They all got away, including the two that were here in the White House. Luke came and got them.’ She tossed that report to Pembroke. ‘And anyhow, you no longer have any authority.’

There was a strained, unpleasant silence.

‘When that thing bit me,’ Nicole said, ‘I knew we were in for a time of difficulty.’ But in one respect it was a good thing it had bitten her; it had made her alert. Now she could not be taken by surprise -- she was ready, and it would be a long time before something, or someone -- would bite her again.

Metaphorically or literally.

‘Please, Mrs Thibodeaux -- ‘ Pembroke began.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t whine. You’re out. That’s it.’

There’s something about you I don’t trust, she said to herself. Maybe it’s because you let that papoola animal get to me. That was the beginning of your decline, of your career downfall. From then on I was suspicious of you.

And, she thought, it was almost the end of me.

The door of the office opened and Richard Kongrosian appeared, beaming. ‘Nicole, ever since I moved that A.G. Chemie psych-chemist down to the laundry room I’ve become fully visible. It’s a miracle!’

‘Fine, Richard,’ Nicole said. ‘However, we’re having a closed conference in here, at this moment. Come back later.’

Now Kongrosian made out Pembroke. The expression on his face at once changed. Hostility ... she wondered why.

Hostility -- and fear.

‘Richard,’ she said suddenly. ‘How would you like to be NP Commissioner? This man -- ‘ She pointed at Wilder Pembroke. ‘He’s out.’

‘You’re joking,’ Kongrosian said.

‘Yes,’ she agreed. In a way, at least. But in a way, no.’ She needed him, but in what fashion? How could she make use of him and his abilities? At the moment she simply did not know.

Pembroke said stiffly, ‘Mrs Thibodeaux, if you change your mind -- ‘

‘I won’t,’ she said.

‘In any case,’ Pembroke said in a measured, prepared tone of voice, ‘I’ll be glad to return to my position and serve you.’

Thereupon he left the room; the door shut after him.

At once Kongrosian said to her, ‘He’s going to do something. I’m not sure what it is. Can you tell who’s loyal to you at a time like this? Personally, I don’t trust him; I think he’s part of the planet-wide network of conspiracy scheming against me.’ Hastily he added, ‘And against you, too, of course. They’re after you, too. Isn’t that right?’

‘Yes, Richard.’ She sighed.

Outside the White House a news machine squalled; she could hear it vending details about Dieter Hogben. The machine possessed the entire story. And it was exploiting it for all it was worth. She sighed again. The ruling council, those shadowy, ominous figures who stood directly behind every move she made, were undoubtedly thoroughly aroused, now, as if wakened from their sleep. She wondered what they would do. They had a lot of wisdom; collectively, they were quite old. Like snakes they were cold and silent, but very much alive. Very active and yet always obscured from sight.

They never appeared on TV, never gave guided tours.

At the moment she wished she could trade places with them.

And then all at once she realized that something had happened. The news machine was vending something about her.

Not about the next der Alte, Dieter Hogben, but some other Ge entirely.

The news machine -- she went to the window to hear better -- was saying that ... She strained to hear.

‘Nicole dead!’ the machine shrilled. ‘Years ago! Actress Kate Rupert in her place! Entire governing apparatus a fraud, according to ... ‘ And then the news machine moved on. She could no longer hear it, no matter how hard she tried.

His face wrinkled with confusion and uneasiness, Richard Kongrosian asked, ‘Wh-what was that, Nicole? It was saying you’re dead.’

‘Do I look dead?’ she asked tartly.

‘But it said an actress was taking your place.’ Kongrosian, bemused, stared at her, his face working with incomprehension. ‘Are you just an actress, Nicole? An impostor, like der Alte? He continued to stare, looking as if he were about to burst into grief-stricken baffled tears.

‘It’s merely a sensational newspaper story,’ Nicole said firmly. She felt, however, frozen all over. Numbed with dark, somatic dread. Everything was out now; some highlyplaced Ge, someone even more an intimate of the White House circle than the Karps, had leaked this last, great secret.

There was now nothing left to conceal. Hence there was no longer a distinction between the many Bes and the few Ges.

There was a knock at the door and without waiting Garth McRae entered, looking grim. He held a copy of The New York Times.

‘That psychoanalyst, Egon Superb, informed a reporting machine,’ he said to Nicole. ‘How he found out I don’t have the slightest idea -- he’s hardly in a position to know first-hand about you; obviously someone must have deliberately spilled it to him.’ He studied the newspaper, his lips moving. ‘A patient. A Ge patient confided in him and for reasons that we may never know he called the newspaper.’

Nicole said, ‘I suppose there’s no use arresting him now. I’d like to find out who’s using him; that’s what I’m interested in.’ It was no doubt a hopeless wish, doomed to disappointment. Probably Egon Superb would never say; he would take the pose that it was a professional secret, something given him in sanctified privacy. He would pretend he did not want to get his patient into jeopardy.

‘Even Bertold Goltz,’ McRae said, ‘didn’t know that. Even though he roams around here at will.’

‘What we’re going to see a demand for now,’ Nicole said, ‘is a general election.’ And it would not be she who would be elected, not after this disclosure. She wondered if Epstein, the Attorney General, would consider it his job to take action against her. She could count on the Army, but what about the High Court? It might rule that she was not legally in power. Actually it could be doing that at this very moment.

The council would have to emerge, now. Admit in public that it and no one else held the actual governmental authority.

And the council had never been voted into office of any sort. It was paralegal entirely.

Goltz could say, and truthfully, that he had as much right to rule as the council.

Perhaps even more so. Because Goltz and the Sons of Job had a popular following.

She wished, suddenly, that over the past years she had learned more about the council. Knew who comprised it, what they were like, what their aims were. As a matter of fact she had never even seen it in session; it had dealt with her indirectly, through elaborate screening devices.

‘I think,’ she said to Garth McRae, ‘that I had better go before the TV cameras and address the nation. If they actually see me perhaps they’ll take this news less seriously.’

Perhaps the potency of her presence, the old magical power of her image, would prevail. After all, the public was accustomed to seeing her. They believed in her, from decades of conditioning. The tradition-sanctified whip and carrot might still function, at least to a limited extent. At least partially.

They’ll believe, she decided, if they want to believe. Despite the news being hawked by the news machines. Those cold, impersonal agencies of ‘truth.’ Of absolute reality, without human subjectivity.

‘I’m going to keep on trying,’ she said to Garth McRae.

All this time Richard Kongrosian had continued to stare at her. He did not seem able to take his eyes from her. Now he said hoarsely, ‘I don’t believe it, Nicole. You’re real, aren’t you? I can see you, so you must be real!’ He gaped at her piteously.

‘I’m real,’ she said, and felt sad. A lot of people were in Kongrosian’s position, trying desperately to maintain their view of her undamaged, unaltered from that which they were accustomed to. And yet -- was this enough? How many people, like Kongrosian, could break with the reality principle? Believe in something they knew intellectually was an illusion? Few people, after all, were as sick as Richard Kongrosian.

To stay in power she would have to rule a nation of the mentally ill. And the idea did not very much appeal to her.

The door opened and Janet Raimer stood there, small, wrinkled and businesslike. ‘Nicole, please come along with me.’ Her voice was dry and faint. But authoritative.

Nicole rose. The council wanted her. As was customary with them they were operating through Janet Raimer, their spokesman.

‘All right,’ Nicole said. To Kongrosian and Garth McRae she said, ‘I’m sorry; you’ll have to excuse me. Garth, I want you to act temporarily as NP Commissioner; Wilder Pembroke has been busted -I did that just now before you came in. I trust you.’ She passed by them, then, and followed after Janet Raimer, out of the office and up the corridor. Janet moved briskly and she had to hurry to keep up.

Flapping his arms miserably, Kongrosian called after her, ‘If you don’t exist I’m going to become invisible again or even worse!’

She continued on.

‘I’m afraid,’ Kongrosian shouted, ‘of what I might do! I don’t want it to happen!’ He came a few steps out into the corridor after her. ‘Please help me! Before it’s too late!’

There was nothing she could do. She did not even look back.

Janet led her to an elevator. ‘This time they’re waiting two levels down,’ Janet said. ‘They’ve assembled, all nine of them. Because of the gravity of the situation this time they’ll talk to you face to face.’

The elevator slowly descended.

She stepped out, following Janet, in what had been in the previous century the H-bomb shelter for the White House.

Its lights were on and she saw, seated at a long oak table, six men and three women. All but one of them were strangers to her, blank and totally unfamiliar faces. But in the centre she made out to her disbelief a man whom she knew. He appeared, from the seating, to be the chairman of the council.

And his manner was a trifle more imposing, a little more confirmed than that of the others.

The man was Bertold Goltz.

Nicole said, ‘You. The street brawler. I never would have anticipated this.’ She felt weary and frightened; across from the nine members of the council she hesitantly seated herself in a wooden straight-backed chair.

Frowning at her, Goltz said, ‘But you knew I had access to von Lessinger equipment. And all time-travel equipment constitutes a monopoly of the government. So obviously I had some form of contact at a very high level. However, that doesn’t matter now; we have more urgent business to discuss.’

Janet Raimer said, ‘I’ll go back upstairs again.’

‘Thank you,’ Goltz said, nodding. To Nicole he said sombrely, ‘You’re a rather inept young woman, Kate. However, we’ll try to pick up and go on with what we have. The von Lessinger apparatus shows one highly distinct alternative future in which Police Commissioner Pembroke rules as an absolute dictator. This leads us to infer that Wilder Pembroke is involved with the Karps in their effort to unseat you. I think you should have him taken out immediately and shot.’

‘He’s lost his post,’ Nicole said. ‘Not more than ten minutes ago I relieved him of his duties.’

‘And let him go?’ one of the female members of the council asked.

‘Yes,’ Nicole admitted reluctantly.

Goltz said, ‘So now it’s probably too late to take him into custody. However, let’s continue. Nicole, your first action must be against the two monster-cartels, Karp and A.G. Chemie. Anton and Felix Karp are particularly dangerous; we’ve previewed several alternative futures in which they manage to destroy you and hold power -- at least for a decade or so. We’ve got to prevent that, regardless of what else we do or do not do.’

‘All right,’ Nicole said, nodding reasonably. It seemed a good idea to her. She would have acted against the Karps anyhow, without advice from these individuals.

‘You look,’ Goltz said, ‘as if you’re thinking that you don’t need us to tell you what to do. But actually you need us very badly. We’re going to tell you how to save your life, physically, literally, and secondarily your public office. Without us you’re dead right now. Please believe me; we’ve used the von Lessinger equipment and we know.’

‘It’s just that I can’t get used to the idea of it being you,’ Nicole said to Bertold Goltz.

‘But it’s always been me,’ Goltz said. ‘Even though you didn’t know it. Nothing has changed except you’ve found out, and that’s really very little in all this, Kate. Now, do you want to stay alive? Do you want to take instructions from us? Or do you want to be stood up against a wall somewhere by Wilder Pembroke and the Karps and be executed?’ His tone was harsh.

Nicole said, ‘Of course. I’ll co-operate.’

‘Good enough.’ Goltz nodded and glanced around at his colleagues. ‘The first order you give -- naturally through Rudi Kalbfleisch -- is that Karp und Sohnen Werke throughout the USEA has been nationalized. All Karp assets now are the property of the USEA government. Instruct the military this way: it’s their task to seize the Karps’ various branches; it’ll have to be done with armed units and possibly heavy mobile equipment. It should be done right away, possibly before tonight.’

‘All right,’ Nicole said.

‘A number of army generals, three or four at least, should be sent to the main Karp installations in Berlin; they should arrest the Karp family personally. Have the Karps taken to the nearest military base, have them tried by a military tribunal and executed immediately, also before tonight. Now, as to Pembroke. I think it would be better if the Sons of Job sent commando assassins to get Pembroke; we’ll leave the military out of this aspect of the situation.’ Goltz’s tone changed. ‘Why that expression on your face, Kate?’

‘I have a headache,’ Nicole said. ‘And don’t call me “Kate.” As long as I’m in power you should continue to call me Nicole.’

‘All this distresses you, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to murder anybody, even Pembroke and the Karps. The Reichsmarschall was enough -- more than enough. I didn’t murder those two jug-players who brought that papoola into the White House so it could bite me, those two underlings of Loony Luke. I let them emigrate to Mars.’

‘It can’t all be handled that way.’

‘Evidently not,’ Nicole agreed.

Behind Nicole the door of the shelter opened. She turned, expecting to see Janet Raimer.

Wilder Pembroke, with a group of NP men, stood in the doorway, pistol in hand. ‘You’re all under arrest,’ Pembroke said. ‘The lot of you.’

Leaping to his feet, Goltz groped inside his coat.

With a single shot Pembroke killed him. Goltz toppled backward, plucking at his chair; the chair slammed back as it overturned and Goltz lay on his side beyond the oak table.

No one else moved.

To Nicole, Pembroke said, ‘You’re coming upstairs; you’re going to make a TV appearance. Right away.’ He waved the barrel of his gun shakily at her. ‘Hurry up! The TV-cast begins in ten minutes.’ From his pocket he managed to bring forth a much-folded sheet of paper. ‘Here’s what you’ll say.’ He added, grimacing in what seemed almost a tic, ‘It’s your resignation from office, or rather so-called office. And in it you admit that both news stories are true, the one about der Alte and the one about yourself.’

Nicole said, ‘Whom do I abdicate in favour of?’ Her own voice sounded thin in her ears but at least it was not pleading. She was glad of that.

‘An emergency police committee,’ Pembroke said. ‘Which will supervise the forthcoming general election, and then of course resign.’

The stunned, passive remaining eight members of the council started to follow Nicole.

‘No,’ Pembroke said to them. ‘You’re all staying down here.’ His face was white. ‘With the police team.’

‘You know what he’s going to do, don’t you?’ one of the council members said to Nicole. ‘He’s given orders to have us killed.’ The man’s words were hardly audible.

‘There’s nothing she can do about it,’ Pembroke said, and once more waved his gun at Nicole.

‘We previewed this on the von Lessinger apparatus,’ a female member of the council said to Nicole. ‘But we couldn’t believe it would happen. Bertold dismissed it. As too improbable. We thought such practices had died out.’

With Pembroke, Nicole entered the elevator. The two of them ascended to the ground-level floor.

‘Don’t kill them,’ Nicole said. ‘Please.’

Examining his wristwatch Pembroke said, ‘By now they’re already dead.’

The elevator doors slid open; the elevator had stopped.

‘Go directly to your office,’ Pembroke instructed her.

‘You’ll deliver the telecast from there. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the council did not take seriously the long-shot possibility that I might get them before they got me. They were so convinced of their own absolute power that they assumed I’d go like a sheep to my own destruction. I doubt if they even took the trouble to preview these last few moments. They must have known there was a reasonably good chance that I’d gain power but they evidently didn’t follow up the situation and learn precisely how.’

‘I can’t believe,’ Nicole said, ‘that they could be so foolish. In spite of what they said and you said. With the von Lessinger equipment at their disposal -- ‘ It seemed impossible to her that Bertold Goltz and the others had simply let themselves be killed; logically, they should have been beyond reach.

‘They were frightened,’ Pembroke said. ‘And frightened people lose the ability to think.’

Ahead lay Nicole’s office.

On the floor before the doorway lay an inert form. It was Janet Raimer.

‘We found ourselves in a position where we were coerced into doing that,’ Pembroke said. ‘Or rather -- let’s face it we wanted to do it. Let’s be honest with each other, finally. No, I don’t have to. Taking care of Miss Raimer was an act of pure, enjoyable volition.’ He stepped over Janet’s body and opened the door to Nicole’s office.

In the office stood Richard Kongrosian. ‘Something terrible’s happening to me,’ Kongrosian wailed, as soon as he spied the two of them. ‘I no longer can keep myself and my environment separate; do you comprehend how that feels? It’s awful!’ He came towards them, visibly quaking; his eyes rolled with abject fear and sweat stood out on his neck and forehead and hands. ‘Can you understand?’

‘Later,’ Pembroke said to him, nervously. Again she saw the tic, the involuntary grimace. To her Pembroke said, ‘First, I want you to read over that material I gave you. Get started on it right away.’ Once more he examined his wristwatch. ‘The TV technicians should have been here and set up by now.’

Kongrosian said, ‘I sent them away. They made it even more difficult for me. Look -- see that desk? I’m now part of it and it’s part of me! Watch and I’ll show you.’ He scrutinized the desk intently, his mouth working. And, on the desk, a vase of pale roses lifted, moved through the air towards Kongrosian. The vase, as they watched, passed into Kongrosian’s chest and disappeared. ‘It’s inside me now,’ he quavered. ‘I absorbed it. Now it’s me. And -- ‘ He gestured at the desk. ‘I’m it!’

In the spot where the vase had been Nicole saw, forming into density and mass and colour, a complicated tangle of interwoven organic matter, smooth red tubes and what appeared to be portions of an endocrine system. A section, she realized, of Kongrosian’s internal anatomy. Perhaps, she thought, his spleen and circulatory configurations that maintained it. The organ, whatever it was, regularly pulsed; it was alive and active. How elaborate it is, she thought; she could not take her eyes from it, and even Wilder Pembroke was gazing fixedly at it.

‘I’m turning inside out!’

Kongrosian wailed. ‘Pretty soon if this keeps up I’m going to have to envelop the entire universe and everything in it, and the only thing that’ll be outside me will be my internal organs and then most likely I’ll die!’

‘Listen, Kongrosian,’ Pembroke said harshly. He turned the gun towards the psychokinetic concert pianist. ‘What do you mean by sending the TV crew out of here? I need them in this office; Nicole’s going to address the nation. You go and tell them to come back.’ He gestured at Kongrosian with the gun. ‘Or get a White House employee who -- ‘

He broke off. The gun had left his hand.

‘Help me!’ Kongrosian howled. ‘It’s becoming me and I have to be it!’  The gun vanished into Kongrosian’s body.

In Pembroke’s hand a spongy, pink mass of lung-tissue appeared; instantly he dropped it and at once Kongrosian shrieked with pain.

Nicole shut her eyes. ‘Richard,’ she moaned gratingly.

‘Stop it. Get control of yourself.’

‘Yes,’ Kongrosian said, and giggled helplessly. ‘I can get hold of myself, pick myself up, the organs and vital parts all around me, lying on the floor; maybe I can stuff them back inside, somehow.’

Opening her eyes, Nicole said, ‘Can you get me out of here, now? Move me a long way off, Richard. Please.’

‘I can’t breathe,’ Kongrosian panted. ‘Pembroke has part of my breathing-apparatus and he dropped it; he didn’t take care of it -- he let me fall.’ He made a gesture towards the NP man ...

Quietly, his face drained of colour and the ordinary hopefulness of the process of life, Pembroke said, ‘He’s shut off something inside me. Some essential organ.’

‘That’s right!’ Kongrosian shrieked. ‘I shut off your -- but I’m not going to tell you.’ Slyly, he poked a finger at Pembroke, waggling it in his direction. ‘Only this; I’ll say this: you’ll live for about, oh, say, four more hours.’ He laughed. ‘What do you say to that?’

‘Can you turn it back on?’ Pembroke managed to say.

Pain had infiltrated his features now; he was suffering.

‘If I want,’ Kongrosian said. ‘But I don’t want to because I don’t have time. I’ve got to collect myself.’ He scowled in rapt concentration. ‘I’m busy evicting every foreign object that’s managed to enter me,’ he explained to Pembroke and Nicole. ‘And I want myself back; I’m going to make myself come back inside.’ He glowered at the pink spongy mass of lung tissue. ‘You’re me,’ he told it. ‘You’re part of the I-world, not the non-I. Understand?’

‘Please take me a long way from here,’ Nicole said to him.

‘Okay, okay,’ Kongrosian agreed irritably. ‘Where do you want to be? In another city entirely? On Mars? Who knows how far I can move you -- I don’t. As Mr Pembroke said, I haven’t really learned the political uses of my ability, even after all these years. But anyhow now I’m in politics.’ He chuckled with delight. ‘What about Berlin? I can move you from here to Berlin; I’m confident of that.’

‘Anything,’ Nicole said.

‘I know where I’ll send you.’ Kongrosian exclaimed suddenly. ‘I know where you’ll be safe, Nicky. Understand, I want you to be safe; I believe in you, I know you exist. No matter what those damn news machines say. I mean, they’re lying. I can tell. They’re trying to shake my confidence in you; they’ve all ganged up, saying exactly the same thing.’

He added by way of explanation, ‘I’m sending you to my home in Jenner, California. You can stay with my wife and my son. Pembroke can’t get you there because he’ll be stone dead by then; I’ve turned off another organ inside him, now, and this one -- never mind which it is -- this one is even more vital than the other. He won’t live another six minutes.’

Nicole said, ‘Richard, let him -- ‘ She ceased, then, because they were gone. Kongrosian, Pembroke, her office in the White House, everything had whipped out of existence and she stood in a gloomy rain forest. Mist drizzled from the shiny leaves; the ground underfoot was soft, impregnated with dampness. She heard no one. The moisture-saturated forest was utterly silent.

She was alone.

Presently she began to walk. She felt stiff and old and it was an effort to move. She felt as if she had stood there in the silence and rain for a million years. It was as if she had been there forever.

Ahead, through the vines and tangle of wet shrubbery she saw the outlines of a dilapidated, unpainted redwood building. A house. She walked towards it, her arms folded, shivering from the cold.

When she pushed the last branch aside she saw, parked ahead of her, an archaic-looking auto-cab in the centre of what appeared to be the house’s driveway.

Opening the door of the auto-cab she said, ‘Take me to the nearest town.’

The mechanism of the cab did not respond. It remained inert, as if it were moribund.

‘Can’t you hear me?’ she said loudly to it.

A woman’s voice came to her, from a distance. ‘I’m sorry, miss. That cab belongs to the record people, it can’t respond because it’s still under hire to them.’

‘Oh,’ Nicole said, and straightened up, closing the door of the cab. ‘Are you Richard Kongrosian’s wife?’

‘Yes, I am,’ the woman said, descending the board steps of the house. ‘Who are -- ‘ She blinked. ‘You’re Nicole Thibodeaux.’

‘I was,’ Nicole said. ‘Can I come indoors and get something hot to drink? I don’t feel too well.’

‘Of course,’ Mrs Kongrosian said. ‘Please. Did you come here to find Richard? He’s not here; the last I heard from him he was at a neuro-psychiatric hospital in San Francisco, Franklin Aimes. Do you know it?’

‘I know it,’ Nicole said. ‘But he’s not there now. No, I’m not looking for him.’ She followed Mrs Kongrosian up the steps to the front porch of the house.

‘The record people have been here three days,’ Mrs Kongrosian said. ‘Recording and recording. I’m beginning to think they’re never going to leave. They’re nice people and I enjoy their company; they’ve been staying here at night. They showed up originally to record my husband playing, under an old contract with Art-Cor, but as I said, he’s gone.’ She held the front door open.

Nicole said, ‘Thank you for your hospitality.’ The house, she discovered, was warm and dry; it was a relief from the dreary landscape outside. A fire burned in the fireplace and she went over to it.

‘I heard the strangest garbling thing over the TV just now,’ Mrs Kongrosian said. ‘Something about you; I couldn’t make any sense out of it. Something having to do with you -- well, not existing, I think. Do you know what I’m talking about? What they were talking about?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ Nicole said, warming herself.

Mrs Kongrosian said, ‘I’ll go and fix the coffee. They Mr Flieger and the others from EME -- should be back fairly soon, now. For dinner. Are you alone? Nobody’s with you?’ She seemed bewildered.

‘I’m entirely alone,’ Nicole said. She wondered if Wilder Pembroke was dead by now. She hoped so, for her own sake.

‘Your husband,’ she said, ‘is a very fine person. I owe him a great deal.’ My life, as a matter of fact, she realized.

‘He certainly thinks a lot of you, too,’ Mrs Kongrosian said.

‘Can I stay here?’ Nicole said suddenly.

‘Of course. For as long as you wish.’

‘Thanks,’ Nicole said. She felt a little better. Maybe I’ll never go back, she thought. After all, what’s there to go back to? Janet is dead, Bertold Goltz is dead, even Reichsmarschall Goering is dead, and of course Wilder Pembroke; he’s dead by now, too. And the entire ruling council, all the half-concealed figures who had stood behind her. Assuming of course that the NP men had carried out their orders, which no doubt they had.

And, she thought, I can’t rule any longer; the news machines have seen to that in their blind, efficient, mechanical way. They and the Karps. So now, she decided, it’s the Karps’ turn; they can hold power for a while. Until they in turn are preempted, as I was.

She thought, I can’t even go to Mars. At least not by jalopy! I saw to that myself. But there are other ways. Big legal commercial ships and government ships as well. Very fast ships which belong to the military; perhaps I could commandeer one of those. I could work through Rudi, even though he is -- or it is -- on its deathbed. Legally, the army has sworn an oath to him; they’re supposed to do what he, or it, tells them.

‘Coffee? Are you all right? Are you ready for it?’ Mrs Kongrosian peered at her intently.

‘Yes,’ Nicole answered, ‘I am.’ She followed Mrs Kongrosian into the kitchen of the big old house.

Outside the house the rain fell heavily, now. Nicole shivered and tried not to look directly at it. The rain frightened her; it was like an omen. A reminder of some evil fate to come.

‘What are you afraid of?’ Mrs Kongrosian said suddenly, acutely.

‘I don’t know,’ Nicole confessed.

‘I’ve seen Richard like this. It must be the climate, here. It’s so dismal and monotonous. But I thought from his description of you that you’d never be this way. He always made you sound so brave. So forceful.’

‘I’m sorry to disappoint you.’

Mrs Kongrosian patted her on the arm. ‘You don’t disappoint me. I like you very much. I’m sure it is the climate that’s getting you down.’

‘Maybe so,’ Nicole said. But she knew better. It was more than the rain. Much more.

15

The hard-eyed, middle-aged and utterly professional NP man said to Maury Frauenzimmer and Chic Strikerock, ‘You’re both under arrest. Come along with me.’

‘You see?’ Maury said with scalding accusation to Chic.

‘I told you so! The bastards have it in for us. We’re the fall-guys in this. The lowest dupes on the ladder -- the ultimate simps.’

With Maury, Chic left the small, familiar, cluttered office of Frauenzimmer Associates, the NP man immediately behind them. He and Maury trudged gloomily, in silence, to the parked police car.

‘A couple of hours ago,’ Maury burst out suddenly, ‘we had everything. Now, on account of your brother, look what we’ve got. Nothing.’

Chic did not respond. There was no answer he could make.

‘I’m going to get you, Chic,’ Maury said as the police car started up and moved towards the autobahn. ‘So help me god.’

‘We’ll get out of this,’ Chic said. ‘We’ve had troubles before. They’ve always passed. Somehow.’

‘If only you had emigrated,’ Maury said.

And I wish I had, too, Chic thought to himself. Right now Richard Kongrosian and I would be -- where? In deep space, on our way to our frontier farm, beginning a chaste, new life. And instead ... this. He wondered where Kongrosian was, right now. Doing just as badly? Hardly likely.

‘Next time when you start to leave the firm -- ‘ Maury began.

‘Okay!’ Chic said savagely. ‘Let’s forget it. What can be done now?’ The one I’d like to get, he thought, is my brother Vince. And, after him, Anton and old Felix Karp.

The NP man seated next to him all at once said to the NP man driving, ‘Hey look, Sid. A roadblock.’

The police car slowed. Peering, Chic saw, at the roadblock, an army mobile weapons carrier; on it, a big gun pointed eerily at the lines of cars and wheels halted by the barricade across the eight lanes.

Beside Chic the NP man drew his hand weapon. So did the driver.

‘What’s going on?’ Chic asked, his heart labouring.

Neither NP man answered; their gaze was riveted on the army unit blocking the autobahn in effective, trained fashion. Both men had become acutely tense; Chic could sense it. It permeated the interior of the car.

At that moment, as the police car crept along almost touching the car ahead, a Theodorus Nitz commercial slipped in through the open window.

‘Do people seem able to see right through your clothing?’ it squeaked at them, bat-like, as it slithered into concealment under the front seat. ‘In public, does your fly seem to be unzipped and do you need to glance down -- ‘

It died into silence as the NP man driving venomously shot it with his pistol. ‘Jeez, I hate those things,’ he spat out with aversion.

At the sound of the shot the police car was immediately surrounded by soldiers, all armed and all hair-trigger alert.

‘Put your weapons down!’ the sergeant in charge barked.

Reluctantly, the two NP men tossed their guns aside. A soldier plucked the car door open; the two NP men stepped warily out, their arms raised.

‘Whom were you shooting at?’ the sergeant demanded, ‘At us?’

‘A Nitz commercial,’ one of the NP men said shakily.

‘Look in the car, under the seat; we weren’t shooting at you -- honest!’

‘He’s telling the truth,’ a soldier said finally, after poking about in the car. ‘There is a dead Theodoras Nitz commercial under the seat.’

The sergeant reflected and then decided. ‘You can go on. But leave your weapons with us.’ He added, ‘And your prisoners. And from now on you take all your orders from GHQ, not from the higher police.’

At once the two NP men hopped back into their car; the doors slammed shut as they drove off into traffic as rapidly as possible, through the opening in the army barricade. Chic and Maury watched them go.

‘What’s up?’ Chic asked.

‘You’re free to go,’ the sergeant informed him. ‘Return to your homes and stay inside. Don’t participate in anything going on in the streets; no matter what seems to be happening.’ The squad of soldiers moved off then, leaving Chic and Maury standing alone.

‘It’s a revolt,’ Maury said, his jaw hanging. ‘By the army.’

‘Or by the police,’ Chic said, thinking rapidly. ‘We’re going to have to hitch hike back to town.’ He hadn’t hitch hiked since he was a kid; it seemed odd to be doing it now, in his adult years. It was almost refreshing. He began to walk down the stalled lines of traffic, his thumb out. Wind blew in his face; it smelled of land and water and big cities.

He took a deep, full breath of it.

‘Wait for me!’ Maury yelled, and hurried after him.

In the sky, to the north, an immense, grey, mushroom-like cloud all at once formed. And a rumble stirred through the earth, jarring Chic and making him jump. Shielding his eyes he peered to see; what had happened? An explosion, perhaps a small, tactical A-bomb. Now he inhaled the reek of ashes and knew definitely what it was.

A soldier, striding past him, said over his shoulder, ‘The local branch of Karp und Sohnen Werke.’ He grinned starkly at Chic and hurried on.

Maury said in a soft voice, ‘They blew it up. The army blew up Karp.’

‘I guess so,’ Chic said, dazed. Again, reflexively, he stuck out his thumb, searching for their ride.

Above, two army rockets streaked in pursuit of an NP ship; Chic watched them until they were gone from sight.

It’s a full-scale war, he said to himself, awed.

‘I wonder if they’re going to blow us up, too,’ Maury said.

‘I mean the factory. Frauenzimmer Associates.’

‘We’re too small,’ Chic said.

‘Yeah, I guess you’re right,’ Maury said, nodding hopefully.

It’s good to be small, Chic realized, in times like this. And the smaller the better. Right down to the vanishing point.

Ahead of him and Maury a car had stopped. They walked towards it.

Now, to the east, another fungus-shaped mass of cloud material expanded to fill the sky, and again the ground shook. That would be A.G. Chemie, Chic decided as he got into the waiting car.

‘Where you boys headed for?’ the driver of the car, a plump, red-haired man, inquired.

Maury said, ‘Anywhere and everywhere, mister. Just so it’s away from all this trouble.’

‘I agree,’ the plump, red-haired man said, and started the car into motion. ‘Oh, how I agree.’ It was an old, out-of-style car but it was good enough. Chic Strikerock sat back and made himself comfortable.

Beside him, visibly relieved, Maury Frauenzimmer did the same.

‘I guess they’re getting them big cartels,’ the red-headed man said as he drove slowly forward, following the car ahead of him through the barricade’s narrow aperture and out the far side.

‘Sure are,’ Maury said.

‘About time,’ the red-headed man said.

‘Right,’ Chic Strikerock said. ‘I’m with you there.’

The car, gathering speed, moved on.

In the large old wooden building, full of dust and echoes, the chuppers moved about, talking with one another, drinking Cokes, and a few of them were dancing. It was the dancing which interested Nat Flieger, and he led the portable Ampek F-a2 in that direction.

‘Dancing, no,’ Jim Planck said to him, ‘singing, yes. Wait until they begin to sing again. If you can dignify it by calling it that.’

Nat said, ‘The sounds of their dancing are rhythmic. I think we ought to try to pick that up, too.’

‘Technically you’re head of this venture,’ Jim admitted.

‘But I’ve done an awful lot of recording in my time and I say this is useless. It’ll be there on the tape, admittedly, or rather in that wormy of yours. But it’ll sound like nothing. Nothing at all.’ He glared remorselessly at Nat.

But I intend to try anyhow, Nat said to himself.

‘They’re so bent,’ Molly said, standing beside him. ‘All of them ... and they’re so short. Most of them aren’t even as tall as I am.’

‘They lost,’ Jim said, with a laconic shrug. ‘Remember? What was it, two hundred thousand years ago? Three hundred thousand? Anyhow it was quite a while ago. I doubt if they’ll survive very much longer this time either. They just don’t look like they have it. They look -- burdened.’

That was it, Nat realized. The chuppers -- the Neanderthals -- looked weighed down, and by an impossible task, that of survival itself. Jim was absolutely correct; they just were not equipped for that task. Meek, small and hunched, apologetic, shuffling and mumbling, they lurched along their meagre life-track, getting nearer each moment to the end.

So we’d better record this while we can, Nat decided. Because it probably won’t be long now, from the looks of it.

Or ... could I be wrong? A chupper, an adult male wearing a plaid shirt and light grey work pants bumped against Nat and muttered an inarticulate apology.

‘That’s okay,’ Nat assured him. He felt, then, the desire to test his theory, to try to cheer up this failing life form, this throwback. ‘Let me buy you a beer,’ he said to the chupper.

‘Okay?’ There was, he knew, a bar of sorts in the rear of the building, this large, central recreation hall which the chuppers seemed to possess collectively.

The chupper, glancing at him shyly, mumbled a no thanks.

‘Why not?’ Nat demanded.

‘ ‘Cause -- ‘ The chupper seemed unable to meet Nat’s gaze; he regarded the floor, clenched and unclenched his fists in a closed-circuit-like but passing spasm. ‘I can’t,’ the chupper finally managed to say. However, he did not go. He remained standing in front of Nat, still staring down and still grimacing. Probably he was frightened, Nat decided.

Embarrassed in a frightened, obliterating way.

To the chupper Jim Planck said drawlingly, ‘Hey, can you sing any good chupper songs? We’ll record you.’ He winked at Nat.

‘Leave him alone,’ Molly said. ‘You can see he can’t sing. He can’t do anything -- that’s obvious.’ She walked away, clearly angry at both of them. The chupper glanced after her listlessly, drooping in his chupper fashion; his eyes were dull.

Would anything, Nat wondered, make those dull eyes light up? Why did the chuppers want to survive, if life meant so little to them? He thought suddenly, maybe they’re waiting. For something that hasn’t happened yet, but which they know -- or hope -- will occur. That would explain their manner, their -- emptiness.

‘Leave him alone,’ Nat said to Jim Planck. ‘She’s right.’

He put his hand on Jim’s shoulder but the recording expert pulled away.

‘I think they can do a lot more than they appear to be able to,’ Jim said. ‘It’s almost as if they’re marking time, not expending themselves. Not trying. Hell, I’d like to see them try.’

‘So would I,’ Nat said. ‘But we’re not going to be able to get them to try.’

Off in a corner of the hall a television set boomed loudly, and a number of chuppers, both male and female, had wandered over to it to stand inertly in front of it. The TV set, Nat realized, was giving news of some urgent sort. At once he turned his attention that way; something had happened.

‘You hear what the newscaster is saying?’ Jim said in his ear. ‘My god, some damn thing about a war.’

The two of them edged through the throng of chuppers, shoving their way up to the TV set. Molly was already there, already absorbed in listening.

‘It’s a revolution,’ she said stonily to Nat, above the hollow, booming uproar emanating from the TV set’s audio system. ‘Karp -- ‘ Her face was drenched with disbelief. ‘The Karps and A.G. Chemie, they tried to seize power, along with the National Police.’

The TV screen showed a smoking, virtually disintegrated ruin, the remains of buildings, an industrial installation of great magnitude that had been all but obliterated. It was, to Nat, unrecognizable.

‘That’s Karp’s Detroit branch,’ Molly managed to tell Nat, above the racket. ‘The military got it. Honest to god, that’s what the announcer just said.’

Jim Planck, studying the screen impassively, said, ‘Who’s winning?’

‘Nobody yet,’ Molly said. ‘Evidently. I don’t know. Listen and see what he says. It’s just broken out, just getting underway.’

The chuppers, listening and watching, had become silent.

The phonograph which had played background music for them to shuffle to had become silent, too. The chuppers, almost all of them now, stood clustered around the TV set, rapt and attentive as they witnessed the scenes of fighting between the armed forces of the USEA and the issue from the barracks of the National Police backed up by the cartel system.

‘ ... in California,’ the announcer was spluttering, ‘the West Coast Division of the NP surrendered intact to the Sixth Army under General Hoheit. However in Nevada -- ‘

The set showed a street scene, downtown Reno; an army barricade had been hastily erected, and police snipers were firing at it from the windows of the nearby buildings. ‘Ultimately,’ the newscaster said, ‘the fact that the armed forces possess a virtual monopoly in atomic weapons would seem to guarantee them victory. But for the present, we can only ... ‘ The newscaster rattled excitedly on, as all over the USEA the mechanical reporting machines coasting about in the areas of conflict gathered data for him.

‘It’s going to be a long fight,’ Jim Planck said suddenly to Nat. He looked grey and tired. ‘I guess we’re darn lucky we’re here, out of the way,’ he murmured, half to himself. ‘It’s a good time to lay low.’

The screen showed a clash between a police patrol and an army unit, now; the two fired rapidly at each other, scurrying for cover as shots zinged from their automatic small arms. A soldier pitched forward on his face and then so did a grey NP man.

Next to Nat Flieger a chupper, watching absorbedly, nudged the chupper standing beside him. The two chuppers, both males, smiled at each other. A covert, meaningful smile. Nat saw it, saw the expression of their two faces. And then he realized that all the chuppers had become brighteyed with the same secret pleasure.

What’s going on here? Nat wondered.

Beside him, Jim Planck said softly, ‘Nat, my god. They’ve been waiting for this.’

So this is it, Nat realized with a thrill of fear. The emptiness, the dull listlessness; that had gone. The chuppers were alert now as they viewed the flickering TV image and listened to the excited news announcer. What does this mean to them? Nat wondered as he studied their emotion-laden, eager faces. It means, he decided, that they have a chance.

This might be their opportunity.

We’re destroying each other before their eyes. And -- it may provide room for them, a space to squeeze into. Room, not cooped up here in this dreary, tiny enclave, but out in the world itself. Everywhere.

Grinning knowingly at one another the chuppers continued avidly to watch. And listen.

Nat’s fear grew.

The plump, red-headed man who had given Maury and Chic the ride said, ‘This is as far as I’m going, boys. You’ll have to hop out.’ He slowed the car, stopped at the curb. They were in the city, now, off the autobahn. On every side, men and women scampered in panic, seeking shelter. A police car, its windshield shattered, nosed forward cautiously, the men inside bristling with weapons. ‘Better get indoors,’ the red-headed man advised.

Warily, Chic and Maury emerged from the car.

‘My place, The Abraham Lincoln,’ Chic said, ‘is near here. We can walk it. Come on.’ He waved big, overweight Maury ahead and the two of them joined the running mob of frightened, confused people. What a mess, Chic said to himself. I wonder how it’ll wind up. I wonder if our society, our style of life, will survive this.

‘I feel sick at my stomach,’ Maury groaned, puffing along beside him, his face grey from the exertion. ‘I’m -- not used to this.’

They reached The Abraham Lincoln. It was undamaged.

At the doorway their sergeants of arms, with a gun, stood beside Vince Strikerock, their identification reader; Vince was checking each person in turn, busy at his official task.

‘Hi, Vince,’ Chic said, when he and Maury arrived at the station.

His brother jerked, raised his head; they regarded each other in silence. At last Vince said, ‘Hi, Chic. Glad to see you’re alive.’

‘Do we get in?’ Chic said.

‘Sure,’ Vince said. He looked away, then; nodding to the sergeant of arms he said to Chic, ‘Go ahead. I’m sure glad the NP didn’t manage to corner you.’ He did not look once at Maury Frauenzimmer; he pretended that Maury was not there.

‘What about me?’ Maury said.

In a strangled voice Vince said, ‘You -- can go inside too. As Chic’s special invited guest.’

Behind them the next man in line said with urgent peevishness, ‘Hey, hurry up, will you! It isn’t safe out here.’ He bumped Chic, nudging him on.

Quickly Chic and Maury passed on inside The Abraham Lincoln. A moment later they were ascending by a familiar means: a building elevator. To Chic’s top-floor apartment.

‘I wonder what he got out of it,’ Maury said musingly.

‘Your kid brother, I mean.’

‘Nothing,’ Chic said shortly. ‘Karp is gone. He and a lot of people are finished, now.’ And Vince isn’t the only one I know of that group, he said to himself.

‘Including us,’ Maury said. ‘We’re no better off. Of course I guess a lot depends on who wins.’

‘It doesn’t matter who wins,’ Chic said. Not as far as he could make out, at least. The destruction, the great national disaster, was still there. That was the terrible thing about civil war; no matter how it came out it was still bad. Still a catastrophe. And for everyone.

When they reached the apartment they found the door unlocked. With massive caution Chic opened the door. And peeped inside.

There stood Julie.

‘Chic!’ she said, starting a step or so towards him. Beside her were two big suitcases. ‘I’ve been packing. I’ve made arrangements for you and me to emigrate. I’ve got the tickets ... and don’t ask me how because I’ll never tell you.’

Her face was pale but composed; she had dressed up quite a bit and looked, he thought, exceptionally fine. Now she saw Maury. ‘Who is this?’ she asked, faltering.

‘My boss,’ Chic said.

‘I just have two tickets,’ Julie said hesitantly.

‘That’s okay,’ Maury said to her. He beamed at her, to reassure her. ‘I have to stay on Earth. I’ve got a major business enterprise to preside over.’ to Chic he said, ‘I think she’s got a good idea. So this is the girl you told me about on the phone. The reason you were late to work, that morning.’

He slapped Chic genially on the back. ‘Lots of luck to you, old buddy. I guess you’ve proved you’re still young -- young enough, anyhow. I envy you.’

Julie said, ‘Our ship leaves in forty-five minutes; I was praying like hell you’d show up here. I tried to get hold of you at work -- ‘

‘The NP picked us up,’ Chic told her.

‘The army has control of the space field,’ Julie said. ‘And they’re supervising the arrivals and departures of deep-space ships. So if we can just make it to the field we’ll be all right.’ she added, ‘I put all your money and mine together to buy the tickets; they were incredibly expensive. And with those jalopy jungles gone -- ‘

‘You two guys better get started,’ Maury said. ‘I’ll stay here in the apartment, if it’s okay with you. It appears to be reasonably safe here, all things considered.’ He seated his weary, overstuffed body on the couch, managed to cross his legs, got out a Dutch Masters cigar and lit up.

‘Maybe I’ll see you again, one of these days,’ Chic said to him, awkwardly. He did not know exactly how to make the break, to leave.

‘Maybe so,’ Maury grunted. ‘Anyhow, drop me a line from Mars.’ He picked up a magazine from the coffee table and leafed through it, his attention turned to it.

‘What are we going to do on Mars to stay alive?’ Chic asked Julie. ‘Farm? Or had you thought about that?’

‘Farm,’ she said, ‘Claim a piece of good land get started irrigating it. I have relatives there. They’ll help us get started.’ She picked up one of the suitcases; Chic took it away from her and then hoisted the other.

‘So long,’ Maury said, in a contrived, overly-light tone. ‘I wish you two luck scratching around in that red, dusty soil.’

‘Good luck to you, too,’ Chic said. I wonder who’ll need it the most, he wondered. You here on Earth or us on Mars.

‘Maybe I’ll send you a couple of sims,’ Maury said, ‘to keep you company. When this all blows over.’ Puffing on his cigar, he watched the two of them go.

The blaring music had arrived once more now, and some of the hunched, massive-jawed chuppers had resumed their shuffling dancing. Nat Flieger turned away from the TV set.

‘I think we’ve got enough on the Ampek,’ he said to Molly. ‘We can start back to the Kongrosians’ house. We’re through, finally.’

Molly said sombrely, ‘Maybe we’re through everywhere, Nat. You know, just because we’ve been the dominant species for a few tens of thousands of years it doesn’t ensure that -- ‘

‘I know,’ Nat said to her. ‘I saw their faces, too.’ He led her back to where they had left the Ampek F-a2. Jim Planck followed and the three of them stood together, by the portable recording apparatus. ‘Well?’ Nat said. ‘Shall we start back? Is it really over? ‘It’s over, Jim Planck said, nodding.

‘But I think,’ Molly said, ‘we should stay here in the Jenner area until the fighting lets up. It wouldn’t be safe to try to fly back down below to Tijuana right now. If Beth Kongrosian will let us stay, let’s stay. Right there in the house.’

‘All right,’ Nat said. He agreed with her. Completely.

Jim Planck said abruptly, ‘Look. There’s a woman coming over here towards us. Not a chupper but a -- you know, what we are, the same as us.’

The woman, slender and young, with short-cropped hair, wearing blue-cotton trousers and moccasins and a white shirt, threaded her way through the shuffling gangs of chuppers.

I know her, Nat said to himself. I’ve seen her a million times. He knew her and yet he did not; it was terribly strange. So incredibly damn pretty, he thought. Almost grotesquely, unnaturally beautiful. How many women that attractive do I know? None. No one in our world, in our lives, is that attractive except … Except Nicole Thibodeaux.

‘Are you Mr Flieger?’ she called, coming up close to him, then, gazing up into his face; she was very small, he discovered. That had not been apparent over the TV transmissions. In fact he had always thought of Nicole Thibodeaux as looming large, even ominous; it was a distinct shock to find her otherwise. He could not exactly understand it.

‘Yes,’ he said.

Nicole said, ‘Richard Kongrosian put me here and I want to get back where I belong. Can you take me out of here in your auto-cab?’

‘Sure,’ Nat said, nodding. ‘Anything.’

None of the chuppers paid any attention to her; they seemed neither to know nor care who she was. Jim Planck and Molly, however, gaped in mute disbelief.

‘When are you leaving?’ Nicole asked.

‘Well,’ Nat said, ‘we were going to stay. Because of the fighting. It seemed safer here.’

‘No,’ Nicole insisted, at once. ‘You have to go back; you have to do your part. Do you want them to win?’

‘I don’t even know who you’re talking about,’ Nat said. ‘I can’t make out exactly what’s going on, what the issues are or who’s fighting whom. Do you know? Maybe you can tell me.’ But I doubt it, he thought. I doubt if you can turn it into something sensible for me -- or for anyone else. Because it is just not sensible.

Nicole said, ‘What would it require to get you to take me back or at least out of here?’

Shrugging, Nat said, ‘Nothing.’ All at once he had made up his mind; he saw things clearly. ‘Because I won’t do it. I’m sorry. We’re going to wait this out, this event that’s going on. I don’t know how Kongrosian managed to put you here, but maybe he’s right; maybe this is the best place to be, for you and for us. For a long time to come.’ He smiled at her. Nicole did not smile back.

‘Damn you,’ Nicole said.

He continued to smile.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘Help me. You were going to; you started to.’

Speaking up huskily. Jim Planck said, ‘Maybe he is helping you, Mrs Thibodeaux. By doing this, by keeping you here.’

‘I think Nat’s right, too,’ Molly said. ‘I’m sure it’s unsafe for you at the White House right now.’

Nicole looked around fiercely at the three of them. Then, resignedly, she sighed. ‘What a place to be stuck in. Damn that Richard Kongrosian, too; it’s basically his fault. What are these creatures?’ She gestured at the shuffling line of adult chuppers and the small, neo-chupper children who lined both sides of the great dusty, wooden hall.

‘I’m not quite certain,’ Nat said. ‘Relatives of ours, you could say. Progeny, very possibly.’

‘Forefathers,’ Jim Planck said, correcting him.

Nat said, ‘Time will tell which it is.’

Lighting a cigarillo, Nicole said vigorously, ‘I don’t like them; I’ll feel a lot happier when we get back to the house. They make me just dreadfully uncomfortable.’

‘They should,’ Nat said. Certainly he shared her extreme reaction.

Around the four of them the chuppers danced their monotonous dance, paying no attention to the four human beings.

‘I think, however,’ Jim Planck said thoughtfully, ‘we’re going to have to get accustomed to them.’