"My God," Turpin said slowly.

 

"You see my point? Suppose one of EG's staff has been bribed to demonstrate that your systems are vulnerable to sabotagel"

 

Turpin sat stock-still for long seconds. Abruptly he jumped to his feet. "It's thin! Christ, it's thinl But you're right-it could be a way to mis-direct the investigation. I'll shoot for it. But it's going to be hell anyhow. Because. . . . Well, you know the only way to break EG's contract on this?"

 

Sheklov shook his head.

 

"To impeach the Board for treason. In which case I can confidently expect to be shot to death by an Army firing-

 

squad. And I couldn't help but take you with me. They have very efficient interrogation drugs nowadays."

 

He glanced at his watch, and concluded, "I must go. They said they'd have a veetol on the beach for me in ten minutes."

 

 

The moment the door closed, Sheklov's self-control failed and he began to shake. His mouth dried, his guts churned, and for a terrible few seconds he thought his bladder was going to let go. Just in time, he forced a deep breath into his lungs, and held it, and was able to deploy the resources due to his yoga training: the pranayana first, to cancel out the panic-reactions of his body, and then a series of mental exercises to drive unrealised possibilities back to their proper status in his awareness.

 

But the shock had reached deep :gown through his per

 

sonality, to layers that had already been badly bruised by

 

his encounter with Danty, and it was a lohg, process. It

 

was still not complete when he realized with a s"tart that

 

someone else was in the room: Lora. -

 

"I'm sorry," she muttered from the doorway. "But I heard Dad go out, and I thought maybe I could sneak in here and get away from everybody. But if you don't want to be disturbed-"

 

With an effort Sheklov put back his Holtzer mask, and smiled at her.

 

"Come in by all means. I can't-well, I guess this isn't the thing for a guest to say, but I can't blame you for wanting to hide out for a bit."

 

Gratefully she shut the door and came to sit in the chair her father had been using. She dropped into it like a limp doll, legs sprawled, and he realized with a shock that she was wearing nothing under her short black indoor robe. During lunch he hadn't noticed; so much of her had been hidden under the table.

 

Obviously, though, it hadn't occurred to her that exposing her crotch was either immodest or discourteous. He considered, very briefly, reverting to the full Holtzer pattern and commenting in shocked terms, then decided he should risk not doing so to secure an opening for some inquiries about Danty.

 

While he was casting around for the correct turn of phrase to lead into the subject, however, she saved him

 

 

the trouble. "Don, what do you think of Danty?" she de-' manded suddenly.

 

"Ali . . ." Careful! "As a matter of fact, I found h' quite an interesting young man. I was astonished when he claimed to be a reb, because he's not at all what you'd: imagine. I got the idea he was putting people on."

 

"You mean like needling Rev. Powell?"

 

"Oh, that-yes! I've seen Powell on TV now and then,; of course, but last night was the first time I'd met him.° And I was not impressed." Good; that came out in th~ proper tone of stufy disapproval.

 

"Exactly right for Peter," Lora muttered. "Christ, they make a lovely pair .... Say, Don-1 Oh, never mind."

 

"What?"

 

She made a vague gesture, staring disconsolately at herdelicately-fingered harms., "Oh . . . oh, I was just going to ask if you'd like tG sleep with me for the rest of your stay,. So I could get ~~of Peter's company. I think you're nic

 

You sm';e a lot, as though you mean it, and somewhere• und-ineath there's something-well-something real about you. If you see what I mean. So I just thought . . ."

 

Another gesture like the former.

 

Startled, Sheklov said after a pause, "Well, I'm flattered -I guess. But . . . well, your parents, for one thing . . ." The words tailed away.

 

Flattered isn't it. I'm flabbergasted!

 

"Oh, them!" Lora said. "Think they give a fart what Ido? They never have done. That's why I do all these crazy= things. They call it `tolerance,' or `freedom from inhibitions,' or some shit like that. What it means really is, theyhave an excuse for not bothering about their kids. .

 

Still, I guess it might foul up your business deal with Dad,;

 

hm?" -

 

"Well-uh-it might," Sheklov said. "And in any case. you won't have to share with Peter much longer. I expect.` to leave in a day or two. And if you'll forgive my saying. so, I had the impression you're involved with Danty." -

 

"Oh, I'm such a reeky fool!" Her eyes were staring into: infinity. "I got so mad this morning, over at his place: About something that doesn't matter at all. I mean, I've= done much worse things to people-do them all the time. I think sometimes I'll go crazy, right out of my skull crazy.: Maybe cut my throat in a fit of the blues."

 

She sounded as though she meant it. Sheklov's spine crawled.

 

"Well, surely you haven't done anything you can't put right by apologising," Sheklov ventured. "I certainly hope you didn't. Like I said, I found Danty kind of interesting, and I hoped I might see him again, talk some more."

 

"Really?" She sat up sharply and her eyes lost their glazed look.

 

"Why not? You know, I must admit I don't like this attitude you find down here, about young people-as though they had to be sort of quarantined. Hell, I'm not so old myself, I'm thirty-five, and back home I have friends from-"

 

But she wasn't listening. "You mean if I went looking for him I could-well, I could say you wanted me to, not just have to crawl to him and eat dirt?" She jumped to her feet.

 

"If that would help, sure you can." --Aod Sheklov thought: I'm going to be a long time figuring oudthe mores herel

 

"Oh, Donl" Lora exclaimed, clasping her hands. "I love youl"

 

She rushed forward, jumped on his lap, and thrust her tongue into his mouth.

 

 

. xv

 

The melodramatic-yet in a sense very real-self-directed? threat he had uttered to Sheklov had had a curious stabilising effect on Turpin's mind. It couldn't just be the tram-l' quilliser; during his twenty-five-year balancing act, he had', faced all kinds of crises from the risk of divorce to full-',, scale investigations of Energetics General by a House', committee, and he had relied on drugs time and again to tide him over. He knew, what they could and couldn't do.

 

This state of mind? was unique -a sensation as though all shaft of ice had been thrust clear from his crown to the,°base of his spine.

 

A.nrl, cue chill seemed to pervade every nook and cranny o¢ !us being. Ordinarily, while a veetol was hovering on its jets waiting for clearance into a traffic-lane, he was a trifle. scared-particularly when, as now, there was deep water underneath.

 

Today, though, the notion of having a thousand feet of nothing between him and disaster didn't trouble him in the; least. It was almost enjoyable. He had discovered a sort of pride in his own resilience. He knew better than to surrender to it-pride could be as dangerous as panic-but Sheklov had convinced him that exposure was far from unavoidable after all. (Damn the man! his subconscious added silently. Sabotage by the Navy, or another company, should have occurred to me, not to him!)

 

The situation was bad. It didn't have to be irremediable. It had better not be.

 

He had left Russia too soon to learn the same yoga: techniques as Sheklov-they had not been adopted untit long after his injection into the States-but trial and error' had taught him what he needed to think of in order to` calm his mind. He concentrated now on the crucial factors; recalling his own earlier recognition of the value of hav= ing confidence in one's achievements. Sheklov had told., him, more than once since his arrival, that he was still regarded as the most valuable agent ever planted on thin continent-and wasn't there truth in that compliment? His "

 

position as a senior vice-president of EG was virtually impregnable. Energetics General, in most people's minds, was synonymous with the sacred concept of continental defence, and he was looked up to by everyone he came in contact with---even by Prexy's backers, despite their being Navy.

 

Prexy himself as well, of course-but he didn't count for a fart in a bath-tub.

 

He slacked the buckles of his seat-harness a little as his confidence grew and grew. Yes, he could believe that Sheklov had been sent to him because his cover was perfect. And they did still set store by him Back There. They must. For the good and sufficient reason that he was the one who had coped. He was the one who had remained afloat when so many others had sunk-been tried and executed, or in a few cases that rankled in his memory killed by a mob, during the bad period of the late seventies when a single month might see as many-as two drnsand lynchings of political suspects, drug-users, and young'=en with long flair or beards.

 

He was in an almost benevolent mood when the reserved area hove in sight and the pilot called, "Mr. Turpin! We're going in for a landing now-please tighten your harness."

 

He was delighted to see how steady his hands were as he gripped the straps.

 

 

From the nearby superway it would have been impossible to tell that anything out of the ordinary was occurring in the reserved area. Stands of trees forced with paragibberellins and a rise in the ground concealed the immensely powerful four-enginered helicopters that had brought the service crew. Turpin caught only a brief glimpse of them as his pilot-properly conscious of not having a high enough clearance to enter a reserved area-set down a couple of minutes' walk away. He noticed that their sides were branded with the white figures "33," and tried to recollect more about the members of this team than simply their names.

 

Hurrying towards them, he saw that around the nearest 'copter several men in the quasi-military uniforms of fatigues and technical harness (which, he recalled not without pride, he had been instrumental in having adopted to emphasise the dedicated role these men played in Con-

 

 

tinental Defense) were milling like ants. With one foot on the ground, the other on the ledge of the 'copter's door, a blond man in his middle thirties was shooting questions by turns at each of his engineers. Turpin knew him instantly, although he had only met him once or twice, and months ago. That was the crew-boss, Gunnar Sandstrom, about whom security had been so dubious when his appointment came up. Because of the behaviour of the Scandinavian governments, of course, who refused to hand over traitors and deserters.

 

He had just started to call and wave to attract Sandstrom's attention when the howl of another aircraft battered their ears, rising in the blink of an eye from a drone to an intolerable roar. The shadow of it flickered over Turpin a fraction of a second before the noise hit; reflexively he glanced up at -;.he bright sky, and was blinded -in his haste to leave, home, he had forgotten his dark glasses. But he c^ ~ght a glimpse of its white paint-job, nonetheless, ? ua cursed silently. He had hoped to be here before a•:y of the senior security people showed, to plant his . picions about inter-corporation sabotage.

 

oo late now, though. Somebody very top indeed had arrived. That was no ordinary veetol, but a Mach 3 type, capable of crossing the continent in barely more than an hour.

 

Its pilot-if it was piloted, and not automatically controlled-set it down with meticulous accuracy in the middle of the cluster of choppers. Almost before the power had been cut its door was thrown open and a heavy-set man with black hair, wearing a bright blue windbreaker and orange pants, jumped to the ground. Sandstrom, naturally, broke off his conversation with his engineers and went running to meet him.

 

Turpin felt a brief pang of dismay. This was someone he didn't recognize. He'd hoped at least that they would send an acquaintance of his, sympathetic to EG. Still, there was no alternative to putting a bold face on the matter. He too strode up to the newcomer, as he was checking Sandstrom's redbook.

 

"Good morningl Or rather, good aftemoonl" he said. "I'm Turpin of Energetics General. I left home as soon as I heard what had happened." He offered his hand.

 

The black-haired man looked at it for a while, not mov-

 

ing to take it, and then raised piercing eyes to Turpin's face.

 

"Redbook?" he murmured.

 

Almost, Turpin let it be seen how insulted he felt, but he recovered in time and meekly produced the document -adding, as he handed it over, "Good afternoon to you too, Gunnar. Walked into a hornet's nest. didn't you?"

 

The crew-boss, looking troubled, didn't answer.

 

"Right," the dark-haired man said, handing Turpin's redbook back. "I'm-"

 

Turpin interrupted, "Yours too, please!"

 

They locked gazes for a moment. Then the newcomer chuckled and reached towards his hip pocket.

 

"Yes, by all means, Mr. Turpin. Correct procedure-oh, shit!"

 

As he touched his pocket, a yammering alarm had gone off.

 

He did something under his sweat-p-•ched left armpit, and the row stopped, and he finally produc`erl--the redbook. "Sorryl" he muttered with some embarrassmeltt.- "New model alarm. Very efficient. -But in the heat of the"~owent . . ."'"

 

The words trailed away.

 

Pleased to have rattled the security man, Turpin opened the redbook. Even before he read the first page, he had a strong idea of what he was going to fiild. Only the handful of key personnel who master-minded security throughout the States had those personalised alarm-systems in their clothes. Nonetheless, what he discovered amazed him. Apart from redbook #000 000 001, which was allotted to Prexy, he had never seen such comprehensive clearances. "Morton Kendall Clarke," he read. "Substantive bailiff, acting warden, United States Security Force. Seconded Continental Defense HQ."

 

Then: five pages of departmental stamps, four of special authorisations enabling him to assume command of Army, Navy, police, and National Guard detachments in an emergency; the usual warning to the civil population that resisting his orders carried a term of not less than one year's jail ....

 

It was too much. He slapped it shut and gave it back. Clarke tucked it away with a self-conscious grin, as though all too aware of how it must have affected Turpin.

 

 

"Rightl" he said, turning to Sandstrom. "Let's have the details again from the top."

 

Sandstrom glanced at Turpin, but all the latter could do was nod. You didn't argue with a redbook like Clarke's. The crew-boss began to recite in a manner as impersonal as 6. machine.

 

"We set down here at fourteen-oh-three. Randomschedule maintenance assignment serial H-506-oblique-828oblique-97. I deployed my crew in the prescribed manner. My aide, Leo Wilkie over there"-he pointed at a frecklefaced young man with a shock of tow-colored hair-"set about deploying the status-check gear for use when the site had been pronounced A-OK. Immediately he fired up the lice-counter, he drew my attention to . . ." He interrupted himself. "Uh-sorry. I mean the live-circuit remotecondition reader." .

 

"I `know what you rrtean," Clarke snapped. "Go on."

 

"Yes, sure." San dstrom licked his lips. "Well, right away we both reali°za something was wrong. Should have displaying t4v regular pattern bright as day. And the screen stay "dead. I knew there wasn't a fault in the unit because i ame fresh from overhaul this morning."

 

"So what did you do then?"

 

"Sounded the recall siren and told the crewmen what I suspected. And- Leo exchanged their routine gear for-uh -the appropriate equipment. In fact, by that time one of the crews, making for the master switching bunker, bad had their own suspicions aroused. The locks on the bunker door were not at their former setting. The door is fourinch sintered-ceramic, a kind of artificial ruby, with . . . but I guess you've been to lots of these sites."

 

"Yes," Clarke said. "So? What next?"

 

"I ordered a top-to-bottom check of the site. Didn't want to risk the chance that we'd been issued with data that actually related to somewhere else.."

 

"Has that ever happened to you?"

 

"No, sir, never. But we were warned in training not to proceed if it did happen."

 

"I see. Go on."

 

"Well"-Sandstrom made a helpless gesture-"we satis-

 

fied ourselves the site really was shut down. So I sent out

 

the alarm." _

 

"When?"

 

"I logged that, sir," the freckle-faced Leo broke in. "Fifty-three minutes after we landed."

 

"Fifty-three minutesl" Clarke exploded. "Nearly an hourl And now . . ." He checked his watch. "Now it's an hour and a half later stilll What the hell were you doing all that time?"

 

Listening, Turpin recognised the faint whine what sharpened his voice, and shivered. He knew many people like this, more women than men but plenty of men too, who had let petty power go to their heads and enjoyed stamping on the least suggestion of dilatoriness or incompetence among their subordinates . . . and were always full of excuses for their own shortcomings. He knew, and suspected that Clarke knew too, that checking out a site of this complexity in an hour was fast work.

 

Unfortunately, of. course, when it comes to someone

 

who holds a redbook like Clarke's, .you can't talk about

 

"petty" power . . . -

 

Sandstrom had stiffened, his mouth tensn"-V though he wanted to snap back but dared not. He said lih..a dead tone, "What I was doing, sir, was acting in accordance with my instruction manual. That's to say, evaluating the status of every potentially deadly item of equipment in the reserved area in order to protect my crewmen from accidental injury. If that's a satisfactory answer, I'll proceed to what I did after sending out the alarm."

 

"So tell -me," Clarke said with a scowl.

 

"I deployed half my men along the beach, under orders to look for any sips of someone coming from the sea who might have sabotaged the installation. And I deployed the other half into the woods and along the track leading to the superway, with the same-"

 

"Gunnarl" A top-of-the-lungs shout. They spun around. On the dirt road leading towards this spot, a man running and calling and waving, obviously very agitated. "Gunnar, this way, quick!"

 

 

And, a couple of minutes later, Turpin, Clarke, Sandstrom, and two members of the maintenance crew were staring down at a footprint on the side of a now-dry puddle-or rather, at half a footprint. Only the sole had left a mark. But that was clear enough for the brand-name to be read.

 

 

Well ahead of the scheduled time of Magda's meet with her client, Danty had left the apartment, revelling in the sensation of not being driven to do things whose outcome he could not foresee. He had sometimes tried to describe his-his . . . No, the word didn't exist. Say "premonitions"? That was absolutely wrong. "Previsions"? Wrong again. Fits of clairvoyance, perhaps . . .

 

Anyway: He had tried to describe them; and failed. They were an abstract, like hunger and thirst, and could only be assuaged h; letting himself drift until he found the proper conr.e of action, and pursued it. Occasionally there wac _ tingling or throbbing at the back of his head.

 

Today, however, he was luxuriously able to relax. He

 

yed it so much that for. well over two hours he simply andered about the city, saying hello now and then to his acquaintances. He had very few friends, and no close ones except Magda.

 

Eventually, however, he spotted a family climbing towards a hoverhalt carrying beach-gear, off for a swim, and decided on the spur of the moment to join them. The shore would be crowded, of course; today was dry and clear and not unbearably hot. Here on the Cowville side the sand was not as carefully cleansed as over by the towers of Lakonia-still, by current standards, New Lake was outstanding. Few people cared to go to the ocean any more, even if they lived within easy reach. The water was too foul. And as for rivers . . . 1

 

But in New Lake you could swim without risking instant diarrhoea and pharyngitis, and half a mile from shore you could climb on to a bobbing plastic platform and stare at Lakonia and daydream. Even blacks could daydream.

 

Besides, they could scoff at cocks who were due for overnight agony and lobster-redness in the morning.

 

 

When he scrambled down from the hoverhalt by the lake, one among a hundred all with the same idea, he

 

headed straight for a rental booth where two dollars obtained you a towel. That was all you had to have. Some fine Sundays they rented five thousand towels. Judging by the length of the line ahead of him, today might top the previous high.

 

But before he came within ten places of the head of the line, a familiar tingling started at his nape, and slowly spread.

 

Oh, no! he pleaded silently, and stood fast, trying to disregard it.

 

Eventually. however, it reached the point where-he knew from experience-he had to respond. or suffer night after night of sleepless worrying, guessing at answers for the question that could never be answered: "Suppose I had...?"

 

Furious, within a minute of i.° aching the rental booth,

 

he broke out of the line and stared wildly about him. No

 

one paid much attention to his behaviour, except the girl

 

behind him, who was so eager to get in the water she was

 

undressing already. You got these crazy screwhe~ by the

 

beach all the time.

 

He had very little money on him, as usual. He seldom carried more than twenty dollars, enough for car-fare and public toilets. One of the advantages of the beach was that it passed a whole day for next to nothing.

 

Yet his attention fixed abruptly on something he would never ordinarily have bothered with: a telescope, on a block of concrete overlooking the lake, with an engraved map of the Lakonia towers beside it-out of date by three building-projects-and the usual time-switched coinmachine controlling its shutter.

 

Yes. That. But why in the name of . . . ?

 

He sighed and walked towards it. Now, a few people did glance at him. puzzled. When money was so sc2lrce, why waste it on peering through a telescope?

 

He agreed. He agreed entirely. Nonetheless he pushed his dollar into the slot and closed his eyes, feeling without reference to the map where he ought to point the 'scope. At once a dozen naked kids, of both sexes, who had doubtless failed to persuade their parents to give them money for the same thing, came rushing to beg a brief glimpse of Lakonia.

 

He ignored them, even though they tugged at his pants so hard they threatened to pull them down. It wouldn't

 

 

have bothered anyone but him if they'd made it, of course; his balls weren't anything special to look at.

 

He re-opened his eyes just as the corroded and badlyserviced timing device on the shutter consented to admit that his coin was, valid. It sprang aside-not all the way, but far enough. A three-quarter circle of brilliant sundrenched sand appeared, backed by the colourful Lakonia towers. On the sand a veetol was standing, dwarfed by the buildings beyond, and its bright blue paint was marked with the symbol of Energetics General, a stylised star transfixed by a lightning bolt.

 

A man approached it at a stumbling run, mopping his forehead as he went. He looked familiar. But for an agonising instant Danty thought the handerchief he was using would prevent a clear sight of his face. Then, though, he' shoved it in his pocket as he made to climb the veetol's steps.

 

Christl Turn`. d

 

Almost ',efore its door was shut, the veetol howled heav~wwards, and Danty turned away from the 'scope, to

 

'amazement of the children around him, who took a ull ten seconds before they started quarrelling over who should make first use of the time bought and not expended.

 

 

"Reeky pigs," Potatohead said as he drew on his pants -but not too loudly. The pig who had told them to quit the beach was still within earshot. And gun-shot.

 

"Mm-hm," Stark said, squatting on the sand to empty some of it out of his shoes. "Funky traitors."

 

The pig happened to be about the same colour as they were.

 

"Whother fart youter down?" Josh said, coming back from an ice-cream concession holding three overbalancing cones of pale blue, yellow, and pink.

 

"Nosser much wha'we doon," Potatohead grunted. "Mop whother 'adiated cop think we shudnal"

 

Josh stared at them for a moment. Then, in a gesture of all-embracing disgust, he hurled the ice-creams to the ground and stamped on them. Nearby, a child who had been watching with large envious eyes broke into a howl of misery and would have charged up and pummelled Josh but that his father seized him by the ankle and tripped him-which led to still louder howls.

 

"Chrahssekl" Josh blasted. "Youter doan' spen'nough

 

tahm uppie chothers' cricks? Lahk youer hanna blow, hunh? 'Zat it?"

 

"We-yull . . ." Potatohead shuffled from one foot to the other, reincarnating Uncle Tom to the life.

 

"Ah, y'make muh wan'thro-wupl" Josh snarled. "Y'knoh they dullet'nyun bu' gulls scroona beachl Fay-yudl Mekun fast! Ah dwonna knoh youter blabbohs 'fo' y'eads get stray-yutl Heah muh? Ah s'd fay-yudl"

 

Briefly, Shark looked as though he might hurl himself at Josh; the latter, though, kicked with bare toes at the pants he had left folded on the sand and parted folds of cloth to reveal the handle of his knife. He was very fast with it, much faster than his buddies-which was a good reason for him to give the orders.

 

"Ah, piss'nyal" Shark sighed at length, and turned away.

 

 

Turpin getting into a company veetol at a run-and on a Sunday afternoon) Head down, strolling randomly along the beach and attracting cat-calls on every side. not only from girls, proposing reasons why he should havg, his pants on-mostly connected with needing a magnifyingglass-Danty struggled to make sense of the situation.

 

If it did have anything to do with him, and past experience indicated that he wouldn't have felt it if it didn't, then it must connect up by way of the reserved area that he'd left turned off. Why? Why? That was the best possible guarantee that the security force would come running)

 

Of course, no one would be able to link him personally with what he'd done. Before leaving, he had meticulously wiped everything he recalled touching, and his memory was good. The rock he'd hidden beside was below the tide-mark, and he'd gone to it over firm, dry ground patched with dune-grass, so . . .

 

He stopped dead. Just ahead of him, some tender-foot had stepped in a patch of damp sand, and the mark of a plastic sandal stood out as clear as a plaster-of-Paris cast. And he remembered.

 

That puddle, where he'd collected mud to smear on his facel He'd seen-and he'd done nothing about-that print he'd left on its edge . . . and since Friday morning there had been no more rainl

 

 

"Josh)"

 

 

"Ah, shit! Wh'n Ah sa' fay-yud, Ah mean fay-yud!" Josh sat up, hand snaking towards his pants and the hilt of his knife.

 

"Nah, coolunl" Shark hissed. "Tha' slug dun-s'all wrong -tha' Dan'y Wohd!"

 

Instantly Josh forgot everything else. He turned very slow to face them, eyes blank behind his dark glasses.

 

"Sawun?"

 

"Sho'! Raht hyah onna be-yutchl"

 

There was a pause full of the cries of kids playing ball. At length Josh nodded and began to pull on his clothes.

 

"Shown way, hm?" he said. "We got sco' t'level wi-yat mother."

 

A XV11 A

 

 

A few minutes after the discovery of the footprint, a second security veetol dropped out of the sky-not such a fast model as Clarke's, but much larger, bringing a top forensic team with all their gear. Under Clarke's direction they set about turning the site inside-out.

 

Turpm found himself compelled to trail at Clarke's heels, not a r81e he relished. He was used to being the focus of attention where anything connected with Energetics General was concerned. Now and then he tried to involve himself in one of Clarke& conversations.

 

`"Think that print will give you a lead to-?"

 

"Hell, no. Second commonest brand on the market, fourth commonest sizel" And back to a technical discussion with the forensic experts. '

 

"Whoever did it came down the track, as I see it, and then-"

 

"Doesn't follow." With even greater curtness. "We shan't know until we've finished searching the beach."

 

So Turpin. anxious, withdrew into the background and smoked a rapid succession of cigarettes, his earlier confidence oozing away under the simultaneous pressure of Clarke's snubbing and the glare from the sunlight on the sand, which threatened to give him a headache. He was on the point of confronting Clarke directly and saying that he was going home because he was tired of wasting time, when the men working over the beach discovered something that made his heart lurch.

 

In a direct line between the dirt road and the sea, a probing metal rod had come back from six inches underground smeared with some sort of sticky plastic goo.

 

Oh, my God. Sheklov's survival suld

 

None of his reaction showed in his face, of course, or his manner. He had had far too long to practise concealment of his emotions. Moreover. he had been assured that the destruct process left no single compound in the mess that could be identified as of foreign origin.

 

 

But suppose they underestimated the impact of thirty years' paranoia on our forsenic techniques?

 

He wondered briefly what "they" and "our" meant to him nowadays.

 

Now it was definite. He would not dare to leave here before he had planted in Clarke's mind the seed of the suspicion Sheklov had proposed: the idea that some rival corporation, or the Navy, had decided to undermine confidence in EG's ability to fulfil its defence contracts.

 

Waiting for his chance, he stood by while the forsenic team, with the patience of archaeologists, uncovered the mass of mingled plastic and sand. It bore no resemblance to the form of a human being, Turpin realized with relief. It had been folded roughly square, and the destruct process had caused streels of plastic to flow away from its edges like pseudopods around a sick amoeba. He waited tensely for Clarke's opinion of the find.

 

"What do you think?" the security man said finally to the nearest of his aides.

 

The man shrugged. "Garbage," he answered. "One of those self-destruct bags you have on yachts, chucked overboard and washed up here."

 

"That's what it looks like to me," Clarke agreed. "But take a sample to the lab just in case. And keep on looking. Say-uh-Turpinl I'd like a word with you now."

 

He gestured for the older man to fall in at his side, and led the way towards the vegetation fringing the shore. As he walked be produced and offered a pack of cigars, a good West Coast brand.

 

Accepting one, Turpin decided to risk a bit of deduction himself. He said, "Did you get hauled back from a vacation?"

 

"Not exactly," Clarke grunted. "Just my first free weekend in two months. I was out in Oregon last week, and I have cousins in Frisco, so I thought I'd take the chance to call on them. Then this blows up, so fast I don't even have the time to change clothesl Hahl" He bit the end off his cigar and spat it savagely into a nearby bush.

 

Well, that would excuse some of his bad manners . . . . Offering a light, Turpin ventured, "Have you drawn any conclusions yet? Naturally, on behalf of EG, I'm very concerned about all this."

 

"Whereas I have to be concerned about it on behalf of

 

the whole nation," Clarke said, with the air of a man scoring a debating-point.

 

"Naturallyl" Turpin agreed, lighting his own cigar. "But, you see-"

 

"Just a moment." Clarke pushed his cigar to the corner of his mouth. where it jutted up at the traditional tycoon's angle, and reached into one of the pockets of his windbreaker. He drew out something of shiny metal, about six inches long when unfolded. touched a switch at its base, and-holding it about the height of his mouth-turned through a complete circle. A high-pitched hum made Turpin's teeth ache slightly.

 

"Parabolic mike detector?" he said after a pause.

 

"Yes. And it's okay. No one is eavesdropping right now." Clarke folded the gadget and put it away. "Sorry, but I had to make absolutely certain, because of what I want to ask you. Turpin, how well do you know these service crews of EG?"

 

"I know some of them in fair detail," Turpin said, wondering if he was about to receive a gift from the gods. It certainly sounded as though he was. "As to this one, thirtythree-well, rather less than some."

 

"I noticed you call the crew-boss by his first name," Clarke probed.

 

"Oh, that's company policy," Turpin said with an easy smile. "Executives call crew-bosses by their first names, their juniors by their surnames. It goes for both sexes."

 

.. "I see. But it's rather an unusual name, isn't it-Gunnar?"

 

AM

 

Smoothly, never saying anything outright that might be interpreted as an accusation, Turpin laid down parameters for Clarke's thinking: someone who felt handicapped by a foreign name. possibly suspecting that he'd been passed over for promotion because of it, might so easily have listened to blandishments from another company, hoping to augment the income he regarded as less than his just due, . . . He managed to refer to EG's excellent record on industrial espionage, then to the intense competition against which the firm had secured the automatic defences contract, then to the clean bill that every House committee had given them after an investigation, and all the time Clarke listened intently, now and then making a further check with his detector.

 

 

At last be- gave a thoughtful nod. He said, "I guess you must have studied Sandstrom's file."

 

"Seen it, certainly," Turpin said, blinking. "Can't swear to having memorised it, naturally."

 

"I seem to recall, though"-with a frown-"he gave one special reason for-moving into high-grade electronics, didn't he?"

 

"Ah . . ." Simultaneous, a search of memory and preparation of an adequate excuse for not remembering. Memmory dealt him a trump just in time. "Why, yesl I do know what you meanl Didn't it have something to do with a childhood fascination with the space programme?"

 

"So he deposed," Clarke agreed, slipping his detector back in his pocket for the fourth or fifth time. And then, just as Turpin was preparing to congratulate him on being able to pick that single entry out of heaven knew how many security files-which, indeed, was a rather sobering feat and indicated just why Clarke was as high as he was in the hierarchy of his force-he did something that took Turpin absolutely by surprise. He bent to the ground, caught up a small rock, and hurled it as far as he could.

 

"Did you see that go into orbit?" he demanded savagely. And added, before Turpin could frame words to reply with: "Come on-better get back and see if my men have turned up anything else."

 

A )kV111 A

 

 

"I guess that's the place," Lora said doubtfully, slowing the car alongside a vacant parking-bay and pointing across the street to an ugly old building with a hoverhalt on its roof.

 

"Yell" she added, craning to read a sign pointing to it. "I remember the name. Right first time-not bad, lm?"

 

She backed into the bay and jumped out. Copying her, Sheklov stared at the building. It was shabby, with great cracks in its walls that were only prevented from spreading by the reinforced concrete beams doing double duty as supports for the steel stairs up to the hoverhalt. They had arrived at the same moment as a hovercar, and he could see the walls trembling under the extra load.

 

He shook his head. He hoped he wasn't going to have to spend long in this paradoxical country: so rich, yet with so many people in it prepared to suffer intolerable indignities)

 

Having stuffed five bucks into the nearby meter-the regular fee for two hours' parking on a Sunday-Lora caught his arm and hurried him across the street. On the steep stairs of the hoverhalt he lost sight of her as the hovercar discharged a crowd of people numbering only about twenty but blocking the width of the steps as efficiently as a small army, then caught up with her again on the landing outside the topmost apartment, where she was already ringing the bell.

 

Shortly, the door was opened to a security stop by a woman with a strong face and coarse black hair, who could have been any age from thirty to fifty, wearing a casual red sweater and tan pants. Her expression, resigned at first, changed in a moment to one of welcome.

 

"Ohl I wasn't expecting anyone, so I thought it might be the pigs--or one of my clients turning up without an appointment. But you're Lora Turpin, aren't you? Come on inl"

 

She released the security stop and flung the door wide.

 

Lora hesitated, while Sheklov's eyes seized greedily on what details of the interior of the apartment he could

 

 

make out from where he stood. Books-twenty times as many as in the whole of the Turpins' home! A ouija board, hung from the wall on a bit of string! Visible on a low table abandoned presumably when the bell rang, a tarot pack!

 

It was like coming home.

 

So who was this woman, anyway-Danty's mistress? That seemed unlikely. Vaguely he heard Lora asking whether Danty was in; equally vaguely, he registered the reply: "No, but he could be back at any time. Please come in and wait if you'd like to."

 

"Well . . ." Lora looked to Sheklov for guidance.

 

"That's very kind!" he exclaimed, and this time took her arm, encouraging her over the threshold. "Apparently you know Lora," he added. "I'm Don Holtzer."

 

"Oh, yes. Danty said he met you at the Turpins'. I'm Magda Hansen." Shutting the door and waving them to chairs. "Do sit down. Maybe you'd like some coffee?"

 

"Please," Sheklov said firmly.

 

"I'll go plug the percolator in. Just a moment." And she headed for the miniature kitchen in the corner.

 

Out of the side of her mouth, looking ill-at-ease, Lora whispered, "But that's the-uh-the girl Danty's living with. I saw her when I woke up this morning. That was why I.. "

 

"Turned tail?" Sheklov supplied equally softly, finally putting two and two together. "Well, she doesn't seem to mind your coming to call, does she?"

 

And that was all he had the chance to say before she was back and sitting down on one of the built-in couches, facing them. Recollecting her tarot cards, she leaned forward to gather them up. Sheklov decided to risk commenting on them.

 

"That's an unusual deck you have there. Is it what they call-uh-tarrot?" Mispronouncing it deliberately.

 

"Yes." Collapsing the cards with strong, thick fingers into a neat pile. "Haven't you seen them before? Like to look?"

 

"Well, thanks," Sheklov said, reaching to the full stretch of his arms to take them from her. He realized at once they were a design he didn't know. But good. The hanged man, in particular: a black surrounded by hooded Klansmen. Very apt. He gave them back, and Magda turned to

 

park them on a vacant section of one of the many bookshelves at her back.

 

"Did you say you thought it might be police at the door?" he inquired, since Lora appeared to be tongue-tied.

 

"Could have been," Magda said with a sigh. "Those radiated pigs are on a harassment kick right now-come crashing in, mostly on Sundays or in the middle of the night-just to turn everything over and make a mess. If they break a few things, so much the better."

 

"But-uh-what excuse do they have for . . .?" Sheklov let the question trail away, thinking of the days when that had been the perennial nightmare of anyone on the other side who had dared to reveal an original turn of mind.

 

Magda gave a shrug. "Oh, they always say 'suspicion of illegal drugs,' you know. But that's so much shit. It's just the thing they don't need a warrant for. Fact is, they hate rebs, and that's all there is to it."

 

"I see," Sheklov said, for want of any better comment. He felt at a loss. This woman, much older than Danty, had a similar disconcerting quality in her dark gaze and in her tone of voice. He could almost imagine himself saying something to her, as he had done to Danty. that would be a betrayal of his cover, and without being able to help it even though he realized it was happening.

 

Still, he had to put some questions about Danty because of what had already happened. He said, "Ah . . . 1 Well, if it's Danty they're after, I can't see why. I talked to him a bit at the party last night. and he seemed to be veryuh-serious. Sort of thoughtful. And well-read, too," he added as an afterthought.

 

"Yell" Lora chimed in. "That's why Don wanted to see him again. Wasn't it, Don?"

 

"Yes. Yes, of course."

 

There was a dead silence, during which Magda looked -not discourteously, just searchingly-at both of them in turn for long seconds. She said at last, "And, of course, the pigs don't like foster-rebs, either."

 

Meaning herself, Sheklov deduced. The term had been included in his briefings. It applied to an older person who actively encouraged the young to drop out of society in search of some allegedly superior truth. A few states had incorporated it into their criminal codes, making such encouragement an offence for which the parents of minors

 

 

could sue by analogy with "alienation of affection" in the old British common law.

 

Shades of Socrates and the hemlockl "Corrupting our youthl"

 

"I get the impression," Sheklov said slowly, not looking directly at Magda, "that over the border we-you know I'm Canadian?"

 

"Danty did mention it."

 

Was there mockery in those dark eyes? Had she seen through his pretence?-He couldn't tell. He ploughed doggedly on.

 

"Well, we seem to understand something different by the word reb. I mean, it's not something the police would -uh . . ." A wave of his hand.

 

"Down here the police pounce on anyone who's in the slightest degree different," Magda said. "Anyone who tries to think for himself, to begin with-they're the most dangerous of all. Every loyal citizen is convinced that the government is right, even if today it says the exact opposite of what it said yesterday. Not that that happens so much any more. We've decayed into what they call a consensus." She made the word sound fairly obscene.

 

"You mean-" Lora began. Magda cut her short.

 

"What I mean is that the government of this country is killing us. Stone-dead. By slow strangulation."

 

She jolted forward on her couch, her face suddenly animated, and Sheklov realized with a start that she was beautiful-not in the conventional American, or even the conventional Russian, sense, which had more to do with mere glamour, but in the ancient sense of the Gioconda or the Venus di Milo. It was as though a light had been switched on inside her head that illuminated her true personality. Also, in contrast with the shrill whine of almost every other woman he had met since his arival-most notably, Sophie Turpin and her mother-her voice was a resonant contralto, cello-forceful.

 

"And it's a tough job for them," she said. "Because in every generation you get a handful of people who won't just be crushed into the regulation mould. Don't you? The ones who want to be--oh-inventors rather than engineers, or poets rather than copywriters, or architects rather than building-contractors. Peg it?"

 

"I guess so," Sheklov said, and added wryly, "likewise, ecologists rather than timber-salesmen."

 

"You peg," she said. and this time smiled at him-just with her eyes. wrinkling the lids humorously. "So what happens when you block off all their opportunities to explore and experiment as they want to? You get rebs. Hell, you're bound to."

 

"Well-sure you are!" Sheklov said, blinking. "So . . .?"

 

"So they get stamped on," Magda said. "Like I said."

 

"But--21

 

"But why? Oh, I know it's crazy. I know we're so rich we ooze monev like-like fat dripping off roast pork. I know we ought to be able to tolerate a fraction of 1 per cent of young people who'd rather sit and think than fit into the machine. But people seem to resent their need to do that, don't they?"

 

Sheklov swallowed hard, wondering what Holtzer ought to say, and was saved the trouble. Lora spoke up.

 

"I know just what you mean!" she exclaimed. "Lots of times I think inside my head there's something going on that isn't in the books they make you read in school. It makes me want to do crazy things now and then, really crazy, just to shake everybody up. And they don't even notice!" The last word was almost a cry.

 

"So what do you do about it?" Magda said.

 

"I . -. ." She licked her lips. Eventually she shook her head and stared down at her hands, folded in her lap.

 

"See. Don?" Magda said. "That's what a foster-reb like me is trying to stop. Someone like Lora ought to be able to-to go somewhere, do something, stack up new experience and dig around among it in case the answer's somewhere underneath."

 

"I-uh-I guess I can see you have a case there," Sheklov said cautiously. "But what one hears about the result ."

 

• "You mean the popular picture of a reb?" Magda interrupted. "I guess if you're Canadian" (did she lay too much stress on that or was his imagination working overtime?) "you've been fooled by the media. I'm not talking about fakes, phoneys, borderline psychopaths, what they used to wrap up under one handy label like `beat' or `hippie.' That went out of style when the courts started holding that long hair was prima-facie proof of vagrancy because it meant you couldn't pay the barber, and the pigs grunted with joy and reached for their guns!"

 

Reflexively Sheklov touched his chin. Back There he'd

 

 

sported a beard. Why not, in an area where the winter temperatures regularly dipped to -30° Centigrade?

 

"Yeah beards too," Magda agreed. "And when that happened the phoneys folded up and went home. Leaving just the few, just the handful, who couldn't be folded up. And what can they do? If they apply for a passport, the pigs come running and turn over their homes. grill their families, their friends, until no one wants to know them any more. 'Everything's great here, why should you want to leave?'-that's the principle, and saying you're curious about the rest of the world is no excuse. You've been told all your life that this country is the best, the finest, the most wonderful. So they want to know why you aren't satisfied. And how can you say why you aren't? You haven't done the things that might tell youl"

 

"But if you do try and leave, you have to leave for good!" Lora burst out. "I've thought about it, and-and I just daren'tl I might get shot at the borderl"

 

"A lot of people do," Magda sighed. "Which is why most rebs go exploring in a different direction altogether."

 

Sheklov looked at the ouija board, the tarot deck, various other significant items on display. He said at last, "You must mean-inside their heads."

 

"Yes." Magda gave him a puzzled look. "I usually have to spell that out to people when I'm defending the rebs. I guess north of the border you aren't quite so calcified, hm? But that's the long and short of it, yes."

 

"How did you get involved with these rebs?" Sheklov queried. "If you don't mind my asking."

 

Magda seemed to be overcome with a fit of self-consciousness. She said, avoiding his eyes, "Oh . . . 1 Oh, I guess I was one of the half-and-half cases. Sometimes I felt I ought to stand up for what I believed in, and sometimes I was just lazy enough to coast along with the gang, and I drifted into a marriage on that basis. Which turned sour, and taught me-much too late-that my laziness was a crime against myself. And, too, I found out that I have

 

 

"Yes?" Sheklov prompted.

 

"I have a talent," Magda said after a brief hesitation, and pointed at the card in the window. It was so thin the word CONSULTATIONS could be read on it, backwards, against the light sky of late afternoon. "You see," she continued, licking her lips, "I do have more-uh-empathy

 

than some people. I trained as a nurse when I quit college, thinking maybe I'd go to work for the Red Cross or some other international aid organisation, in some broken-backed poverty-stricken country. It turned out I wasn't allowed to, because-well, because I'd been kind of wild as a kid and they wouldn't give a passport to anyone with a drug-bust on their record. Smoking pot was all, but quite enough. So here I am, a professional shoulder to weep on in an age when most people won't admit they can cry. Won't even confide in their best friends. It doesn't require a licence, so that's cool."

 

Sheklov was framing his next question when Lora spoke up again unexpectedly. She said, "Say-uh-Magda! Does Danty have any kind of talent? I kind of wondered when . . . . Did he tell you how we met? He saved my lifel"

 

Sheklov rounded on her in astonishment. There was something so brittle and superficial about this girl, hearing her utter a statement like that jolted him.

 

But Magda was nodding as though it was perfectly natural to say such things. "Oh, that Danty!" she said, in a tone that cross-bred cynicism with affection. "He has a talent, sure has. Know what he always says about himself?"

 

Lora shook her head, her eyes hungry.

 

"Ever read The Sword in the Stone? Yes? Remember Merlin the magician?"

 

"Yes, of coursel"

 

"Well, Danty always says he's in the same mess, born at the wrong end of time. You see, he-"

 

There came a scratching at the door, the sound of a key being fumbled into the lock. She broke off and swung around to face that way. So did the others. The door flew wide.

 

Danty stood there, swaying drunkenly, lips drawn back in a grimace of pain, eyes almost closed, a crusting cut on his forehead, and a great blood-gushing slash on his left arm that now, letting fall his key, he struggled again to staunch with his red right hand.

 

"Help me," he whispered faintly, and fell headlong.

 

 

Lora screamed.

 

Galvanised by the sound, Sheklov leapt from his chair. He slapped the door shut at the full reach of his arm and dropped to his knees beside Danty.

 

"Shut up!" he rasped at Lora. "Go find a phone, call a doctor! Magda, help me get him on the couchl We'll need ice-scissors-bandages-"

 

Coolly she undercut him, bending over his shoulder to inspect Danty's wound. "I did train as a nurse, remember?" she murmured. And put one hand accurately on a pressure-point that reduced the surging leakage of blood to an ooze.

 

"Oh. Yes, of course. Sorry." Sheklov rose. too?"

 

"And you?" she pursued. "Are you trained in medicine,

 

 

What have 1 said now? Sheklov's mind raced. But almost , at once he hit on a good reason for Holtzer to know firstaid.

 

"Hell, of course! Do you have any idea how many lumbermen lose arms and legs to power-saws every year? Must be hundredsl"

 

"Good, then." Magda said. "Lora, bring ice-cubes, will you? And you'll find a box in the corner of the kitchen- 3 top shelf-marked with a red cross. I'll need that."

 

"What about calling a doctor?" Sheklov snapped. "Don't you have a phone?"

 

Magda gave him a steady look. "Think I can afford indemnity insurance?"

 

.. fit?" .j

 

 

"It's very clear you're not American! You want a doctor who makes house-calls, you have to pay insurance against his being mugged or robbed on the way to you. In Cowville the going rate's a thousand a month." She added after a moment, "Anyway, Danty's black. and no white doctor would treat him, and I wouldn't dare call a black one. Help me lift him to that couch-no, just a moment, I'll put a sheet on it."

 

He left a bloody trail on the floor.

 

 

After that Sheklov reacted mechanically as Magda efficiently cut away Danty's sleeve, wiped the knife-woundthat was what it had to be, an inch wide and more than that deep-and sprayed it in turn with an analgesic, an -antibiotic powder, and finally with a clear solution from an aerosol can. Reading the label on this last before Lora dutifully returned it to the first-aid kit, Sheklov learned that it was intended to create a film impervious to airborne infection that would contract as it dried and draw the edges of a cut together, obviating the need to insert stitches.

 

Hmm! That would be useful at home! A fine invention)

 

On the other hand, he wouldn't care to live in a society that found it necessary to include such a product in a home first-aid kit . . .

 

Then the final touches: rinsing of Danty's face-his cut forehead was minor, hardly more than a scratch, although his eyes would be puffy for a day or two, Magda predicted-and the job of clearing up, which Lora undertook silently, despite her faintly green cheeks and look of incipient nausea. Magda complimented her a couple of times on being so helpful, and she flashed smiles of gratitude in response.

 

Sheklov recalled what she had said about her parents not taking an interest in their children.

 

At some point during all this-Sheklov did not notice exactly when-Danty regained consciousness, but apparently figured out what was going on and went on lying quite still. His first word, when Magda had done with him, was, "Thanks)"

 

"You're all right, Danty?" Lora exploded, and almost let the bowl of pink water she was carying to the kitchen fall to the floor. Barely in time she recovered, parked it on the table, and fell on her knees at his side.

 

"Me? Sure, baby, I'm okay. I'm tough)" Danty said, ruffling her hair. "Let me sit up, hm? That's the idea!"as she twisted around to support him behind his shoulders. Touching his arm, he winced, and added, "I guess this may need a sling for a day or two, Magdal"

 

"Lora, go look behind that curtain, by my bed. There's a bag full of rags," Magda said, and Lora departed at a run. She added to Danty, "Who did it-Josh?"

 

 

"I'm not sure whether Josh beat Shark to it, or the other way around " Danty sighed. "They took me completely by surprise. Jumped me near the hoverhalt as I was coming off the beach."

 

"You know who did this to you?" Sheklov said, astonished. ".Shouldn't you-uh-report it, then? Or something?" he added lamely.

 

"To the pigs?" Danty said with a cynical grin. "Man, I should die laughing the day the pigs do anything for mel More like -hey'd give Josh a medal."

 

"Is this long enough?" Lora called, waving a piece of blue cloth around the corner of the curtain that hid Magda's sleeping alcove. Magda held out her hand for it, and after tugging hard on its ends folded and tied it to make a sling.

 

"Great, baby," Danty said, having tried it out. "Say, I guess I should thank you all, shouldn't I? Don-Lora. . . Lora, honey! Shit, what you crying for?"

 

She was struggling not to, but tears were pouring down her cheeks and she was clamping her hands together to stop their ;baking.

 

"Give her a trankl" Danty said, and interrupted himself. "No. got a better idea. Any of that vodka left that Punchy gave us?"

 

"Sure is!" Magda said, snapping her fingers, and headed for the kitchen. She was back in a moment with mismatched glasses and a bottle half-full. According to its label, Sheklov noted, the contents.vere made in Scheneotady, New York. This wasn't like the Vyborova he drank at home, but it helped, and he set his empty glass aside gratefully. It was only when he found Danty offering the bottle for a refill that he realized he had drunk it Russianstyle, in a gulp, instead of sipping it like the rest of them.

 

That, though, apparently wasn't unexpected in .the present context. At least, none of them commented.

 

After a pause to wipe her eyes, Lora said suddenly, "I-uh-I'd like to say something."

 

"So shoot," invited Danty.

 

"I . . ." She took the plunge. "I like youl Both of youl You feel real."

 

"That's a change from this morning," Danty chuckled. "I thought you'd set the stairs afire. the speed you left at."

 

"I know," Lora said, almost inaudibly. "All the time I do stupid things, the exact opposite of what I want . . . .

 

I wish 1 could figure out how to explore inside myself, too. I'm sure there's something in there I ought to know about, something that would be worth having. After all. I'm not an idiot. I'm just"-a furious grimace "kind of crazy!"

 

"Aren't we all?" Magda said. and drained her glass. At the same moment there was a shrill ring from behind the curtain. and she jumped up.

 

"That might be about Molly," she said, answering an unspoken query from Danty. "I left the number at the hospital so they could tell us the news." And vanished.

 

"Friend of ours," Danty explained. "Pregnant."

 

"Oh. Is she in the maternity ward?" Sheklov hazarded.

 

He gave his usual crooked grin. "No. Emergency. They have three kids already and their neighbours aren't talking to them. So her husband threw her downstairs to try and abort her. Broke her pelvis."

 

"What?" Lora burst out in horror.

 

"Happens all the time," Danty said. passing his unhurt hand wearily over his face. "Shit, what you expect? We got three hundred sixty million people now, and no way out."

 

There was silence among them. During it, they heard Magda's voice.

 

"But how the hell did you get this number? It's unlisted, and I never gave it to Avice!"

 

"Oh " Danty said softly. "Not Molly. One of her patients-I mean clients. Mustn't say `patient.' You have to have a licence if you have patients."

 

Magda again: "Yes! Yes, all right! Thanks for calling. But don't use this number again. and above all don't pass it on to anyone else, is that clear? I don't want to have it changed againl"

 

And she came back, scowling.

 

"The Clarke woman?" Danty asked.

 

"Right in one." She helped herself to more vodka and resumed her seat. "Husband's been called back unexpectedly, so she won't dare come here tomorrow. Christ, can you call that sort of thing a marriage? That's what mine was like you know, why it broke up. I wasn't allowed to do anything I thought of by myself, or I'd get kicked in the ass for my temerity." She threw her liquor down her throat as though it would drown the memory.

 

"Dantyl" Lora said suddenly, jumping out of her chair and going to sit at his side. "Are you okay now? Feeling all right?"

 

 

"No." Danty said. "I'm feeling lousy-what the hell do you expect, with a crack on the head and a knife-cut?" And relented reaching up to tousle her hair affectionately. "Don't let it get you down, though. I've had worse things happen to me, and lived through them . . . . Say, Mag'1"

 

"Yes?"

 

"Could we like feed these people? Day's wearing on, and all I had was brunch."

 

"Well-"

 

"Hold it!" Sheklov interrupted. "I have a better idea. Why don't we all eat dinner together? My expense. Lora, would you drive us somewhere? Like maybe out of town?"

 

"Oh, gread" Lora said. "Sure, wonderful! Danty?"

 

"Well, I wouldn't say no, if we can find somewhere that doesn't mind a mixed party," Danty said after a pause. "What about you, Mag'?"

 

"I guess so," she said. "Have to change clothes first, though, if we're going any place-uh-respectable."

 

"So will I," Danty said, getting up. "But I sure wouldn't refuse a square meal. Thanks, Don. We won't be a moment."

 

He caught Magda by the arm and escorted her through the curtain, out of sight.

 

 

The moment they were alone fn the sleeping alcove, she rounded on him. Very softly, but very ferociously, because this must not carry to the others, she said. "What the shit possessed you to walk into that much trouble?" She tapped his cut arm.

 

"Had to," was the curt reply. "Just had to. Know what happened this afternoon? Turpin was called out from home to go somewhere very fast in an EG veetol. And I can guess where."

 

"That reserved area?" Magda said, her eyes fixed on his drawn face.

 

"Where else? And for some reason it was more important for me to know that than for me to steer clear of where Josh and Shark and Potatohead might find me."

 

There was an awful, dead pause.

 

"Remember what I said about getting scared?" Danty said at last. "What-what-what could be more important than my keeping alive? And I mean thatl They were going to cut me into little pieces, and no one would have tried to helpl It was just luck that there was a pig somewhere

 

around who wasn't fond of them right now. I got the notion that Shark and Potatohead were like having a blow on the beach, and the pig moved them on. So when he saw them again . . ." A vague gesture. "That was all that saved me. I rode the hover line back here, bleeding all over the car, and you know, nobody even offered me a seat?"

 

"That's America," Magda said.

 

"Yes." Danty turned away and pulled open the small built-in closet where his clothes were stored. "And you know something? 1 want out."

 

"Where to? Africa? Look what happened to the people who went there in the black exodus!"

 

"No, just out," Danty said. His voice, still barely above a `whisper, suddenly became level and determined. "Any place where this fucking talent would have something solid to work on, instead of walking me into trouble all the time!"

 

 

1 XX

 

 

"That you. Morton?" Fenella Clarke called as she heard the key clicking in the door. A microphone beside her chair picked up her voice-being directionalised. it did not blur the question by also picking up the sound from the TV she was watching-and conveyed it to the entrance foyer.

 

"Who the hell else are you expecting who can get through these locks?" her husband retorted. There was a mike focused on him, too.

 

When she married him, she had thought it romantic, in some indefinable way, to have captured one of the brightest up-and-coming young experts who had undertaken that toughest of all varieties of law-enforcement work: policing the very minds of disloyal citizens. And her confidence had been amply repaid in material terms. Less than five years after their meeting, he had been in a position to buy into the Lakonia towers, and this apartment was among the choicest. with a superb view on every side.

 

The kind of thing she had not foreseen . . .

 

Well, that mike beside her chair was an example. (Remembering, she said to it meekly, "Just a figure of speech, honey, you know thatl" And heard a grunt by way of response.) The whole place was riddled, permeated, infested with bugs. Electronic type. Mostly newly developed gadgetry that he was field-testing, because his profession was also his hobby.

 

And, above all, she had never in her life imagined the penalties she was going to have to pay for her comfort. In her memory, she marked the turning-point by Morton's decision to have a separate bedroom in their Lakonia apartment-not by the acquisition of the apartment itself. It was at that stage that he had reached he point where a security force executive began to worry about talking in his sleep. At least, that was what she had worked out in discussions with her friend Avice Donnelly, who was married to a senior plant security officer for Energetics General

 

and hence was regarded as a proper person for Morton Clarke's wife to befriend.

 

She didn't actually like Avice. She found her bitchy, overfond of gossip and especially of scandal, and given to nursing ridiculous grudges, sometimes for years on end.' But one couldn't get along with no friends whatever. Just couldn't! No matter how often Morton indicated that that was the way he would have preferred it.

 

Every promotion seemed to make things worse. Back when he was a mere agent, and they had been courting, he had appeared to get some kind of fun out of his work. That was something she could understand, even appreciate. There was a quality akin to fencing in the person-to-person duels of a subversive and a security agent, and when the results were in, one could stand back and look at the ingenuity that had led to the d6nouement with honest admiration. "He thought that we would think . . ." Only: "We realized he would think that we would think . .. ."

 

And he'd been promoted to the next grade, keeper, and she'd accepted his proposal of marriage on the spot. He'd been so overjoyed, it was infectiousl

 

The rot set in later. She found out.about his promotion to acting bailiff by chance, weeks after it was authorised . . . then to substantive bailiff only when she answered a call on the secure line while they were discussing the household accounts . . .

 

She had barely dared to mention all this to anyone except Avice, because if Morton felt he had to keep such data from his wife, how could she talk about it with anyone else?

 

And, naturally, there was the problem of children. Fenella had hoped to have at least one-people felt that was okay-and had looked forward to the baby's arrival. Except Morton refused to co-operate. A child was vulnerable to being kidnapped by subversives.

 

She had asked about divorce when that episode overtook her. And been refused. Flatly. No.

 

And tomorrow, like Avice, she had meant to pour out her heart to this wonderful woman, this Magda Hansen, who was so sympathetic and understanding and made such fabulous suggestions for getting around obstinate husbands, and . .

 

How the hell had Avice brought herself to consult Mrs. Hansen, anyway? Avice with her impenetrable shell of

 

 

self-possession, her tinkly laugh, her air of not giving a fart about anyone or anything-she must have been driven to the breaking-point.

 

Come to think of it, 1 haven't heard from her in over three weeks! I should have called up. . .

 

She reached for a cigarette, the latest of far too many today, and glanced towards the door. Wasn't Morton going to come in?

 

Obviously not. But then, he so often didn't, Just made straight for his den, which she was forbidden to enter unless he was present.

 

One of these days I'm going to walk in there and smear shit all over all the things he prizes more than me. And then I'll shoot myself right in the middle of it, the messiest way possible, through the roof of my mouth. See how he likes coming home and finding that lot to clear up!

 

She turned her attention, with an effort, back to the TV, knowing at the bottom of her mind that she never would.

 

 

Stomach grumbling from the sandwich and glass of milk he had gulped down on his way home, at the wrong time owing to his hasty departure from California-at least as far as his metabolism was concerned-Morton Clarke wiped his face as he entered his den and closed the door. Tight. With a careful double-check of the locks.

 

Should have remained a bachelor. No life for a married man, my career.

 

But, having married, one must stay married. They were instantly suspicious, in the security force, of anyone who changed his mind on such an important matter . . .

 

He sat down before his desk, which was more of an electronic console because this was his only permissible outlet for personal initiative once he had dedicated his life to the security of his country. Sometimes he thought of himself as akin to a mediaeval monk, sustained only by recollection of a pledge he had given while in full and sober possession of his faculties when the Rule of his order became intolerable. Yes; he must not give way to private preferences, to personal predilections. This afternoon, at the reserved area, he had come perilously close to doing so when he picked up that rock and .uttered that fierce remark to Turpin: "Did you see that go into orbit?"

 

What went into orbit, these days, from the United States, was the minimum necessary to preserve the nation

 

from the unceasing hostility of the rest of the world: That had been drilled into him ever since back in college, he had first become aware of the b,wReoning commitment within his mind, and realized he was going to find fulfilment only in working for the safety and salvation of his native land.

 

He raised his eyes to the one item he permitted to decorate his sanctum. It wasn't-as one might have expected-Old Gory. or even a photo of Prexy. He knew too much about the workings of modern American government to have chosen anything of that sort. No: He had fixed to the wall where he could see it any time he looked up something that reminded him of the penalities you had to pay for freedom: a newspaper cutting, glassed and framed from the Chinese official Paper Red Ranner. and it showed a North Vietnamese official press photo of a captured American plot being led on a rope halter through the streets of Hanoi. He couldn't read the caption but a friend of his had translated it for him. and a tvped summary had been pasted "nder the actual cutting. it said that because this man had committed the crime of bombing Angkor Wat he was plainly a hopeless case for re-education-quote/unquote-and hence had been condemned to public ignominy.

 

Shit! What good are a bunch of ancient ruins when men's minds are In chains?

 

 

Sight of that picture, as always. re-stimulated him to the ever-greater urgency of his task. He drew a deep breath and started to punch the various keyboards set into his desk First off: tnti-bilg checks.

 

All clear. No one had located any of the lines with any tapping device known to security force experts. He was as safe from eavesdropping here as at the SF headquarters.

 

Thank heaven . . .

 

Next. therefore: a summary of things that had occurred to him since leaving the reserved area. The forensic team, naturally would be there indefinitely, but another top SF executive had arrived half an hour ago and relieved him, and he had been permitted to depart. On the way back to Lakonia, though. his mind had whirled and whirled. like a turbine under power, and now he had to report his thoughts.

 

He recited, tonelessly, for about ten minutes into the

 

 

proper phone. summing up all his views concerning that notion of Turpin's-that the site might have been inactivated by an agent of some rival corporation caring more about profits than national security, or perhaps 'by Navy, who had of course had their noses out of joint for more than a decade. It was entirely too possible that Turpin was right; at least, nothing on his record, or that of any other EG board-member, indicated that there would be likelier suspects within the corporation.

 

However. he dutifully listed the various doubts he was entertaining.

 

That done. he switched his attention to other matters. What additional data might be relevant? To punch for records of shoe-sales that might have included the agent of thafootprint, so sharp and clear on the roadway leading into-the site-no. that was absurd. They sold millions of pairs of shoes every month, and as he'd told Turpin, the brand-name was one of he commonest. (Shit! A "clue" in classic form, and here I am helpless, staring at it in my memory!)

 

On the other hand, if someone had come to and gone away from the site on the morning in question .... He put his chin in his hand and stared at nothing. Well, there was so much traffic on the superways nowadays, a thorough sifting of every vehicle that passed within a few miles of any of the three thousand reserved areas would taken even computers a very long time . . . and that was assuming there were records to analyse.

 

Suppose, though, a patrolman had filed some sort of trivial report during the period immediately following the shut-down of the site? The auto-logs had stopped registering at about 0350; dawn had been-uh-between four and five . . .

 

He reached for the remote keyboard that connected him with the master forensic computer at his HQ. and punched into it an inquiry that seemed like a fair compromise: Had any patrolman in the vicinity reported anything, no matter how minor, during the appropriate period, that didn't appear in any of the regular traffic-offence categories? He wasn't certain quite what he was looking for, but-well, surely a saboteur must have come to the site, spent a short while in and around it, and then gone away. Something as simple as a car reported travelling in one direction, then in the opposite direction sooner than could be accounted

 

for by a stopover and turn-around at a nearby city: That would fit.

 

 

Sifting police records was inevitably slow, even for computers; so many matters nowadays were police business. Waiting, he decided he could legitimately take care of a personal problem that had been irking him since his return home. What about Fenella? What had she been up to?

 

Should have remained a bachelor . . .

 

But he hadn't, and since he had a wife, she must be like Caesar's, above reproach. It was not strictly permissible to adapt officially issued detection gear for purposes like suspected infidelity, but of course all the married executives in the security force did so, and the top brass turned a blind eye. He himself had Fenella so thoroughly bugged, she literally couldn't go to the bathroom-let alone make a phone-call or take a cab-ride--without his being able to find out afterwards.

 

It took him less than three minutes to locate, on the tapes, the argument she had had with the phone company to try and get them to release the unlisted number of Magda Hansen.

 

 

~J

 

 

"There are two ways you can go," Magda said suddenly, after a long period of near-silence during which the nightblack ribbon of the superway had unreeled like a tape punctuated with blasts of random noise, the glare of oncoming lights at the curves where suddenly they shone direct-for a mere fraction of a second-on to Sheklov's tortured retinae.

 

"What?" He glanced at her in surprise, thinking she must be giving him advice for their route back to Cowville. But there was no intersection sign ahead, and the last instructions he had read from the roadside had informed him it was twenty-three miles to the next exit.

 

'Two ways you can go," Magda repeated. "Into yourself-or out of the world that other people share. Apart from that, you can't go anywhere and still be a person."

 

Sheklov pondered that. He was driving, and terribly

 

aware that he probably was not doing it very well. He had

 

had a ready-made excuse for that when Lora had sug

 

gested it, and Magda had deferred, on their departure

 

from the restaurant where they had eaten dinner and

 

drunk a lot of wine and beer, he had produced the data

 

incorporated in his briefing, which explained that, like

 

many Canadians, he had never owned an American car,

 

but had stuck to Swedish and Italian imports.

 

Still, this thing of Lora's seemed to be designed for people who didn't drive well, and certainly the roads were . .

 

He rapidly reviewed everything that had happened or been talked about since they left Cowville on the outward leg of their trip. They had had to go a long way-north, of course-before finding a place where they would serve a mixed party with less than forced tolerance. One restaurant-owner had even offered the classic excuse: "It's not that 1 object, mind you, only that my other customers . . . 1"

 

Goodbyel

 

And then it had proved to be very pleasant, although the meal was incredibly expensive and the continuous

 

music grated on Sheklov's ears and the high voices of other diners uttering demonstrably false statements had made him now and then want to get up and beat a little common sense into their heads. Still, that wasn't his brief. He had to act as though he were what he pretended to be. Turpin's comment about being shot to death by an Army firing-squad rang continually in his brain.

 

So there had been no awkwardnesses until they were getting back into the car, and Lora had said outright that she intended to ride in back with Danty and not drive home. And held out the car-key for Sheklov to take.

 

Following which, on the dark road, occasional gasps and mutters had punctuated the music from the radio, and once, perfectly clearly, "Danty, you're terrific)"

 

It was reaching down through Sheklov's mental armour, and hitting him in the-well, the hormones, you might say. He had entertained the notion that when they arrived back in Cowville Magda might . . .

 

1 don't understdnd! 1 simply don't) Culture shock!

 

How on Earth (he consciously capitalised it) could this sort of promiscuous, casual behavior co-exist with all the billboards he kept seeing that advertised Koenig's? That brand-name, and its implications, had been explained to him in detail; lead-impregnated, Koenig's underwear was claimed to protect the gonads from accidental irradiation, and styles were offered for women as well as men.

 

While the cars that whizzed past-he had proof of this at his back-were marketed with rear seats that folded down to facilitate seduction)

 

It dawned on him, perhaps as much as two miles later at the speed they were travelling, that Magda was offering the explanation he yearned for . . . and then he recalled that she had claimed to possess more empathy than most people, to the extent of having a talent someone in trouble could call on her to exercise.

 

Me too?

 

It made him abruptly cold to think of what she might have-not guessed=.deduced about him. His briefing had never taken a person like her into account.

 

Yet he had learned to trust some of his own instinctual reactions, too, and nothing about Magda-Danty was a different matter-had made his nape prickle, his usual warning-sign. There was no hint of menace about her, just a curiosity that he found almost refreshing, as though she

 

 

put the most personal possible questions without a thought of giving offence.

 

He said, framing his words carefully, "I guess you must have noticed how hard this country has hit me. I mean, when I took on this job of mine, fixing that pulp-contract that brought me down here, I walked into it thinking what ;' I guess most people think north of the border: 'They're .` right next door, so they're probably no more different than

 

those people down the streetl' If you-uh-follow me."

 

"Well, Danty and Lora aren't a hundred per cent typical," Magda murmured, taking a cigarette from the dis-penser on the dash. The EMPTY light came on as she removed it; as though by reflex, she felt for her own pack and slipped a couple into the store to compensate. The light went out. There was almost nothing on the dash that related to the operation of the car-the speedometer and the ignition-on light were almost buried among the ancillaries, the radiation-counter, the rain-detector light, the controls for the radio, and the sir-conditioning instruments.

 

Clearly from the back: "Oh, Dan-ty-y-y . . !"

 

"You don't get it," Magda said, having drawn and let go the first puff of her cigarette.

 

"Frankly, no," Sheklov grunted, and twisted the wheel the few degrees necessary to carry them through a wide curve.

 

"It's like I was saying," Magda answered with a shrug. "When things become intolerable, the obvious way is out. In our case, you can't go out-not unless you're prepared never to come back. And Lora wasn't joking when she talked about the risk of being shot at the border. Except that treading on a mine is probably a bigger risk, and then of course the-uh-the private enterprise bit is unpredictable."

 

"The what?"

 

"Private enterprise. Lots of privately financed organisations patrol the borders, too. And mine them. Security doesn't approve, and sometimes they get hauled into court on the grounds that if they don't trust the official patrols they can't be loyal. But usually they get let off with a nominal fine and a warning, because patriotism with a capital P is the excuse for anything."

 

"I -I don't believe I ever heard about that," Sheklov admitted, wondering when the border in his mind was

 

going to be crossed, the one between Sheklov and Holtzer, who was fading moment by moment as he struggled with the problem that had troubled him since his arrival . . .

 

I'm on a fool's errand here! It's as though they'd sent me to an asylum three thousand miles wide! An idea that is brand-new could be new because it's insane, couldn't it?

 

Suppose 1'd walked into one of the "private enterprise" patrols when 1 came ashore?

 

Hell! Mavbe 1 did!

 

"Getting tired? Like me to spell you?" Magda said. He realized with a wrenching sense of panic that he had let his attention drift from the wheel, and crossed into another lane alreadv crammed with cars.

 

"Uh-no," he forced out. "No. I'm fine."

 

Providentially. in the lane just vacated, a car howled past with its governor cut out, doing far more than the legal maximum. and he was able to jerk his head at it.

 

"Saw him coming up-thought I'd better move over."

 

"Ah-yes " Magda said. and took another drag on her cigarette. A few heartbeats later, she continued with what she had been saying as though there had been no distraction.

 

"Yes! There are two ways to go, assuming you want to go somewhere and aren't just content to be forced into the official mould. You can go insane, and that's the easy one. You can buy Koenig's. and keep a gun on the dash" -there was one in this car and she tapped it with long, sharp nails-"and convince yourself you're taking the ordinary, reasonable precautions a human being has to take to protect himself. That's what I meant when I said you can go out of the world other people share."

 

"But surely," Sheklov hazarded, "other people do share that world."

 

"You miss my point. They share the idea that the world mustn't be shared. Tap a friend on the shoulder when you meet him on the street, he whirls around and pulls a gun, doesn't he? Likely a gas-gun. that onlv blinds and doesn't kill, but a gun nonetheless. And he fires before he looks to see whether you're known to him."

 

"Yes," Sheklov said at length, a mile of dark road later. "I'm with you."

 

"It's a whole pattern," Magda said. "And it's crazy. Like with warts on. You know-you ever hear-of any sane species whose worst natural enemy was himself?"

 

 

"Man?"

 

"Natural species?"

 

Silence except for the humming sound of traffic all around them. Signs were beginning to say COWVILLB up ahead.

 

"Yes, I guess we tried to defy nature at some stage," Sheklov said at last. "One gets to see the results in the timber-trade, naturally-" He caught himself as Magda gave a dry laugh and echoed his last word in a whisper: naturallyl

 

"So what's the other way?" he asked, irritated.

 

"Hold it," Magda said, twisting around in her seat. "Heyl Close out, you twos"

 

In the back seat, a mutter of annoyance. Sheklov spared a glance in his mirror and saw the two heads, one fair and one dark, separate and move to a regular sitting position.

 

"What's the trouble?"

 

"Pigs, what else?" Magda said, and leaned away from him. A car with a spotlight on the corner of the windshield was working its way up the line of traffic, and the man next to the driver was flashing the light into the windows of the cars it passed.

 

When they came up to Lora's car, they found her and Danty decorously sitting, more or less fully clothed, in opposite corners of the rear seat.

 

"The other way?" Magda said when they had been overtaken in due sequence. "Find a route where the bastards can't follow you and shine spotlights on you, of course."

 

"There isn't one," Lora said in a dead voice.

 

The turnoff signs were saying COWVILLE-NORTH. Sheklov remembered that from their entry on to the superway. He slowed and signalled right.

 

"You're not with me," Magda said. "I mean the route where the things that count in your life aren't the things they're worried about-even though they ought to be afraid of them, because they're the most dangerous. Danty, are you okay?"

 

He was rubbing his temple with the hand of his injured arm.

 

"My head hurts," he said in a dull tone.

 

"Oh, Dantyl" Lora burst out. "It must be that cutl Don, get us off the superway quick as you can, find a drugstorel"

 

"Nol" Magda snapped. "Zip it, will you? Danty?"

 

"I . . ." He licked his lips. "I don't get it all," he said

 

after a pause. "But the one thing we mustn't do is go

 

home." -

 

"But-(" Sheklov began.

 

"Make for it, sure," Danty said. Little beads of sweat, shiny in the lights of the city, were springing out on his skin. "But don't try and stop outside, that clear? Something's happening, something bad. We got to smell the scene and find out what."

 

Sheklov gave Magda-a blank stare. She sat back with a resigned expression.

 

"Told you," she said. "Danty was born at the wrong end of time, peg? So you do what he tells you. If you don'tshit, the sky may fall on us."

 

 

. ~cu .

 

It was a long time before Morton Clarke could believe impersonal report of the computers, so far away from familiar desk of his, yet-electronically speaking-so close at hand that he could reach out and touch them.

 

They had a kind of reality to them that people never seemed to have.

 

He looked again at the print-outs, dangling over the automatic destruction unit, and eventually picked them up and laid them side by side, because he had to convince himself.

 

"The name's the same," he said with an access of gal. lows humor. and did what had to be done.

 

Then he waited. He didn't wonder what Fenella was doing. He knew she was watching TV.

 

Channel 8.

 

 

The first thing the security forces did not do was notify the police that they were about to conduct a raid. It wasn't safe to do that; the police were not secure but iealously guarded their right to pick their own men and women, to hide their confidential files . . . or to try to.

 

So it had been years since the U. S. Security Force liaised with the police anywhere, and above all not in Lakonia or Cowville, the most sensitive of all areas in the country.

 

Cold, despite the outside warmth of the night, Clarke sat at his desk and dictated what must be looked out for.

 

 

"Apartment empty." was the first news that reached him. He gave a nod. That figured.

 

Then, a few minutes later: "Looks like a foster-reb pad. Mystical books. Diagrams. Ouija board, that kind of thing. Man's and woman's clothes in the closets."

 

"Names?" was Clarke's only counter.

 

"Danty Aloysius Ward, male. Magda Hansen, n6e Porter . . . . Say, Mr. Clarkel"

 

"Yes?"

 

"What the hell are we looking for? I been in hundreds of places like this one"-a vibrating, hammering sound, the overheard passage of a hovercar-"though maybe not all quite so noisy! Bad place to plant bugs, this!"

 

Maybe that's why they're there. "Did you check the phone?"

 

"Sure we did. It's unlisted, but the number corresponds."

 

"Ah-hah. Then tell me what size shoes they take, will you?"

 

"I guess it's Charlie who's checking out the clothes. I'll get him; just a moment!"

 

Waiting. Clarke looked again at the tape he had-well, put it politely, don't say extracted, say-obtained from the police computers.

 

SOURCE: LODGED BY CLOUGH WILLIAM N., PATROLMAN #7653. LOCATION: GASTATION 132 SUPERWAY ZONE H-8. TIMED AT:

 

"Mr. Clarke?"

 

"Yes."

 

"I have those shoe-sizes for you. Brand-names too, where I can read them. Most of them are pretty worn."

 

"Shoot, then." Poising pen over paper.

 

When he had the details before him, Clarke felt his mind congealing like fresh concrete. into new hardness, new heaviness. He was barely aware of his own voice saying, "It fits. Keep at it. Turn the apartment inside out. This one is big."

 

After which he stared at the news-cutting framed on the wall and did nothing for nearly five minutes.

 

"Where's Sophie?" Mrs. Gleewood demanded in the middle of a sentence uttered by the TV that she and her son-in-law were watching.

 

"What?" Bemused, as usual, into a semi-stupor by the polychrome images on the screen, Turpin started up in his chair. "Oh! Sophiel Well . . . well, I guess she went to lie down, didn't she?"

 

"You mean she's drunk again," Mrs. Gleewood snapped. "I noticed at dinner--don't think you can hide that sort of thing from me! I never thought when she married you she'd be driven to alcoholism, I swear I didn'tl"

 

She folded her bony hands and jutted her sharp chin forward. She dieted, of course, to "keep her figure," apparently in the hope that young men would continue to find her attractive in spite of her narrow, cruel eyes with

 

 

those dirty-looking dark bags under them, the chicken-skin scrawniness of her throat-which should have sported about three comfortable double chins, but instead sagged in loose pore-dotted folds-and the rasping. whining note that never left her voice. If there were any single conceivable reason to bad-mouth anyone fool enough to wander within earshot of this woman, Turpin had sometimes thought, it was beyond her powers of self-control to deny herself the pleasure of mentioning it.

 

Why couldn't the stupid old bag eat a normal diet, get comfortably fat, and die young and happy-instead of hanging on until doomsday, griping about everyone and everything? Maybe she'd have kept one of her three husbands if she hadl

 

But all he said aloud was, "Come now, mother-in-law, you can't say that Sophie is an alcoholicl She does drink more than most people, I imagine, but she's always been highly strung."

 

Mrs. Gleewood sniffed. "And where's your guest?" she snapped. "That Mr. Donald Holtzer, or whatever his name is?"

 

"I believe he-uh-he went out with Lora," Turpin said, and tensed, his hackles bristling.

 

"I see," Mrs. Gleewood said. "1 seel Another scalp, hm.

 

"What do you mean?" Bridling-knowing he was expected to, because if he didn't that would ruin her evening. But it was getting harder and harder to fill his designated role.

 

"Scalps," Mrs. Gleewood said with satisfied deliberateness. "Pubic scalps. Not yet nineteen, I would remind you, and already she has enough of those to qualify her for a full Indian brave's head-dress. And, while I'm considering the subject of the children you inflicted on my daughter, may I ask what you're going to do about Peter's haemorrhoids?"

 

Christl How 1'd love to take that scrawy neck and wring id And 1 could, 1 could, 1 keep myself in good shape, and if 1 just-

 

He caught himself, barely in time.

 

Oh, that reeky turd Sheklov! If he weren't here, if 1 hadn't been compelled to cushion him, 1 could have rid myself for good of this loathsome, disgusting, incompetent

 

would-be matriarch! As soon as I'm shut of him, 1'll1'll . . .

 

Only he wouldn't. He knew he wouldn't. It would be as hard as curing himself of a habit like smoking or drinking.

 

He said mildly, "I'm afraid I don't quite understand."

 

Conscious of having won the exchange, Mrs. Gleewood sniffed. "I wish you wouldn't talk while I'm trying to watch TV l" she crowed.

 

And sat back, delighted with the dialogue.

 

 

Meantime, Turpin had something else on his mind. It was-in a paradoxical sense-unreal, because it had been real to him for so long

 

Am 1 going to be exposed?

 

The afternoon, and early evening until he managed to get away, which he had spent around the reserved area, had already taken on the dimensions of a dream. Because all the time and under no matter what circumstances he had grown used to behaving exactly as someone in his position was expected to, he had obviously to limit his responses to those that a genuinely loyal and committed executive of Energetics General might convincingly display when faced by a crisis of the current magnitude.

 

In other words, be had to act as though-whatever he might have said, for instance to Clarke--concerning the factually known political situation within the country, and hence acknowledging the jealousy between the Army and Navy, the constant jockeying for position that never ceased between the various major corporations, always hunting for a larger slice of the Defense Department cake, he had all the right, incontrovertible assumptions. Navy would never act against the country's best interests) Corporation X, since it draws down DOD funds, must be staffed by the most loyal of directors) The Security Force, being hand-picked, is unquestionably the court of last resort, and we can safely rely on them to clear up this mess. Of course, one has to be on guard all the time because, as was shown in South-East Asia, Latin America., the Philippines, and God knows where else, the other side is subtle, devious, cunning) But far be it from ME to lose confidence in the wisdom of those who have laid down the precepts by which we live, the experts whose love of freedom has defined the degree to which we, the laymen, and our families, must sacrifice liberty to preserve it.

 

 

But at the edge of his awareness, even though he was sure he was acting exactly as he ought to in his position, he could hear what Sheklov had said-about there being alien intelligences who could and conceivably would wipe out modern civilisation. Each time he reviewed his recollection of that incredible statement, it acquired new overtones, new resonances due to his subconscious, new implications pregnant with terror.

 

And here 1 am being polite to a stupid old woman because 1 have to maintain my cover. Am 1 crazy?

 

The conviction began to grow in his mind.

 

Yes. Absolutely crazy.

 

He looked now and then out of the corner of his eye at the smugly self-satisfied Mrs. Gleewood, as though he were an executioner measuring someone in advance for a garrotte.

 

 

It fitted. It all hung together. Morton Clarke didn't want to have to believe it, but in the end . . .

 

He looked, one final time, at the chart he had drawn on his notepad, linked with arrows: FENELLA CLARKE to MAGDA HANSEN to DANTY WARD to LORA TURPIN to-

 

No, it had to stop there. It mustn't go onl Mustn't) Bocause somewhere along the line, maybe three stops from now, the chain of reasoning would close, and the name would be his own: MORTON CLARKE.

 

It had to be broken before it was allowed to extend that far. No one could accuse him of treason.

 

Slowly, like a martyr hearing the call for his turn at the Colosseum, he rose from his chair and felt inside his jacket for his gun. Government issue. Got to be proved worthy of it. Immediately, before anyone else saw the connections he had just worked out.

 

He went into the adjacent room, where Fenella was watching Channel 8-no, correction, Channel 9, must have changed over when the commercials came on . . .

 

"Hi, Mort honey," she said. "Come sit downl What you been doing all this time?"

 

"Traitor," he said.

 

"What?"

 

"Traitor) Fucking traitorl Fucking commie)"

 

Bang. Bang. Bang-bang-bang-bang.

 

The gun was empty. Government issue. Six official

 

shells expended. Have to account for them. One should have been enough if he'd come close enough to make it tell.

 

How to explain to the authorities those five wasted shots?

 

He sat down beside the chair that her blood was soaking and began to cry, quite unable to think of an excuse.

 

XX1~ .

 

 

What in hell have 1 wandered into?

 

Sheklov's mind rang with that question. But be had no choice about complying, short of seizing the dashboard gun and holding it to Magda's side.

 

At the same time, however, a curious exaltation filled him. Suppose-just suppose-that by pure chance he had already stumbled on what he had been looking for: that "different attitude of mind" that Bratcheslavsky had been so insistent about . . .

 

Where the behaviour of Danty and Magda had relevance to that alien ship sparkling against the stars, he could not guess. Nonetheless, he was willing for the time being to yield to whatever he was told, although he was simultaneously worried about what would happen to his cover as a Canadian if security's attention were drawn to him.

 

Hunched forward on the rear seat, speaking almost in Sheklov's ear, Danty said, "No, not this turn-go two more blocks, then make a right. Then we'll come down our street on the side farther from the apartment, and we'll get a clearer sight of what's happening."

 

"What do you think is happening?" countered Sheklov in his best Holtzer manner. "I can't see any point to this-"

 

"Nonsense?" Magda interrupted. "Don, rve known Danty a long, long time. Like I told you, he was born at the wrong end of time. He can feel things that haven't happened yet."

 

"So why didn't he dodge the guy with the knife?" Sheklov retorted.

 

There was a short silence. Magda turned around in her seat and looked at Danty.

 

Finally Danty said, "Because if I hadn't been where they caught up with me, I wouldn't have found out something very important."

 

"Danty, what are you talking about?" Lora demanded.

 

Almost in the same moment, Magda said, "Danty, are you-?"

 

"Sure I'm surel" he snapped. "It's been getting stronger

 

for several minutes now. I've never had it so strong in my life. Right here, Don, and right again. Around the corner, take it as slow as you can."

 

Lora said after a short pause, "I keep some binocs in the glove compartment-do you want them?"

 

"Yeahl" Danty sat up straight. "Mag', pass them to Mel"

 

She pulled open the glove compartment and found them, a cheap Mexican pair in a plastic case. He took them and held them ready as Sheklov made the final turn into their home street. At once he let out a hissing breath.

 

"Lookl" he rapped, and set the glasses to his eyes.

 

Glancing rapidly from the traffic around to the landing, up close to the hoverhalt, from which access to Magda's home was obtained, Sheklov felt a pang of horror. The door was wide open. The window was lighted. Two men were standing guard, suspiciously eying passengers descending from a recently arrived hovercar, and apparently giving off some sort of repellent aura, because these passengers were keeping their distance.

 

Also-and this gave him an excuse to drive very slowly-two large cars were illegally parked against the kerb instead of in parking-bays.

 

"Pigs?" Lora said, her voice quavering.

 

"Not pigs," Danty said, staring through the glasses. "Security force. Mag', I'm afraid you've lost your home."

 

"What do you mean?" Sheklov snapped. "I don't know

 

what those security men-if they are security men -I

 

don't know what they're doing in your apartment, but

 

surely you don't mean thatl"

 

"Don't mean it?" Danty repeated, lowering the binocs now that they had passed the building and it was impossible to see the landing where the men stood guard. "Tell him, Mag' baby."

 

She was sitting very still, face white, eyes staring straight ahead. But her hands were folded over so that her nails were deep in her palms.

 

"He's right," she said in a dead voice. "Pigs you can take. Once the series hit you, you're done for."

 

"Series?" Sheklov echoed, and caught himself, realising that the term stood for "security execs."

 

"But this is crazyl" Lora burst out. "Helll You can't just cave in! What about-?" With a snap of her fingers. "Heyl My fatherl He has lots of pulll He'll get 'em off

 

your backs. Just let me get to a phone and tell him what's to be done."

 

She was so agitated, she was reaching for the doorhandle.

 

But Danty had completely ignored the interruption. He was looking solely at Magda.

 

"Well?" he said. "I'm sorry, you know-more sorry that I can say. Not that that does any good."

 

"No." Magda stirred, as though from a period of deep meditation, and helped herself to another cigarette. "No, it doesn't do any good. All right, the avalanche has begun. I guess I half-expected it. You're in charge."

 

 

The door-bell sounded. Turpin, glad of the interruption, rose from his chair with alacrity.

 

"Sit downl" Mrs. Gleewood rasped. "You don't have to answer the doorl What do you keep Estelle for?"

 

"It's Estelle's evening off," Turpin said with satisfaction. "Sunday, remember? Also Peter is out, Lora is out, and Sophie is drunk. You said so yourself. So unless you propose to go and answer-?"

 

She glowered at him and then stared firmly at the TV again.

 

He went to the panel by the door of the living-room where the intercom was, and pressed the answer button to activate the mike.

 

"Yes, who is it?"

 

"Is that Mr. Turpin personally?" a cold, strange voice inquired.

 

"Ah yesl" Butterflies began to perform in Turpin's belly.

 

"My name is Thorpe, Eric Thorpe. Security force. May I see you for a moment?"

 

Oh, Christ . . .

 

But habit made him impervious, on the surface, to even shocks like that one. He said, "Surelyl" In a tone as cheerful as though he really were pleased to be distracted from the company of his mother-in-law. "I'll be with you in just a second."

 

Crossing the hall, ignoring the call Mrs. Gleewood hurled after him-wanting to be told who the visitor was-he reviewed a hundred possibilities in ten seconds, and found that he liked none of them. Pray that his hints to Clarke, out at the reserved area, had borne fruit . . .

 

He checked, through the spy remotes, that there was indeed no one but this single man in the elevator, and opened the door on a security stop.

 

"I'd like to see your redbook, if you don't-" he began, but Thorpe had anticipated the request and was already holding it up so it could be read through the narow gap. Yes, he was who be said he was, and moreover he held the rank of substantive warden.

 

"Come in," Turpin muttered. "We'll use my den-it's bug-free."

 

He led the way; offered a drink-refused-and a cigarette, which was accepted. Sat down, and to his dismay found he bad to put his hands together to atop them shaking.

 

"Well, what can I do for you?" he said. His voice at least sounded under control. "I guess it's about this affair at the reserved area, bin?"

 

"Indirectly." Thorpe was a pale man, with deep-set eyes surrounded by dark rings, as though he lived on far too little sleep and had done so for years. Like all SF executives, he wore unremarkable and inexpensive clothes: tonight, in dark green. "I believe you talked for some while with one of my brother officers, didn't you?"

 

"Morton Clarke?"

 

.,Yes..

 

 

"Well, I imagine we must have talked, on and off, over a period of-let's see-three hours. Why?"

 

"About . . . T"

 

"Well, the alarming discovery that had been made," Turpin said. "And the implications. Wasn't that obvious?"

 

Thorpe looked down at his involuntary host's hands, as though scrutinising them for signs of anxiety. He said, in a matter-of-fact tone, "Of course. And I believe you are slightly acquainted with a young black named Danty Ward?"

 

What the hell is this leading up tot

 

Turpin said as levelly as he could, "Acquainted would be an exaggeration. I met him last night, because my daughter invited him to our party, and one can hardly refuse his own daughter's guests admission. Why? Has he done something?"

 

Thorpe ignored that question. He continued, "How long has your daughter known this-uh--person?"

 

"I've no idea," Turpin snapped.

 

"Are you also acquainted with a woman going by the name of Mrs. Magda Hansen?"

 

"Not that I can recall," Turpin said. blinking.

 

"Do you know a Mrs. Avice Donnelly?"

 

"You mean Fred Donnelly's wife--our plant security chief? Well. naturally I dol But only slightly. Lookl" He sat forward. "Will you tell me what this is about?"

 

Thorpe raised his eyes and met Turpin's and locked with them.

 

"Sabotage. Subversion. Murder. Treason. That's what it's about, Mr. Turpin. It would appear that Morton Clarke has been given what we presume to be a posthypnotic order to kill his wife, and has done so."

 

"What?"

 

"Yes, I'm afraid that's apparently the case." Like a good security man, Thorpe always qualified assertions of that order. "Have you any idea where your daughter is?"

 

"I-uh-nol" Turpin felt sweat breaking out all over his . body.

 

"Or Danty Ward?"

 

"Hell, of course notl"

 

"I see." Thorpe cogitated a moment, and then rose. "Well, I'm afraid rm going to have to ask you to come with me, Mr. Turpin. To avoid the possibility of embarrassing you, of course, I came alone, but I should point out that everything we say can be overheard by colleagues of mine waiting in a car below, and I would counsel you not to decline, or it will become essential to escort you away under guard. Shall we go?"

 

 

"Night-riding," Danty said suddenly. "Head north. Don't stop at the first or second gas-station we pass, but call at the one by the superway entrance on Sixtieth. Fill up there."

 

"Now just a secondl" Sheklov exploded.

 

"Don't argue," Magda said. "Do as you're told." And, with a movement as quick as a striking snake, she snatched the dashboard gun from its socket and flipped off the safety-catch, levelling it at Sheklov.

 

"Oh, shit, Magdal" Danty exclaimed. "No need for thatl Put it down, will you?"

 

"But "

 

In the rear-view mirror Sheklov caught a glimpse of Lora, face perfectly white, knuckles pressed to her teeth

 

as though to suppress a scream. He felt pretty much like screaming himself.

 

"No buts!" Danty said angrily. "I mean, Don here wouldn't want it to be known that he's Russian, would he? Say! What's your real name, by the way? Ivan? Yuri? Nikita?"

 

. aXrv

 

There was a brief, terrible instant during which Sheklov found himself insanely wishing that he believed in a personal god who could be trusted to provide on-the-spot salvation for his worshippers.

 

How long has he.known? And, worse yet:

 

Who has he told?

 

He continued to go through the right motions and drive the car, mechanically, like a robot: red light, slow down; green, step on the gas; miss that idiot pulling out from that parking-bay without looking .... But that had nothing to do with his conscious mind. It was all automatic.

 

"I think you're out of your skulll" he husked at last. "I'm going to find a parking-bay and get out, and leave you to your-your mad fantasiesl"

 

"Russian?" Lora said, as though the word had been in her throat for a short eternity, building up pressure until now it came blasting out like the plug of semi-solid magma that chokes the crater of a volcano until it erupts.

 

"Yes, of coursel" Danty snapped. "Either that, or perhaps Polish, Hungarian, Czech-no, my guess is Russian. Well, Don?"

 

"You're insanel You're hallucinating or somethingl" But Sheklov's mouth was so dry he could barely speak,

 

"Maybe you were right after all, Mag'," Danty sighed. "Okay, put the gun back an him, but keep it well out of sight. He's missed death by inches once in the past few days, when he came ashore. And that would have spread him kind of thin and all over everywhere, so-"

 

"Look out!" Magda exclaimed, and seized the wheel just in time, twisting it to the left and then straightening out. Lora let go a cry of alarm. Sheklov had nearly crashed into the back of 'a truck.

 

"That got to him," Danty said softly. "Don, baby, didn't you know the site was turned off when you came ashore? Didn't you know that if it hadn't been, the submarine would have been blasted less than a mile away? They

 

weren't so careful when they left as when they approached."

 

"You just figured that out?" Magda said, and in the same breath added, "Pull over, Don. You're not in a fit state to drive. You're shaking so much. I'll take'the wheel as soon as you can put us in a parking-bay-ah, there's one now."

 

Dumb, Sheklov nosed the car into it.

 

"Well, it's how it had to be," Danty said. "I felt something bad on the way. And I can't think of any other disaster that fits the picture. No, Donl Don't get outl Slide towards Magda and let her climb over youl"

 

Sheklov, numb, withdrew his hand from the doorhandle and obeyed.

 

As Magda took the controls: "So that's the way I see it. If the site hadn't been turned off, the sub would have registered on the detectors, and-pow."

 

"But he's been staying right in our apartmentl" Lora cried. She was having to clamp her jaw to stop her teeth chattering. "A Russianl A spyl"

 

"You recommended the gas-station on Sixtieth, didn't you?" Magda said, glancing at the dash. "Oh, shit! Loral Loral Stop your snivelling and tell me which of these damned dials is the gas-gaugel"

 

"Uh . . ." Wiping her eyes on her sleeve. "Doesn't have a dial. It's sonic."

 

"Just say to fill up the tank," Danty snapped. "Nightriders usually do."

 

"Yeah." Magda slowed to make the turn on to Sixtieth, a right. "But why the hell did you leave the site turned off?"

 

"I guess . . ." Danty swallowed hard. "I guess so that this would happen. So that we'd be here, now, in this mess."

 

"Gas-stationl" Magda said unnecessarily; it was blazing with light and huge mobile advertising figures, spotlighted, filled with helium, and tugged into a weird non-stop parody of a dance by fine wires attached to cams on electric motors, signalled drivers to pull in. "Don, you hold your tongue and behave yourself, hm? And you, Loral"

 

"No! Let me outl" Lora cried, and as the car swung close to the side of the road, in order to enter the gasstation, she tried to snatch at the door-handle.

 

Danty stopped her, his dark hand closing over her

 

mouth and his full strength forcing her back against the seat.

 

"I may only have one hand right now," he said in a voice as cold as a Siberian winter, "but if I have to I'll strangle you. Is that, understood?"

 

For a moment Sheklov thought she was going to fight back; her fists curled over and her eyes widened in a look of fury. Then, abruptly, she yielded, and went limp. When he took his hand away, she stared at Danty with a kind of adoration, as though this were the first time in her life that someone had given her an order meant to be obeyed --and she liked the novel sensation.

 

"Full, pleasel" Magda called as they drew up to the pumps.

 

"Full it isl" came the reply over the remote speakers.

 

"I . . ." Sheklov licked his lips. "I meant to ask someone: Why do you lay your gas-stations out this way, with the attendants in those high glass booths?"

 

"Robbery," Magda said. "Maybe the risk of sabotage, too. There was a time a few years ago, when I was in my teens, when gas-stations were closing down all over. They made such a lovely show when someone tossed a Molotov cocktail at the pumps."

 

Cash-drawer. Credit card. Usual routine. During it, Sheklov noticed that Danty was tensing and biting his lower lip. Then, as soon as the card came back and they were leaving the station, he spoke up.

 

"I just figured out how they got on to us."

 

"You and me, you mean?" Magda said, spotting a gap in the trafc and accelerating violently towards it. "So, how?"

 

"A cat called Rollins-get on the superway as soon as you can, hm?-gave me a ride back to. Cowville. We stopped for gas and a suspicious pig came and checked the governor on his car. A Banshee. Thought it had been shorted out. I guess he would have filed a report. He looked at my redbook."

 

"Ah-hah. And the sexies got to the tape of the report, hm? Yes, that fits. So this time wherever we go, we go for godd."

 

"I still think you're crazy-" Sheklov began, but Danty cut him short.

 

"Look, Ivan or whatever your real name isl Get this into your head, will you? I was there on the beach when

 

you came ashore. I saw you get into Turpin's car-"

 

"What?" From Lora, a shrill-edged cry of horror.

 

"Yeah, you heard!" Danty snapped. "Your dad's carl I saw it again in the garage under the tower you live in. Recognised the licence number, so don't give me any shitl Like I was saying, Ivanl Do you want that lot to come out when they catch up with me and start feeding me interrogation drugs?"

 

Ahead, the superway access point loomed, brilliant with neon strips forming arrows and the letter N for northbound. Sheklov caught a brief glimpse of the name of some city, and a distance, but faded to read them clearly.

 

"You're in the laughing seat," Magda said sourly, swing

 

ing into the traffic on the superway. As ever, there was a

 

vast horde of it; this was about the time-midnight whon

 

the night-riders took to the road. Here and there a heavy

 

truck lumbered along in the slow lanes, and the drivers of

 

private cars blasted their horns to register their opinion

 

that all trucks should be forbidden these roads.

 

"Huh?" Danty said. "Oh, you mean what I was saying a few hours ago, I guess. Like about getting out?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"I meant it," Danty said after a pause. "But . . well, tell Ivan here what happens to someone when the sexier put the knife in."

 

"Oh, life simply stops being worth living," Magda said. "Even if they don't convict you of anything, the fact that you're under suspicion gets around. They have computerto-computer links, you know"-with a glance at Sheklov beside her-"for absolutely everything you may want to do. Your credit rating goes first, and your cards are cancelled, and as you probably know carrying cash in this country is a bad idea. Has been since God knows when. Before Danty was born, certainly."

 

"Right,." Danty agreed.

 

"Robbery again?" Sheklov hazarded. He was on the verge of caving in; these people took it so matter-of-factly that he was Russian, and it didn't trouble them, at allonly the attention of the security force was on their minds.

 

"Not just that-I mean, not just the risk of being robbed," Magda said. Now, already, at the high speeds permitted on the superway, the city was dwindling and the dark shell of the night was closing them in. "More the automatic assumption that if you're carrying more than

 

like fifty bucks-peanutsl-you're the thief. Lose your credit rating, you might as well be bankrupt. After that, of course, if you have a job, they make sure your employers find out. Then your landlord; that's the usual order. If you're married, your spouse, and particularly your kids, if they're over say eight or ten years old. I had a client once who came to me because her son, who was thirteen, had heard his father was under suspicion by the series. and wanted her to run away with him where Dad couldn't find them, then inform on him to the pigs."

 

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance," Danty said, and made the quotation downright obscene.

 

"Is.this-is this so literally true that you're running out on your home?" Sheklov said in a bewildered tone, no longer sure whether he was Holtzer or himself.

 

"And our country, if we can make it," Danty said. "Like Magda just told you, once the searchlight turns on you, life stops being worth living. Mag'1"

 

"Yes?"

 

"I'm sorry. Truly I am. If I'd been any better at my thing, I'd have kept you from getting involved-"

 

"Oh, zip it up," Magda cut in wearily. "I guess you were right when you talked to me earlier on. I don't have anything worth staying for. Hell, it's got to where if I order a book I'm interested in through the mail, a pig shows up the day after it's delivered asking why I wanted it.

 

"Yeah," Danty said. "And : . . well, if it's_ any consolation, I feel-beyond any doubt-that this is a right thing to do. It leads somewhere. It does something terribly important that I can't understand. But I'm sure, I'm convinced it does it!"

 

Sheklov, listening, felt a renewal of that unaccountable exaltation that had struck him on the way into Cowville.

 

"Where are we going?" Lora said faintly.

 

"Canada," Danty said. "Put you off a hundred miles or so from here, if you like. If you promise not. to set the series on us, or the pigs."

 

"Canada?" Sheklov snapped, before Lora could answer. "But it's not as simple as--"

 

"The grapevine tells you where youycan still get across," Magda broke in. "We know a couple of places. Dodgy, but with Danty to take care of us, we'll make it. And of

 

course the moment you set foot on Canadian soil, they'd die rather than turn you back . . ."

 

"I don't want to be put out," Lora said abruptly. Danty and Sheklov looked at her hard.

 

"No," she emphasised. "If it's true that-that my father brought a Russian agent into . . . 7" It turned into a question, and died away. Danty nodded vigorously.

 

"Whatever Ivan saysl" he insisted.

 

"Then lie lied to me all my life," Lora whispered. "I don't want to see him again as long as I live. And that's not crazy talk. I'm cold sober again, and I mean it."

 

In which case . . .

 

Sheklov felt as though he were going over the edge of a cliff into deep, icy water. But he said, "My name isn't Ivan. It's Vassily."

 

. acv ,

 

Lora huddled away into the corner of the rear seat and could be heard faintly crying-not sobbing. simply snuffling. Headlights on the other half of the road shot towards them like tracer-bullets.

 

Sheklov thought: Regarding success and failure alike. . .

 

Well, at the moment he was compelled to, whether or not he had-achieved detachment. Because he had absolutely no inkling which had overtaken him. Either he had failed, spectacularly and monstrously, and was going to have to kill himself and his companions in order to avoid exposure of Turpin. or else he had succeeded in some manner he did not understand.

 

Danty knew 1 was due to come ashore. He was there when 1 arrived watching me. He saw Turpin's car take me away.

 

He had turned ofl the site. How did he know the way to do # safely? Turpin said he would hardly dare to try the job without a schematic.

 

He appeared to be claiming that he foresaw the submarine being blown up if the site were not switched ofl. Then he left it switched off, thereby ensuring-he said as much-that we would be here, in this mess.

 

The whole thing is crazy! And so am 1!

 

Yet, behind all these surface thoughts, there was a kind of echo: recollection of what Magda had said, twice.

 

"Danty was born at the wrong end of time."

 

A joking commentl Must bel But it had a-a ring to it. An overtone. Some all-important hidden meaning. Tantalising, like having a word on the tip of your tongue and being unable to utter it.

 

 

There had been silence in the car, except for Lora's soft weeping, for many miles. It was as though his admission concerning his identity had been a minor climax in the course of events, and, it being passed, Danty was content to wait for some new pattern to develop. Magda, at the wheel, was patently too depressed to talk; she wore an

 

expression of unspeakable sadness, revealed flick-flick-flick by the oncoming headlamps.

 

From all the various directions in which his mind had been scattered, Sheklov forcibly pulled himself back together. He reviewed what had to be said; having organised it, he spoke.

 

"Dantyl"

 

"Yes?"

 

"I probably don't need to tell you that this-this talent of yours has completely blown my mind. I don't believe it, but I've been driven to accept it."

 

"That figures," Danty said dryly, and added: "Vassilyl By the way, what kind of a name is that? Is it Russian?"

 

"Yes. Though it was Greek originally. Funny, you knowl" Sheklov gave a short, harsh laugh. "It means 'king.' Not the ideal name for a good third-generation Party man."

 

"But you're not one," Danty said.

 

"I-" Sheklov began, and broke off. After a moment, 'he admitted, "No, in some ways I guess not."

 

"You're too independent," Danty said with assurance. "Like Magda, or me, come to that. You can quote the Gita, for example, as though you took it seriously. My guess would be you have it by heart:"

 

"When you wormed that out of me, I almost had a heart-attack," Sheklov said. Was it only last night? It feels like a year agol But that was a good illusion to be under. It lent the comforting impression of distance in time to his borderline panic. He didn't want to be reminded right now that he was capable of panic. He had to keep his mind at its finest pitch, to reason out and plan this ridiculous journey they were committed to.

 

"Yes, I'm sorry about that." Danty muttered. "But . . . well, this talent of minel I'll try to explain how it works, as far as I understand it myself-which isn't very well." He hunched forward and rested his unhurt arm on the back of Sheklov's seat; staring past him at the cars on the superway.

 

"Since I was-oh-sixteen, seventeen, I guess, now and then I've felt a funny pressure at the back of my head, a sensation that belongs in the same group with hunger and thirst, because it means I have to do something to satisfy it. It makes me grope around like a blind man, or sometimes just wander from one place to another until I feel

 

the pressure fading a little and I realise I'm on the right track. Now and then I can tell quite clearly that I have to be at some special place at some special time. Like the morning of your arrival. I knew a direction I had to go in, I knew I'd recognize the spot when I reached it."

 

"And you knew how to shut down the site," Sheklov said, marvelling.

 

"That was the same process," Danty said. "I got through the fences around the site by-by picturing an action in my mind and waiting to find out whether the pressure in my head got better or worse. Then I did the same thing with the lock on the control bunker, and then with the switches. I was asking this talent of mine, 'Is it safe to close this one? Is it safe to close that one?' And all the time I knew I had to get this right, because otherwise there was going to be a great crashing disaster. Like I told you, I figured out later that the sub that put you ashore would have triggered the detectors."

 

"Thank you," Sheklov said soberly. "1 wouldn't have cared to be a mile from the explosion of one of those missiles."

 

"Nor would I," Danty said, with his regular crooked smile. "And then there's one other thing about my talent. I can sense, in the same general way, how to-to inveigle people into doing things they didn't intend to. I can sort of time words that prompt them to react."

 

"Like making me quote the Gita."

 

"Right. I can't pull the trick all the time, only when something has built up the pressure in my head to a particular pitch. When I'm sensing something terribly important." Danty passed his hand across his eyes. "And I never felt anything a fraction as important as-as you.4'

 

"How do you feel about me, then?" Sheklov countered.

 

"It's hard to describe. Say huge. Say vast. Say colossal. You still aren't within miles of hitting the idea. It's like looking up into the sky and thinking yourself into a state where you can actually understand a million light-years. Feeling in your guts a gulf that takes light all that time to crawl across. Something that makes the whole of history; the whole story of life on Earth, the age of the Earth it. self, tiny!"

 

A shiver trembled down Sheklov's spine. He began to dare to think that he might, just might, have succeeded in

 

his mission. He still didn't see how, but the possibility was now credible.

 

Magda, unexpectedly, spoke up. She said, "Danty, what point of the border should we make for?"

 

"I'm still not quite clear on that," Danty said. "Keep heading north, that's all. I should be able to tell you in a little while what the safest zone will be."

 

"Are we going to keep driving through the day, or lie up somewhere, or what?"

 

"Now that's odd," Danty said, biting his lip. "I was thinking we ought to worry about this car, because obviously the licence number can be recognised, and you'd expect that if Lora doesn't show at home it'll be reported. But I have this absolute conviction that we're safe if we go on driving. I have this crazy idea that even if the car has been-oh-reported stolen, say, it's not going to be taken seriously." He hesitated. "And I can only think of one explanation for that."

 

"What?" Magda demanded.

 

"Well . . ." Danty licked his lips. "I think because the person who would report it is 'Iurpin, and he's in trouble."

 

He glanced reflectively at Lora, in case she had heard. But she was asleep.

 

Sheklov thought: Bad trouble? Because it would be a catastrophe for the whole world it he were caught.

 

"Is Turpin one of vours?" Ma$da asked, with a sidelong glance at Sheklov. When he didn't answer, she answered for herself. "I guess he must be, since he collected you from the submarine."

 

"What's the use of denying it?" Sheklov said wearily. "Yes. he is. And he's one of the greatest heroes in history and he's never going to get credit for it."

 

"He will one day," Danty said.

 

"What?"

 

"I know what you mean," Danty murmured. "I've often wondered how the world had stayed in one piece, and I just saw a good reason. He told you about all the missiles, the radar, and that kind of stuff-right?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Thank God somebody did," Danty said, and Magda nodded.

 

Are these people never going to stop amazing me? Shek-

 

lov thought. He said curiously, "Tell me something, will

 

you? How do you feel about about me?"

 

"As a Russian agent?" Danty suggested, and on Sheklov's hesitant nod gave a shrug. "Oh, as a brave man, I guess. Dedicated. You'd have to be. And clever. But if you mean as a-a foreigner, a communist, all the other things, then . "

 

"Lucky," Magda said.

 

"I don't get that," Sheklov said. "How, lucky?"

 

"Well, because you still have somewhere to go," Magda said. "That's as near as I can define what I mean. Look at us here in this country. We're in the same sort of mess as the Romans were once, and the Spanish, and God knows who else. We've been at the top of the heap, and now there's no choice except either to run like hell to stay where we are, never getting any place else, or to start the long slide down. Me, I think we started down years ago. We've been the richest country in the world, we've been the most powerful, we've been the most influential, andsame as always-we got used to it. We got blas6. Because we couldn't climb any higher, we stopped being able to advance, There hasn't been anything genuinely new in the States for years and years, just changes rung on what we already had. But of course we were afraid of being overtaken. So we drifted into this mess we're in right now, where we care more about our own selfishness and greed than we do about anyone or anything else. What's a good career for a bright young man these days? Why, the security force-or a tidy slot in the hierarchy of Energetics General--or something of that kind. Where are our poets, our musicians, our inventors? They've turned rebl And got stamped onl" She glanced at him. "Aren't I right?"

 

"Being 'on top' isn't the important thing," Sheklov said.

 

"Of course not," Magda snapped. "If it were, we'd feel

 

satisfied. We'd feel-oh-fulfilled!" _

 

"And we don't," Danty said. "Say, Vassilyl There's one thing you haven't told us yet, and I have this impression that it's the most crucial point of all. Why in the world did they decide to risk sending you to the States? I mean, if Turpin is one of your agents, he must have been here for years-"

 

"Twenty-five," Sheklov said.

 

"That long? Hmml Yes, it figures. And he can't be the only one, right?"

 

"No, he's not."

 

"So why did they have to send you? I mean, you could

 

have walked straight into the jaws of the sexies, couldn't you? Lots of practice has made them very good at their job."

 

 

Sheklov thought for a long moment. Then he told them:

 

. xxv1

 

After that there seemed to be very little left to say. The car hummed onward into the night. Clouds were closing in ahead of them; it felt as though the familiar prospect of the stars were being shut away. Sheklov, conscious of having long ago passed the point of no return, was resigned to letting happen what would.

 

And Danty, having heard the story in full, sank back in his seat with a ferocious scowl of concentration and said nothing for so long that eventually Sheklov dozed.

 

He was awoken at last by Magda's voice.

 

"I'm worn outl" she said loudly. "It's nearly dawn."

 

"Then I guess I'd better take the wheel again," Sheklov said. "Danty can't drive one-handed, and"-with a glance behind him, blinking to clear sleep from his eyes.-"Lora's still asleep, isn't she?"

 

"Looks like it," Danty said. "I'd take my turn if I could -but this arm's stiffening up pretty bad. Mag', can we like pull in for breakfast? I'd like to get to a washroom and change the dressing on this cut." He checked, seeming to be struck by an idea. "Sayl Make the left branch at the next interchange, will you? I'm getting it clearer in my head now. We have to shoot for the border in North Dakota some place. I'll know it when I see it."

 

"Service zone four miles," Magda read from a sign. "That must be after the next interchange, then. Will do. . . . By the way, how are you feeling?"

 

"As though that crack on the head loosened my brains," Danty said with a shrug. "But I'll live."

 

Properly roused from sleep now, Sheklov looked out at the morning as it spread across the vast net of the superway. A web spun by an inconceivable spider, a mesh of concrete offering the illusion of freedom to go, yet turning you back whenever you approached the limits you must not exceed , . .

 

Yes. A metaphor of the country. Perhaps of the human condition. Horriblel

 

All his doubts stormed back into his mind. For a brief

 

instant he was able to imagine that he had dreamed his admissions of last night; then Danty said, "Vassily, how are you?" And he knew they had been real.

 

"As well as can be expected," Sheklov said with ghoulish humour.

 

"That goes for all of us." He rubbed his eyes. "Mag', I've only been dozing, not completely asleep. I've been working it out. North Dakota, like I said. If we go over as a party, we're likely to be recognised. I don't know why or how, I only feel it. I'm still trying to sort that out. But something else keeps getting in the way. Vassily, you did say, didn't you, that the aliens showed pictures of Earth?"

 

"Nine still pictures," Sheklov said.

 

"Could you-well-maybe draw them for me?"

 

"I guess so," Sheklov answered after a moment for thought. "I looked at the photographs often enough. Might not get the details right, but in principle they'd be correct."

 

"Fine," Danty said, and gave his crooked smile. "Over breakfast I'll take you up on it. Mag', isn't that the service zone up ahead?"

 

 

The restaurant of the service zone was nearly empty. Only a couple of incurious long-distance truck-drivers glanced at them as they entered. Having collected coffee and food from the counter, they sat down around a table isolated in the centre of the room and Danty produced a stack of paper serviettes.

 

"Okay, Vassily, shoot," he said, and sat back, sipping his coffee.

 

"What are you doing?" Lora, said dispiritedly. She had hardly seemed to be awake when she stumbled from the car; now she sat with eyes red, hair tangled, displaying every sign of exhaustion, as though she had been the one who had to drive through the night. Magda, by contrast, seemed hardly affected. Pale, perhaps, but calm-faced and moving without obvious signs of fatigue.

 

"Drawing," Sheklov said, unclipping a batlpen from his pocket. He added, reaching for the first of the pile of white serviettes, "And I'm not very good at it. But I'll do what I can."

 

He completed each drawing with quick, sure strokes; he had studied these enigmatic pictures-or at least the

 

photos of them brought back from Pluto's orbit, smeared a little with free-space cosmic radiation, but with pretty good detail surviving-and they were branded on his memory. Of course, pen-sketches like these were hard to makke clear. He added a' caption to each, summarising what the experts had deduced about them.

 

Finally, when the others had finished their food, he gestured for a space to be cleared and laid them out in sequence in front of Danty.

 

"This first one is obviously a view of our galaxy," he said. "One can see the spiral arms. Then there's a clear view of the alien ship, which is a plain ovoid, but quite unlike anything of ours, so it's unmistakable. Then there's a view of the sun from a long way out in space-from about where the alien ship is orbiting, in fact. You can be certain of that because the constellations in the background match. I don't know astronomy well enough to do more than dot them in. Then there's a view of Earth, here; the continents are perfectly recognizable, though they're partly masked by cloud, as though the aliens are working from a particular picture.

 

"After that, there's a human-built rocket, possibly a satellite-launcher, possibly one of our own ships that made the Pluto trip first. That's interesting; apparently the engineers have spotted some detail-refinements in the design, and they seem promising. It's rather as though you were to try to draw a Model T from memory and absentmindedly make it look like a much more recent make of car.

 

"Then there's this. An explosion. Notice it's centred on

 

the United States. And in the original I'm afraid I

 

haven't drawn this very well-in the actual picture you

 

can see it's nuclear. The likeliest explanation, the one that

 

frightens us so much, and drove my superiors to send me

 

here, is that it's a strike by the aliens."

 

Magda was staring, fascinated, although Lora was leaning back in her chair with her eyes half-closed and Danty was bestowing only casual glances on each successive picture. Suddenly irritated by his lack of interest, Sheklov let his tone grow sharper.

 

"Next is this one, a plain circle. That puzzled us terribly. But the logical conclusion is that it's the Earth again, wiped out by clouds of dust and smoke. Because here . . ." He reached for the last two drawings.

 

"This is fire. No mistake about it. Something burning violently. And last of all there's-this."

 

He laid down the caveman picture, the figure draped in skins waving a stone axe. And sat back.

 

There was a dead silence.

 

 

Eventually Danty picked up the drawings, like Magda gathering her tarot cards, and reversed them. He laid them out again on the table in the opposite order, turning each around as he set it down so as to be the correct way up from Sheklov's viewpoint the other side of the table.

 

"No," he said. "This way."

 

For a long moment Sheklov stared at them. Then he raised his eyes to Danty's calm, amused face.

 

"Are you-sure?" he said huskily.

 

"As sure as I am that we're going to find a way over the border. dodge the guards. dodge the mines, get to safety. And that's close to 100 per cent. I only got one life, Vassily, and I'm fond of it in spite of everything."

 

Sheklov sat frozen. In his mind he could hear words, as clear as though someone were uttering them aloud:

 

The last shall be first, and the first . . .

 

"Right," Danty said with a chuckle. "Let's move on."

 

. xacvn .

 

"But he was wrong," Bratcheslavsky murmured, taking from its.pack yet another of his endless series of papyrosi and bending its cardboard tube to a right angle preparatory to lighting it at the flame of the hanging brass lamp that swung from the centre of the small room's white ceiling.

 

Standing by the window that gave such a fine view of the city of Alma-Ata, shrouded at the moment in the pale gray mists of early evening, Sheklov said without looking around, "Of course he wasn't He was simply lying."

 

He sighed and helped himself to a cigarette from the pack, then came to join Bratcheslavsky on the cushions piled here and there across the floor, not randomly but with the imprecise symmetry of a Japanese sand-garden.

 

"But you knew the whole border was heavily beset with patrols. And the farther the frontier zone from a major city and major roads-in North Dakota, for example, where you were heading for-the more it's likely to be infested with these 'private' defence forces. You must have realized thatl"

 

"Naturally I did." Savouring the aromatic tobacco, Sheklov let a puff of smoke drift into the updraught from the lamp-Same. Glints of light flashed on its supporting chains.

 

"And you didn't try to argue with him? Not at all?"

 

"I was past the stage of disbelieving-hirn," Sheklov said after a short pause. "I'd been convinced, long before, that he was possessed of a talent I'd barely dreamed of."

 

"And it's lostl" Bratcheslavsky barked, jumping to his feet in the first access of honest rage Sheklov had ever seen from him. "When I think what use we could have made of him-ach!"

 

Sheklov remained squatting on his cushions, gazing up at the old man who had been his mentor for so long, seeing him with curiously different eyes. He felt that his mission, brief as it had been, had altered him. Aged him? Yes, possibly it was only that . . . yet he felt it reached

 

deeper into his personality. He felt not simply that he had crammed a great many years into the space of a few weeks, but also that he'd been educated.

 

Educated? Enlightened? No, that still wasn't the precise turn of phrase he was after. He cogitated, and suddenly he had it.

 

Made more wise.

 

Yes. Yes, exactly. He had had his entire perspective on the world, the human condition, the universe, turned upside-down-and the new version was no less real than the traditional one. He was in the predicament of a savage shown a mirror for the first time, who has painfully to learn the truth that a man's right hand reflected in a mirror is his left.

 

But all that had been present in his mind while he was in Canada, arranging his onward journey to Russia with the aid and connivance, of the company whose representative he had nominally been during his time in the States. So now it had flashed back to his awareness in less than the blink of an eye, and Bratcheslavsky was still talking.

 

"Not only that, what's morel Not just a man with a talent we'd give our eye-teeth to controll But very likely Turpin too, who's been a mainstay of human survival for a quarter of a centuryl"

 

"But they don't suspect him of being an agent, do they?" Sheklov demanded. "Only of-uh-contact with subversives!"

 

"There's too damned good a chance of his being tried for treason." Curtly. "The Navy has jumped into the mess with both feet, and every corporation that's jealous of Energetics General is demanding a chance to take over the defence contracts, and all in all you never saw anything more like the Byzantine Empire in your life! I wouldn't bet against the possibility of the President being deposed, I swear I wouldn'tl"

 

..By an Army coup?"

 

"Yes, of course. It's inevitable, you know, once you let the armed forces take over key organs of your government. Simply because they can impose rigid discipline on their 'members, whereas the loose, inchoate mass of the public is uncontrollable, they're bound to wind up giving the orders. Didn't we come perilously close to it ourselves a couple of times? And it wasn't good judgment that saved us, only luckl"

 

Bratcheslavsky tore the. cigarette from his mouth and gave it a rearing glare; he had bitten completely through its cardboard tube. Tossing it into a sandbowl with an oath. he lit another.

 

"But surely, even if we do lose Turpin," Sheklov countered, "this process will bear out what Marxism has always prophesied: the dissolution of the capitalist state into a brutal internal power-struggle. There'll be so many factions we'll be able to feed in spies, saboteurs, subversives, anyone we choose. All we'll have to do is identify those of the competing parties that are prepared to sell out in order to do down their rivals. Ten years, of that; and America will never be a menace to the world again."

 

"You're an optimist there days!" Bratcheslavsky grunted.

 

"I have good reason. I found things over there I wasn't expecting, would have assumed not to exist. Admittedly, they are neither officially admitted nor properly understood, but they exist, and I'm here because they do."

 

He drew a deep breath.

 

"Lookl My stay there was measured in daysl I don't believe I could have run across what I did unless thesethese virtues and talents are widespread. Just considerl" He raised a finger. "First, I encountered someone with a talent we'd never imagined to be real, only it was real and I had proof. What's more, he . . . well, it's an unfashionable virtue, but it is one."

 

"Self-sacrifice," Bratcheslavsky said.

 

"Yes."

 

There was a long, cold pause. During it Sheklov felt himself carried back in space and time, to the train he had taken over the Canadian border on Danty's instructions. None of them had the mind to question his orders by that stage. No one had suspected the genuinepess of his Canadian passport; for him it had been easy. For Lora and Magda, somewhat harder . . . but there was a wellestablished underground railway into Canada, had been for over a generation, and it had been surprisingly simple to obtain advice and even a guide. (Of course he'd only heard the details afterwards.)

 

For Danty, though. .

 

He'd looked out of the train's window, and seen that car racing down one of the blocked stub-ends of dirt road heading north, and behind a mask of trees he'd seen that rose of flame. Just for a moment, a second or two.

 

Why? Why? Merely so as to ensure that when his train was checked by the border-guards, most of them would have been diverted to investigate the explosion? It was far too high a pricel

 

But he continued, raising another finger. "And I met Magda, who in spite of the stifling effects of public conformism had worked out, from the inside, the true historical analogies for her country's predicament. And"a third finger-"Lore, who behaved in this crazy manner and nonetheless was ready to abandon her. old life for good and all, simply because she'd discovered that her father had lied to her since she was born. That hatred of hypocrisy is a healthy sign .... Did you bring them out safely, by the way? I didn't hear."

 

"Yes, it was confirmed this morning. They wanted to stay in Canada, I'm afraid, but of course we couldn't allow that, not since they both knew about you and Turpin. But don't worry-we'll make them comfortable and take care of them."

 

"Fine," Sheklov said dispiritedly, and stubbed his cigarette in the sandbowl. "Tell me something," he added after a moment. ."Why do you think Danty did it?"

 

"I can only guess," Bratcheslavsky said. "Still, it'll be an enlightened guess. I'm an old man, and I've been through so much in one lifetime I seem to have summed up whole generations of human experience. Not about the material world, but about the spiritual world. The material world is run by people like those"-he jerked his head at the door of the room, through which they were soon going to have to pass in order to explain something vitally significant to people who would have no conception of its true importance--"who are merely efficient. Good at ruling, good at directing, good at ordering other people about. That wasn't Danty's talent. His was for influencing people, encouraging them, not an engineer's talent, but an artist's."

 

"Yesl" Sheklov said, almost surprised.

 

"You envy him that gift, don't you?"

 

"I . . . Yes, I do."

 

"But it killed him at twenty-one." The words hung in the air like smoke. "And there's only one reasonable explanation. Thanks to the gift, he saw something ahead for him that would have been -intolerable."

 

"I-I guess so. But what?"

 

"I think you told me, didn't you? Something you heard

 

from his friend Magda. The prospect of endless years of fear, of expecting that one day he would sense a crisis coming that he was powerless to prevent."

 

"And he preferred not to be doomed by others," Sheklov said. "He chose to make his own decision about an end."

 

 

"But he left a precious legacy," Bratcheslavsky said He twisted around on his cushions and picked up a pile of shiny thick white cards, which he held out to Sheklov. Distracted, the younger man took them and turned them over.

 

They were a set of the pictures from the far-distant reaches of space, which he had so crudely copied for Danty to examine, and which he had so brilliantly and rapidly understood although scores, hundreds of experts had struggled vainly with them for years.

 

He said, "The ship has gone, hasn't it?"

 

"You mean arrived," Bratcheslavsky said with a sour l~

 

"Yes . "

 

Automatically, Sheklov was shuffling the pictures into the reverse of the standard order, meantime visualising himself, a few minutes from now, consciously imitating what Danty had done with those rough sketches in a roadside restaurant.

 

Born at the wrong end of time . . .

 

Oh, what could be wrong with this sick species, mankind, that it had taken Danty with his special, his im. probable talent to see the plain and obvious truth? De. formed by fear and suspicion, everybody's mind but his had read threats into these pictureat (He re-heard himself asking Tunpin, the morning of his arrival in the States, what might happen if New York were wiped off the map by a total-conversion reactions)

 

But the sign of the alien ship was reversed. What lay under his hand was the story of the evolution of mannot a threat that he would be driven back to the caves, but a promise that he would travel to the starsl He turned the pictures up one by one, like tarot cards: the caveman with his atone axe; the discovery of fire; that baffling plain disc, which now he realized was symbolic of the invention of the wheel, not the Earth wrapped in smoke and fallout; the release of nuclear power; the rocket, the

 

first crude spaceship; the view of Earth as the astronauts and cosmonauts saw it when they made their earliest voyages; the far-distant view of the sun from the orbit of Pluto; the contact made with the unthinkable, incredible, inconceivable ship from the far side of the fourdimensional curve of the cosmos. where matter was antimatter and time's arrow faced the other way . . . and last of all that wonderful sight that some man might one day contemplate: the whole galaxy, turning like a whirlpool of stars.

 

Might?

 

Would. That was the most astonishing thing of all. It might, take centuries to work out the philosophical implications of the last conclusion to be drawn from this inverted exponential curve of achievement, but for the time being at least, he, Vassily Sheklov, was content to accept it with the force of a poetic or religious truth.

 

We're going to make it.

 

Because this alien species could not have learned what -as the pictures proved-they knew about mankind from this meeting: the naked form of a primitive man, above all, waving a flint axe. It followed that they, in their past, had already grown familiar with human beings, in what was still the latter's future. This encounter, the first for man, was for the aliens the last.

 

 

No use. It turned his brain topsy-turvy to try to think about it. Leave it to the genius speculators, leave it to the philosophers and cosmogonists and metaphysicians. Right now, the problem was to try to convey some of his sense of certainty to people that Bratcheslavsky had dismissed as "merely efficient." How wonderful to know that the human race was not after all going to be destroyed because aliens triggered its own horrible armoury of murder-and how terrifying to know that it rested on his shoulders to convince the world . . .

 

For a brief instant he felt he knew exactly why Danty had chosen to destroy himself. And then there was a knock at the door, and someone was standing there, and the someone was saying, "The First Secretary and the Chinese Ambassador are waiting to receive you, so if you will come with me..."