Tony sighed, beginning to relax—and suddenly realized he was exhausted. 'Tomorrow night, okay?

 

I'm kinda shot right now."

 

"Don't worry, your body will wake up fully rested," St. Vidicon assured him, "with more than enough energy to take Sandy dancing."

 

Dinner was lasagna at Marinara, then drinks at Bandillero. Tony had kept up the dancing lessons, which proved to be a good thing, because the band played a samba, and Sandy was delighted to find he could dance well enough for her to enjoy it. On the way home in the cab, she sat very close, so Tony held her hand and enjoyed the pressure of her shoulder and thigh against his as he asked where she had learned Latin dancing. This time he didn't ask the cab driver to come back. After all, he had a cell phone.

 

He also had cognac, and Sandy sat very close again. The stereo was playing the music from Carmen, and his heart pounded in time to the beat of the "Habenera" as he kissed her, then kissed her again.

 

Her lips were soft and moist and warm, and the tip of her tongue traced sparks across his lips. He drew a shuddering breath; then, since his mouth was open, he tried touching her lips with his tongue and was amazed at her answering gasp, even more amazed, when he explored further, that she went rigid.

 

Only for a moment—then she melted, and then-mouths fused together. When she lifted her head to breathe, her eyes were wide with surprize. Tony's probably were, too, but he wasn't aware of himself at all, only of her, as he lowered his head and began nibbling her lips. She stiffened again, then caught his hand and lifted it to cup her breast.

 

Tony froze for a moment, startled, then began to caress. She squirmed, murmuring into the kiss.

Then he felt her fingers light upon his chest, felt her undoing buttons, then her fingertips against his skin.

 

He was aware only of her mouth, her breast, and the tingling on his own chest. Then he lifted his head to gasp, and say, "I'd better go."

 

"Go?" Sandy stared at him, shocked, then darkened with anger. "This is a hell of a time to say good night, mister!"

 

"It would be worse a little later," Tony said. "You don't want me to do anything you'll regret."

 

"Oh yes I do!" Sandy pressed against him, churning, and her fingers danced. "But I won't regret it."

 

"I don't want…"

 

"Yes you do." Her fingers searched for proof, and it was Tony's turn to gasp. "And don't try to tell me you're gay—I have evidence to the contrary."

 

"Oh, I want sex, sure enough," Tony said, "but not until we're married."

 

 

Sandy turned into a staring statue. Then she said, in a very stiff voice, "You can have sex. You don't have to con me."

 

"I don't want to," Tony said. "I don't want to take advantage of you."

 

"I could say no," Sandy said through wooden lips.

 

"If you did, you'd be really glad we hadn't gone further than this." Tony held up a palm. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not proposing yet—only giving you fair warning. After all, we really have to know each other a lot better before you decide to let me ask."

 

Desire seemed to slacken as Sandy frowned and looked down, brooding. "Asking is nice," she said.

"I don't know about asking if you can ask, though." She looked up again, and desire came roaring back.

"And I don't know if I want to wait that long."

 

"I don't know if I can" Tony said.

 

Sandy stared into his eyes for a minute, then said softly, "Maybe that's one of the things we need to find out."

 

"You mean if I really can stop if you say to?" Tony smiled. "I think I can. It'll be difficult, though."

 

"It is already." Sandy's voice shook as she said, "But if you're going to say good night, you'd better go."

 

"Okay then. Good night." Tony brushed his lips over hers in what he meant to be a chaste kiss, but it made her shiver anyway. She went to the door with him, and the kiss there was anything but chaste.

When he came up for air, he found he was on the other side of a closing door.

 

Tony went down the stairs, his head feeling curiously light while a sudden bright energy went coursing through him. It almost made up for the frustration.

 

That week, Tony could scarcely keep his mind on business long enough to get started. Fortunately, in his line of work, people were used to programmers who sat staring at computer screens for long periods of time. Sooner or later he'd remember why he was at that particular office and get back to analyzing the problem he'd been sent to solve, and once he could manage to make a start, he could block out the rest of the world as he had always done and become fascinated with the malfunction.

 

"Computers are so much easier to understand than women," he complained.

 

"That may be true," said Father Vidicon, "but they're nowhere nearly as fulfilling."

 

 

"I could debate that," Tony grumbled, "but I suppose you're right. No matter how much you love a microprocessor, it can't love you back."

 

"But a woman might."

 

"Might," Tony echoed. "There's no guarantee she will, is there? Or that the love will last."

 

"Nothing in life is certain," Father Vidicon reminded him.

 

Tony started to answer, but Father Vidicon frowned suddenly, head cocked as though listening.

 

Curiosity roared in Tony, but he held his peace, afraid to interrupt whatever the saint was hearing, until Father Vidicon sighed and turned to him. "Another stressed soul who could use a bit of help."

 

The floor shook, and from somewhere deep below them came a muffled laugh, so deep that they felt it as much as heard it.

 

"I don't think I'd better leave this place just now, though," Father Vidicon said slowly, "even simply by concentrating on the plight of someone on Earth."

 

"After all you've done for me, the least I can do is volunteer. Where to this time, Father?"

 

"An army encampment just outside Shanghai, China," the saint said, "in 1863. You're going to join the army, Tony."

 

Tony stared, then said, "It doesn't seem to matter what time people are calling you from."

 

Father Vidicon nodded. "I hear appeals from people who were born twenty years before I was. That foolish author…"

 

"I thought you said 1863! That's a little farther ago than … let's see, you died when you were thirty-eight, in 2020…"

 

"The man you're helping is a time-travel agent," Father Vidicon explained. "He was bom in 368 in a village between Beijing and Tientsin and was left on a hillside to die because he had a harelip. The time-travel organization sent an agent to wait until everyone was out of sight, then scared away the wolf who'd been attracted by easy prey, picked up the baby, and took him forward to the 1980s, where they had a surgeon who could fix his lip and cleft palate. When he grew up, he decided to join the organization—after all, it was his home. He's based in the 1950s, but some of the agents he knows travel hundreds of years into the future, so he knew about me and is calling for help."

 

Tony frowned. "I don't think a computer programmer is going to be much use in 1863."

 

 

"No, but somebody who knows logic and has a gift for working with technology could be just what he needs," Father Vidicon replied. "You see, he's caught in a time loop."

 

The roar of musket fire drowned out any other sounds as Chang Chu-Yi marched around the circle of musketeers, loading his musket as he went, but with quick glances over his shoulder at the ridiculous mongrel army that charged the T'ai-Ping line of marching circles. It was useless, for how could a few hundred Chinese and Europeans hope to prevail against the disciplined T'ai-Ping soldiers who kept up a continuous field of fire? Somehow, though, they were managing it, and as Chu-Yi came up to the front, he saw the slender dark-haired young man at their head, waving a rattan cane as though it were a secret weapon and shouting encouragement to his men. They responded, charging madly into the T'ai-Ping fire and, incredibly, losing only a few along the way. It was unnerving, so unnerving that the fire wavered as, here and there, a T'ai-Ping soldier fled from the impossible sight and the howling foreign devil who led.

More fell with European musket balls in their chests and bellies as the Ever-Victorious Army came closer and closer until, on the verge of panic, the circles flattened into a ragged line, and the T'ai-Ping soldiers levelled their muskets in a single shattering broadside. It was their worst mistake, though, for as they all struggled to reload, the mercenary army bowled closer and closer.

 

Through it all, that ridiculous young Englishman came charging and yelling. Musket balls whistled past him, grooved his hair, tore his shirt, but none ever wounded him, and his soldiers shouted with triumph, for they followed an invulnerable leader with a charmed life whom no Chinese weapon could touch.

 

Then, suddenly, he shuddered, throwing up his arms and arching his back—then crumpling as blood gouted from his chest. Shocked, his soldiers jolted to a halt, staring in disbelief—but their young commander's body jerked twice where it lay, then went limp.

 

The T'ai-Pings saw and howled victory, charging the tattered little army that turned and ran for the river boats that had brought them there, courage fallen with their stricken leader.

 

The absurd little cannon on the boat's rear deck roared, giving the T'ai-Ping soldiers pause—and giving Chu-Yi the chance to blunder into a thicket of reeds that hid him from view. "Okay, Doc, reel me in!"

 

The scene around him wavered and grew dim, then faded and bleached into stark white walls—and Chang Chu-Yi stepped out of the time machine with a sigh of relief as he let himself go limp.

 

"Bad?" asked the twisted little man in the white lab coat.

 

"Battle always is." Chu-Yi tried to shrug off the nightmare sight. "You were right, though—a T'ai-Ping musket ball definitely did kill Gordon a month after he took command."

 

"And the Ever-Victorious Army stopped being victorious." Doc Angus nodded.

 

 

Chu-Yi frowned. "What difference does that make to us? General Li has the real army, the one with tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers instead of two hundred guttersnipes. It's he who won the war and put down the T'ai-Pings, not Gordon."

 

"But the European reporters made it seem as though it was Gordon who was the architect of victory," Doc answered.

 

"Why should we care?"

 

"For the same reason General Li cared enough to go to bat for Gordon and talk him into coming back to lead the Ever-Victorious Army after the prince dismissed him," Doc Angus said. "Li knew he needed European support, and it was Gordon who was bringing it for him."

 

"They didn't need support! They were doing just fine without England or any of the other European powers!"

 

"Li was." Doc turned away to lead Chu-Yi out of the time machine bay and into the hubbub of the common room. "The Manchus were in trouble, though, and Li knew what was going to happen when they fell."

 

"Anarchy," Chu-Yi said. "There was always anarchy when the barbarians came charging in and brought down a dynasty."

 

"Only this time," Doc said, "the barbarians weren't Mongols or Turks or Manchus—they were English and German and French."

 

"You forgot the Americans."

 

"So did the Manchus." Doc pulled out a chair at a cocktail table. "Sit."

 

Chu-Yi wavered, months of abstinence in the T'ai-Ping army warring with his desire for a civilized drink. Then he sat with a sigh of delight.

 

"Wallow in luxury while you can." Doc Angus sat with him.

 

"I know—I have to go back and save Gordon's life," Chu-Yi said. "I still don't understand why."

 

"Sure, General Li could easily win the war without him," Doc Angus said, "but he's clever enough to know that Gordon attracts good publicity, and considering how chowderheaded that incompetent young emperor is and how quickly his mandarins alienate the Western ambassadors, China needs all the publicity it can get if it's going to take its rightful place as a leader in the world community."

 

"Ridiculous," Chu-Yi said. "China already is the leader of the world community, everyone knows that—at least, everyone in China. It's the oldest, most cultured country on earth, and those insolent barbarians are mere flyspecks."

 

"Li knows better," Doc said. "Li knows that those ignorant barbarians could make the empire suffer, and suffer very badly, if China can't pull itself together. That's why he's fighting a native Chinese rebellion for a Manchu emperor—and that's why he needs Gordon and his favorable publicity."

 

"And that's why I'm going out to kill some poor T'ai-Ping soldier before he can kill Gordon." Chu-Yi sighed.

 

"Also to save the people from the anarchy mat will follow the fall of the Manchus," Doc said. "Li doesn't want hundreds of thousands of people to die from starvation and disease, or in the battles between the warlords who always crop up when a Chinese dynasty falls."

 

Chu-Yi frowned. "And with the British already talking about bringing in an army to enforce the concessions the trade treaty gave them, the Manchu emperor is going to look as though he can't hold China together."

 

Doc Angus made an impatient gesture, then looked up as the waiter brought their drinks. "Thanks, Joe." As the waiter turned away, Doc Angus turned back to Chu-Yi without taking a sip. "The current emperor is an idiot. Well, okay, not an idiot, but not exactly a genius, either— only a very ordinary man who's been spoiled rotten from birth and hasn't the slightest idea how to govern a country."

 

"Then it's a good thing his advisors don't let him do it—because they can run China by themselves."

 

"They could, if they weren't each concerned with seeing how much money he can pile up and hoard," Doc Angus said, "and with carving China up into their own petty kingdoms—and when the British burn the Summer Palace, all China will realize how weak the Manchu dynasty has become."

 

Chu-Yi froze as the implications trickled in. Then he said, "So even if Li does succeed in putting down the T'ai-Ping Rebellion, thousands of individual soldiers will run for their lives and still be around

—and when 'Emperor' Hung Hsiu-Chien commits suicide, they'll simply say they have an ally in Heaven."

 

Doc Angus nodded. "So if the Manchu government folds fifty years early—which it will, without European support—all it will take will be one defeated leader coming out of hiding and raising the banner again, and the rebellion will be back on. Do you really want to see China united while America is still building its railroads—and united under a bizarre sort of government that's willing to adopt European weapons and European army discipline at the same time that it rules its citizens with a fundamentalist zeal that makes the Puritans look liberal?"

 

Chu-Yi shuddered at the thought.

 

 

"The T'ai-Pings are Christians, after all," Doc said. "Very weird Christians, but Christians—and European preachers were ranting that England and Germany should support them against the pagan Chinese, until the reporters started telling the West just how distorted T'ai-Ping Christianity was."

 

"And Gordon is a Protestant fanatic." Chu-Yi nodded. "He thinks the T'ai-Pings are blasphemous."

 

Doc shrugged. "With their self-styled emperor and prophet claiming to be the younger brother of Jesus? You bet he thinks they're blasphemous."

 

"So General Li needs him for propaganda value." Chu-Yi nodded, resigned. "If Gordon lives, the reporters who follow him will convince Europe that the T'ai-Pings are the worst threat since Genghis Khan—and when the Manchus fall, they'll help anybody but the T'ai-Pings."

 

"There won't be any of them left, if Gordon lives," Doc Angus said. "The Empress Dowager will take over and keep the Manchus in power until all the T'ai-Ping survivors are dead of old age." He gave a bleak smile. "Of course, that doesn't mean their grandchildren won't band together to overthrow her successor."

 

"The Kuomintang." Chu-Yi nodded. "Okay, you've convinced me. Gordon has to live." He finished his highball and stood up. "Time for a haircut."

 

Chapter 11

 

When the Manchus conquered China, they made the Chinese men shave their heads except for a pigtail down the back. When Hung So-Chien declared the advent of the T'ai-Ping Tien Kwoh, the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace with himself as emperor, and his troops conquered most of southern China, he banned the pigtail as a badge of Manchu oppression. For his masquerade as a T'ai-Ping soldier, Chu-Yi had only had to let his hair grow—but now, as a Chinese fighting for the Manchu Emperor, even though he was supposed to be a blatant mercenary working only for Gordon's pay, he would still have to wear the pigtail—and no makeup would do when he would have to maintain the appearance for several days, sleeping and waking and in battle—so the barber shaved his head except for the small round of hair in the back, which he plaited into a queue. So, shaved and dressed in traditional Chinese costume,

 

Chu-Yi stepped into the time machine to enlist in Gordon's Ever-Victorious Army.

 

"This foreign devil is crazier than the last one!" Po Chao grumbled as he cleaned his musket.

 

"Maybe, but he wins the battles." Chang Chu-Yi ran the whetstone along the blade of his knife. "I thought he was a fool, naming us the 'Ever-Victorious Army' when we'd never even won a skirmish."

 

Chao shrugged. "It sounded good to the merchants, and they're the ones who pay us to keep Shanghai safe from these crazy T'ai-Pings."

 

 

"Assemble!" the sergeant bawled.

 

Po Chao came to his feet with a sigh and shoved the ramrod back into its holder. "At least he waited until I'd finished cleaning. What is it now, I wonder?"

 

"Probably another of this foreign devil's 'parades,'" Chu-Yi said, resigned. "Well, I don't mind his checking our gear as long as we win."

 

They trotted down to the bare, beaten ground fringed by the bulrushes and reeds of the river and fell into place in the line, and the sergeants bawled, "Atten-hut!" in the finest English style as they stiffened into brace. The lean young Englishman stepped out between them and began to prowl along the front rank, his ludicrous rattan cane stuck under his arm.

 

It was typical of the Western ethnocentrism of the time, Chu-Yi thought, that Gordon regarded the English form of drill as the only acceptable one. The Emperor's troops knew how to line up, of course, but they didn't have to subject themselves to the ludicrous postures Gordon called the Manual of Arms.

Still, Chu-Yi stood at attention like the rest, musket slanted forward at ten degrees from the vertical, and waited for Charles George Gordon to find some miniscule fault in his uniform. Not his musket, of course

—Chu-Yi made sure it was immaculate. He didn't want Gordon inspecting it too closely, gazing down the barrel or such. He might have noticed the rifling inside.

 

Outwardly, the piece looked like any of the others in the hodgepodge of arms Gordon's soldiers had managed to assemble, but the rifling made it far more accurate. It had to be, because Chu-Yi was going to have to shoot a poor T'ai-Ping soldier with it—not just any T'ai-Ping, but the one who would shoot Gordon in this battle.

 

Gordon finished rebuking a German mercenary for the speck of dust on his boot. The Ever-Victorious Army was a mongrel accumulation of the gutter-sweepings of every band of soldiers that had ever visited China. Most of them were Chinese, but there were also Germans, French, English, Americans, and a few others. Chu-Yi felt right at home, for he had been reared Western-style in Dr.

Angus McAran's time-travel complex inside the Rocky Mountains. The Chinese, ironically, were more alien to him than the Westerners, never mind that he had himself been born in China of Chinese parents.

But he had been rescued from exposure on a hillside, and the only other Chinese he had known were the few dozen who were his fellow time-travel agents—until his tutors had started bringing him back for a tour of China's history. Chu-Yi had visited Chang-An, the T'ang Dynasty capital; had been a soldier on the Great Wall when it was brand-new; had been a water-carrier in Canton drafted into the fabled exploring expedition that sailed as far south as the admiral could (he had escaped at the last minute from that one); and had played a dozen other roles at various times in China's past and future. He had known even before he joined as a time-travel agent that he would be assigned to missions in China.

 

Why else would Doc Angus be rescuing Chinese babies who were fated to die? He needed Chinese agents to help finance his time travellers by bringing back lost treasures from ancient days, and as troubleshooters to visit Chang An and Annam and Shanghai and Hang-zhow, to keep historical accidents from changing the world in which he lived.

 

At least, that was his excuse. The real reason, as everyone knew but nobody said, was because Doc Angus was outraged at the idea of letting babies die and children be exiled simply for being different.

Since his own body wasn't exactly an example of normality, he sympathized with the maimed and lame and twisted—and being a scholar, he had just as much sympathy for the ones whose ideas got them into trouble.

 

Yesterday, Chu-Yi's mission had been simple—to spy out the soldier whose bullet had killed Gordon as he led the Ever-Victorious Army in its third attack with no weapon but that silly rattan cane—

Gordon the invincible, whom bullets never touched.

 

Well, this bullet had—but Chu-Yi was going to prevent that.

 

Of course, it was tempting to kill the Englishman himself, and right now, because Gordon was drawing himself up in the manner that meant he was going to give an inspirational speech. Chu-Yi sighed and braced himself for boredom.

 

Gordon spoke to the sergeants, who bawled, "At ease!"

 

Chu-Yi took a half step to his left and slapped his left hand against the small of his back. This was supposed to be more relaxing?

 

Gordon raised his voice and called out in English; his sergeant spoke in Chinese half a sentence behind him, translating. Chu-Yi, able to understand both the original and the translation, had to give the sergeant credit—he might not have been all that accurate, but he was fast.

 

"Men," Gordon was saying, "rejoice! Your time of waiting is over! Today we go to attack Hangzhow!"

 

The men to either side of Chu-Yi stiffened. Battle hadn't been exactly what they'd desired.

 

"Of course, there will be no looting, no … unmentionable and ungentlemanly activities," Gordon went on.

 

The sergeant was more blunt. "Usual rules—no looting, no raping, no beating up civilians."

 

The soldiers looked grim.

 

"But we will win, and there will be a bonus for each of you!" Gordon exulted. "Now take ship, and may Heaven speed our enterprise!"

 

 

"Fall out!" the sergeant bawled. "Board ship!"

 

The gong sounded and Chu-Yi relaxed with a sigh. So did Po Chao, grumbling, "I never did like boats. Why can't we march there, like ordinary people?"

 

"Because the streams that run through this giant marsh are faster than walking," Chu-Yi told him,

"and with those little cannon in front and in back, they're a lot less likely to attract T'ai-Ping ambushes than we would be on the march—especially considering that we'd probably blunder into a bog every dozen feet."

 

"I know, I know!" Chao said. "I can't complain about something that keeps me alive—or, for that matter, saves me work. May I see you tonight, Chu-Yi."

 

"And I you, Chao." It was their homemade good luck charm, for they would both have to be alive to see one another that evening.

 

They filed aboard the Hyperion, Gordon's "flagship," with the rest of their half of the Ever-Victorious Army and braced themselves as the little steamer pulled away from its dock.

 

Li had kept the T'ai-Pings boxed up in Hangzhow for a month, so they were running short of supplies and had to try to break out. Gordon had kept his troops out of sight with only a picket line to guard the gate, so it would look to the T'ai-Pings as though this side of the city was weakly enclosed.

Now his sentries had heard men gathering and had sent word.

 

As the Hyperion pulled up to the bank, the western gate opened and the T'ai-Pings came charging out. "Form up!" Gordon shouted, and the sergeants repeated the order in Cantonese. The soldiers came off the boats at the double and formed up in ranks and columns.

 

The T'ai-Pings, seeing them, formed their line of marching circles and began to lay down a field of fire.

 

The sergeants bawled their translation, but Chu-Yi heard Gordon call out the original. "They're weak from hunger, but you are well fed! Only a little courage and we'll have them surrendering! Forward

—MARCH!"

 

Gordon turned his back and set off toward the city at the double. Firing as they went, the Ever-Victorious Army followed him.

 

Chu-Yi followed more closely than any, firing, reloading, and firing again until he was close enough to make out the features of the man whose shot would kill Gordon. Levelling his musket, Chu-Yi aimed at the man's leg and fired.

 

He could tell from the way the man fell that he had missed and hit the soldier in the chest. The T'ai-Ping was dead.

 

Then the whole world seemed to shift subtly, and Chu-Yi was looking at the man through his musket sights again. Somehow, incredibly, he had another chance to save the fellow's life. He raised his aim and squeezed off another round.

 

Again, the man clutched his chest and fell.

 

Again, the world seemed to shift suddenly.

 

Again, Chu-Yi raised his aim and fired.

 

As the man clutched his chest and fell once more, Chu-Yi realized, with a sense of despair, that he was doomed to repeat the same action forever, and that not even starvation would come to stop him. In desperation, he dropped his aim—but the T-ai-Ping fired, Gordon fell, the world shifted, and somehow Chu-Yi was staring through the sights of his disguised rifle at the same blasted soldier.

 

Tony hovered unseen over the battlefield, appalled as he watched men die and saw the blood spreading. It was raw, it was gruesome, it wasn't at all the way Hollywood would have done it.

 

Then he felt the world shift and saw Chu-Yi drop his aim, saw Gordon jolt backward and fall, felt the world shift again. The problem wasn't with Chu-Yi's musket, then. In fact, there wasn't anything on this battlefield that was of a high enough level of technology to attract gremlins.

 

But there was a time machine—maybe not here, but behind the events he was watching. Even Tony had learned in world history that Gordon had only been wounded once during the T'ai-Ping Rebellion, and he hadn't let it keep him from the next battle. Indeed, he had survived to become a hale and hearty old maverick of a general who'd died in the Sudan, facing the Mahdi's army of desert marauders at Khartoum. What did a computer programmer know about time travel?

 

Well, it was an exercise in logic, wasn't it? Handicapped without a keyboard, without even a piece of paper, Tony tried to trace the sequence of events in his mind: Chu-Yi had killed a T'ai-Ping soldier and Gordon had survived. But somehow, that soldier's death had wiped out Chu-Yi's shooting, and the soldier had lived after all, to fire the shot that killed Gordon. But if Gordon had died, then the earlier Chu-Yi who had been watching from the T-ai-Ping side had lived to go ahead in time to become one of Gordon's soldiers and protect him by shooting the T'ai-Ping—but the soldier's death had negated Chu-Yi's actions, and so on around and around in a neat little circle.

 

A feedback cycle.

 

A logical loop.

 

Why?

 

 

Tony flashed over to the T'ai-Ping side as the world wobbled again. He sank into the T'ai-Ping soldier's head for a few moments, long enough to read his memories and learn his biography.

 

His name was Chang Kuo-Feng, and he was a time traveller. Not only that, he was Chu-Yi's grandson.

 

He was one of Dr. Angus's agents, to be specific. He was stationed in 2047, which was why Chu-Yi had never met him. Kuo-Feng had just finished a scouting trip, living through this section of time to find out whose musket ball had killed Chu-Yi. He had seen the T'ai-Ping soldier shoot and seen Chu-Yi die.

Then he had gone back in time a few minutes and tripped the T'ai-Ping before he could fire the musket ball that would have killed Chu-Yi. Instantly Kuo-Feng had fired a wild shot for camouflage—but had unwittingly killed Gordon.

 

Then he had found himself reliving those few minutes again, but this time, before he could shoot Gordon, pain had exploded in his chest, and the world had faded into darkness.

 

Then, suddenly, he was alive again, and men were firing their muskets all around him, and Kuo-Feng realized more clearly than he ever had that he was putting his life on the line. Duty was duty, though, and he had a sentimental attachment to his grandfather, so he had tripped the T'ai-Ping before he could fire the musket ball that would have killed Chu-Yi. Then Kuo-Feng had fired his next wild shot for camouflage—but had unwittingly killed Gordon.

 

Then the world had shifted, and Kuo-Feng had felt a tearing pain in his chest, and the world had gone black again…

 

So why was he on his feet in the midst of men firing muskets again? This time, though, he was dazed enough so that he forgot to trip the T-ai-Ping, and Chu-Yi had fallen with a musket ball in his chest.

 

Now, under normal conditions, watching your grandfather die is shortly followed by ceasing to exist

—but because Chu-Yi had started a time loop, his descendant had found himself reliving the last few minutes over again. This time he did remember to trip the man next to him, the soldier who was aiming at Chu-Yi, then fired a shot himself to seem innocent, not knowing his musket ball would go through Gordon's ribs—but Chu-Yi had come back in time to shoot his fellow agent first, not knowing the man was:

 

a) one of his own band,

b) saving his life, and

c) his grandson.

 

So Kuo-Feng had died before he could shoot Gordon after all—but he also hadn't been there to trip the soldier whose shot had killed Chu-Yi. So Chu-Yi had died, but having died, he hadn't been there to shoot Kuo-Feng, who therefore had tripped his fellow soldier, saving Chu-Yi's life so Chu-Yi could shoot him, thereby signing his own death warrant…

 

Or, rather, dooming them both to keep living and dying again and again, in that same loop of time—

unless Tony could figure out a way to stop the paradox.

 

Tony pulled out of the man's head, dizzy with the circularity of it, trying instead to figure out how to solve the paradox and break the time loop. He knew the basic principle, of course—step outside the terms of the paradox—but how did you do that in this case? It was one thing to do it when you were only solving a puzzle in a classroom—then you could reassign functions—but this paradox was happening in the middle of a battle, and he couldn't change Chu-Yi's grandson into someone else's descendant, nor persuade Doc Angus—he'd never even met the man, and probably never would—to assign a different agent for this job.

 

But he could spike Kuo-Feng's gun.

 

He flashed back in time a few minutes, hovered beside Chu-Yi's grandson long enough to get his bearings, then plunged into the lock mechanism of the musket.

 

It was a flintlock, considerably more primitive than the kind of technology Tony was used to working with, but he thought he could grasp the general principles anyway. He started rearranging subatomic particles, stripping electrons off atoms and making them flow through the lock mechanism in a circle.

 

Sure enough, a diminutive head popped up, and a gremlkin glared at him over the hammer's spring.

"Begone, mortal! This is my meat, not yours!"

 

Tony was only too glad to oblige.

 

Kuo-Feng tripped the T'ai-Ping, then pulled his trigger, and the hammer drove the flint into the pan

—but the gremlkin had done its work, so the spark made a pretty flash but did absolutely nothing else.

Kuo-Feng frowned and looked down at his musket, then shrugged and sprinkled on new priming powder.

 

Tony grinned; he'd been pretty sure a flow of electrons would attract a gremlkin. After all, before the invention of electric lights, before the invention of radio, during a time when the only technology using electricity was the telegraph, there had to be a huge number of unemployed gremlkins looking for a chance to work mischief. Tony flashed over to the Ever-Victorious Army and saw Chu-Yi hesitate with his rifle levelled, wondering why the T'ai-Ping hadn't fired at Gordon. When the man did fire, his musket was pointed ten feet away. An American soldier spun about with blood streaming from his thigh and fell.

 

Chu-Yi, very confused, lowered his musket. He didn't know why the time line had changed, but he knew it had and was wary of doing anything to change that change.

 

Tony grinned, rising above the battle to watch grandfather and grandson for a few minutes until the T'ai-Ping line broke and the soldiers ran for cover. Kuo-Feng plunged into a thicket of bulrushes and never came out—but he did step out of a time machine in 2047. Chu-Yi, ostensibly chasing fleeing enemies, dashed into another clump—and promptly disappeared, back to the time lab in the mid-1950s.

 

That left only a horrible scene of men hunting down other men. Tony's stomach churned, and he gratefully shot back to Father Vidicon.

 

As the ruby tunnel formed around him again, he wished he could be in Doc Angus's time lab to hear Chu-Yi trying to make sense of the events. But Gordon had lived, that was all that mattered to history—and Chu-Yi and his grandson were out of the time-loop trap, and that was all that mattered to Tony. Sure, it would be nice if they knew what he had done and could thank him for it, but this was definitely one case in which the work would have to be its own reward.

 

"You've taken her on twenty dates," Father Vidicon said, "first Saturday nights, then Friday nights too, and now you're seeing each other on Sunday afternoons and one or two other evenings into the bargain."

 

"Those aren't really dates," Tony protested, "just hanging around together—and they don't always end with going back to her apartment. I mean, well, they do, but most of the time just to drop her off."

 

"I'm glad that petting hasn't become a required part of your agenda," Father Vidicon said. "When it becomes obligatory, it can start becoming boring. But you're together that often, your relationship's been growing through five months, and you wonder that she expects it to become more intimate?"

 

"I'm ready to propose," Tony objected.

 

"But she's not ready to accept." Father Vidicon shook his head with a sigh. "Your generation!

Expecting the final intimacy as a step toward marriage rather than the culmination of a courtship! But the young woman does have some right to expect a deepening of the relationship. It won't remain static forever, you know. It can't— it has to grow or wither, like everything else that lives. Besides, it would be very imprudent for her to tie herself to you for life and have you turn out to be a lackadaisical lover.

Much though it grieves me to say it, your generation does seem to have grown to expect a trial marriage."

 

"You're not saying I should have sex with her!"

 

"Of course not—no priest would ever say that. I am, however, trying to understand her viewpoint."

He lifted his head, turning to look at his protege. "Perhaps it's time to fish or cut bait, Tony. If you're going to insist on being steadfast in virtue, as indeed you should, perhaps you should free her to seek out another."

 

 

The thrill of horror that froze Tony amazed him. He hadn't realized how much he'd begun to count on Sandy being part of his life.

 

Chapter 12

 

"You need distraction," Father Vidicon advised, "and I have a plea that needs answering."

 

"Oh, yeah?" Tony asked, immediately interested, then was amazed at his eagerness. Maybe he did need a break from worrying over his future with Sandy. "Who's in trouble how?"

 

"A company of actors," Father Vidicon said. "They're on the road, touring a comedy through the Midwest, and things are going wrong—inexplicably, I might add."

 

"Of course," Tony said. "If they were explainable, they'd fix them instead of calling on you."

 

"You are learning this business," St. Vidicon said, with an amused smile. "Go unsnarl them, Tony, would you?"

 

Sometimes you get a bad feeling about a show. I mean, you aren't even on the road when you realize things are going to go wrong—little things, nothing huge or life-threatening, but so many of them that it's going to take the gloss off every performance and make everybody miserable. The electrician will miss a cue or two, nothing that the audience will notice but enough to give the actors a bad feeling; an actor will get confused and repeat a sequence of lines; a stagehand will leave the stairs six inches out of true, and they'll trip the unwary actor and leave a gap between two "flats," two fake walls, that the audience won't see but will bother another actor on a level so low that he won't even realize it—or a spotlight will come crashing down in the middle of a performance.

 

Now, that requires two mistakes—neither terribly hard to make, especially considering that, when you're touring, the crew have to hang lights all over again every time we come to a new town, which is every week and sometimes twice. The good side of such a routine is that they get to know the light plot so well that they could hang the lights in their sleep. The bad part is that is that they sometimes come perilously close to doing exactly that. After all, they have to take down the lights after one performance and drive hundreds of miles overnight to a new city where they have to hang the lights all over again, which doesn't give them much time in bed—they nap in the truck and are sometimes pretty groggy when they start climbing ladders again.

 

Still, for a spotlight to fall means that the electrician not only forgot to tighten the clamp that holds it to the pipe over the stage, but also forgot to fasten the safety chain—a piece of steel cable that loops around the pipe and the yoke, the spotlight's "handle." Mind you, I'm not saying it can't happen, as the gouge in the floor of the theater in Indianapolis will attest. Fortunately, the spotlight fell two feet away from Lon as he was sternly lecturing the young roommates. Unfortunately, it threw him off for the rest of the performance. Worse, he couldn't even chew out the lighting crew because they were union—

 

IATSE—and he was Actors' Equity. He couldn't complain to the director, either, because she was back in New York.

 

He could, however, complain to the stage manager, which he did, loudly and at great length, with the whole cast joining in, and when I'd finally managed to calm them down, I had to go talk to the union shop steward. Of course, my union is Actors' Equity, as is theirs, but I'm one of the rare ones who has his IATSE card, too. Even without it, union rules allowed me to "communicate" with the IATSE shop steward about making sure his people got enough sleep.

 

"Enough.sleep?" Joe gave me a hoarse laugh. "We'd just driven eight hours, put up the set and hung the lights, then managed a two-hour nap while you guys were rehearsing, and I'm supposed to make sure they get enough sleep?"

 

I felt as though I could walk under a canary with plenty of headroom. "Yeah, I know, Joe," I said,

"but we're gonna be here for two days. Maybe your folks could catch up on the Zs?"

 

"Which we intend to do," Joe said, "if some smart-alecky stage manager doesn't keep us up all night with asinine gripes."

 

He said it without rancor; he knew I had to complain to him because the actors had complained to me, and he knew I knew why his crew hadn't been as careful as they might have been if they'd been fully conscious.

 

"Sometimes the stage manager has to pay lip service to trying to keep the show in shape."

 

"Yeah, I know, kid." Joe gave me a commiserating slap on the shoulder. "It ain't the world's easiest job for any of us. At least you're a grown-up."

 

I appreciated that. At thirty-two, it was nice to think I had finally come into adulthood. On the other hand, I no longer felt young. To Joe I was still a kid, of course—he was in his fifties. "Sometimes I do kinda feel like the chaperone on the high school Washington trip," I admitted.

 

"Don't we both!" Joe rolled his eyes. "Only way I can still make it through setups is because I let them drive."

 

I knew he had rigged a sort of bed in the scene truck—a slab of foam in the "loft" over the cab. "We better not let them unwind too long," I said. "Right now, they need sleep more than beer."

 

Joe bristled. "You talking about your kids or mine?"

 

"Yes," I agreed. " 'Scuse me—I gotta get down to the bar and see which actress Al and Will are going to fight over tonight."

 

 

"Good luck, kid." Joe grinned. "I'd rather be chief electrician than stage manager any day."

 

Stage manager? I don't manage the stage, I manage the people!

 

I made sure everything was ship-shape backstage— picked up a few props and put them back on the table, made notes to warn Lon and Arlene that once more leaving their pipe and gun, respectively, in their dressing rooms instead of on the prop table would result in a fine, then checked to make sure the ghost light was on—really the job of the local IATSE crew, but it could be one of my actors who became the ghost if it hadn't been left on and he or she tried to cross the stage in the dark. People have fallen through trapdoors carelessly left open, walked off the edge of the stage into the orchestra pit, and tripped over props and hit their heads on stage pegs, so I made sure the single work light was lit to let the ghosts of old actors know they were welcome to come back—and headed off toward the nearest tavern to join the kindergarten set.

 

On this tour, by some fluke, everyone was under thirty, even the actress playing the mother—

Arlene may have been twenty-five, but she had the right facial shape and the right build so that she could play older. When she wasn't made up to look fifty, of course, her figure seemed voluptuous, not matronly, and her face looked slumberous and seductive, but onstage I could have sworn she was ready to sit in with my grandmother's bridge club. Only part of it was makeup, of course—the gal could really act. Character actors generally can. Ingenues, juveniles, and leads can at least look the part.

 

Even at that, Arlene was the senior citizen of our onstage set. The rest of them were just out of college and still working on their Equity points. I came in the door to find my charges had commandeered a table, but that Arlene, Britney, and Debbie had already attracted a small group of standees, all for some reason male, who were giving my boys challenging looks. Farther down the table, the stagehands were giving those looks right back.

 

Some companies, the actors won't even sit with the techs and don't realize the stagehands are snickering at them behind their beers. At least I had them both at the same table, even though it was IATSE at one end and Equity at the other. Sometimes I could even pull them all into the same conversation.

 

Tonight, however, looked to be brewing up a different kind of solidarity. One of the locals leaned down for a closer look at Ashley's neckline, and Jory asked, "Need glasses?"

 

"Shut up, kid," the local said, not even looking at him.

 

"He talks," Jory said in tones of exaggerated wonder. "Gary, did you hear that? It talked!"

 

The local looked up with a frown. "You want your teeth fixed?"

 

"At least I still have them," Jory answered.

 

 

The local rumbled anger and came for him.

 

Jory stood up, grinning.

 

I caught the local's arm as he passed, shoved it up behind his back, grabbed his shoulder with my left, and said, "We take it outside."

 

His friends shouted and started for me, but two of the stagehands stood up behind Jory. Mike and Al were each well over six feet and bulky with muscle. The locals hesitated.

 

"Thanks, guys." Jory swerved past them and came after me.

 

For some reason, the other locals between me and the door didn't try to interfere—they let us pass, then followed us. That blocked Jory from catching up, unfortunately. Well, maybe not so unfortunately.

 

I frog-marched the loudly-protesting local into the parking lot and spun him as I let him go so that he ended up against a wall. Snarling, he stepped away, bringing up his fists, and the crowd muttered appreciatively, forming a semicircle.

 

I kept my fists on my hips. "You don't want to fight with my boys," I told him. "They're all black belts except Jory, and he used to spar with a kid who made Golden Gloves."

 

That gave the local pause, but he had to save face. "All you actors are gay," he snarled. "Everybody knows that."

 

Well, not all—but a substantial percentage of my fellow showmen are indeed homosexual. Theater is one of the few professions where they won't be hassled for it, where a man's talent and skill count for more than his sexual orientation. "Not every actor," I told him, "and even gays have to learn how to fight these days."

 

"Yeah, sure," he sneered.

 

"Aw, hell, Jack," said one of the stagehands' voices, "I thought we were going to have some fun."

 

"Just an exercise in practical education, Lyle," I told him without looking away from the bellicose local, "and I don't think he's going to need a tutor."

 

"Yeah, and what do you think you could teach him?" Another local stepped forward toe-to-toe with Lyle.

 

My local stared past me, gawking. I swung around beside him with a wary glance out of the corner of my eye, but he was all rapt attention, watching the big man who was no doubt the local champion challenging the invader. That quickly, he had shifted from boxer to spectator.

 

The champ was every inch as tall as Lyle with, I could have sworn, the same black hair and beard.

They were both muscular and had the kind of thickened belly that looks like fat but is all muscle.

 

"I could teach him street fighting," Lyle said with a lazy grin. "Maybe you, too."

 

"Might be you'd learn a little more than you wanted." The local leaned in nose to nose.

 

"Phew!" Lyle stepped back, waving his hand across his face. "Your buddies really oughta tell you about that breath."

 

The local grinned wider. "You got a problem with my breath?"

 

"No," Lyle said, "you do. Really oughta try cleaning the chitlins before you eat them."

 

An ominous silence fell, and my heart rose to block my throat. Indy is close enough to the Mason-Dixon line that you don't tell a Good Ol' Boy he eats chitlins.

 

With a snarl, the local charged—but Lyle pivoted out of the way, and it was dark enough that nobody could have said for sure that he kicked as he turned, but the local did trip and fall. He scrambled to his feet just as the siren wailed, and the parking lot lit up with flickering blue-and-red lights.

 

The spectators disappeared like butterflies in autumn, but Lyle and the local still stood toe-to-toe, neither willing to give in before the other. Neither of them seemed to be daunted by the thought of a night in jail. I, however, had the reputation of the company to consider, not to mention trying to shift the scenery tomorrow night without Lyle's help. I stepped up to the two Goliaths and hissed, "Indian wrestle!"

 

They both turned to me with blank stares, but the doors of the patrol car slammed, and they spun toward each other, locking hands and setting shoe against shoe. They strained against each other's pull in perfect, rigid stillness as the patrolman stepped up. "What's going on here?"

 

"Just a friendly test of strength, Officer." I stood hands on hips, watching.

 

The policeman took the sight in with one sweep of his flashlight and grunted. "What're you doing here?"

 

"Somebody has to referee," I said, "or they'll start arguing about whose back foot moved first."

 

The local champion yanked hard, but Lyle was ready for him and yanked too. The local lunged forward, trying to throw Lyle off-balance, but he'd played this game often enough to know that the yank would probably be followed by the lunge and shoved hard.

 

Stasis.

 

The cop was still, watching.

 

Lyle yanked to the side, then shifted and pulled back. The local wavered.

 

The cop laughed. "Almost had you there, Bull."

 

"Almost," Bull grunted, and executed a sudden pull-twist-shove maneuver. Lyle whirled his free arm, striving for balance and managing to keep it, but his back foot shifted an inch.

 

"Score!" the cop declared. "Moved your back foot, stranger."

 

"Only an inch." Lyle relaxed. "Only one fumbling …"

 

The local yanked—but Lyle, readier than he looked, yanked back too, with a laugh. "Round two?"

 

"Game's over," the cop said firmly. "Settle for winning, Bull."

 

"Awright, then." Bull straightened with a grin. "You owe me a beer, stranger."

 

"The best the house has got." Lyle slapped him on the shoulder and turned away. Back inside the bar they went, trading friendly insults having to do with their ancestry. As I remember, Bull was denying any relationship to the orangutan Lyle was hypothesizing as his grandfather and countering by claiming descent from a buffalo.

 

"Nice maneuvering," the cop said.

 

"Looks like Bull has played this game before," I answered.

 

"So have you," the cop said. "I had a call about a barroom brawl that had moved outdoors."

 

"Must have been some other tavern," I said.

 

"Yeah, it must," the cop agreed. "Make sure it stays that way, okay?"

 

I did my best.

 

Nobody minded if Lyle seemed a little hungover the next day. Everybody was looking well rested when they showed up for makeup call. The stagehands ran through the preshow light check, sound check, and scene check while Maryann made sure everything was where it should be on the prop table, then reluctantly admitted to me that no one had to pay a fine that night. I went back to the makeup room, telling myself that one of these days I was going to let Lon and Arlene know how much they owed me for picking up after them. As usual, I decided that day would come when we were all safely back in New York and the tour had closed.

 

As I came in, Lon stood up, glaring down at Johnny, and demanding, "Who says I did?"

 

"It's your kind of sense of humor." Johnny glared. "And you haven't exactly shown respect for other people's makeup before."

 

"You think I want to get pink-eye from your infected eye shadow?"

 

I sidled a little closer to see what the problem was. Johnny's makeup kit was open, and a lump of nose putty lay in the bottom. My eyebrows shot up when I saw how it had been shaped.

 

Chapter 13

 

It was a very artistic job, actually. The nose putty had been carefully modelled into the shape of a fist with the thumbnail protruding between the first and second finger. That wouldn't have been a problem if Johnny's birth name hadn't been Gianni, and if he hadn't been Italian. As it was, I only knew what "the fig" was because I'd been in a rather authentic production of Romeo and Juliet and found out why one of the young bloods took offense at another "chewing his thumb."

 

"Nice work," I said in my best tone of admiration.

 

Johnny swivelled to glare up at me. "You call that nice?"

 

"It's good modelling." I looked up at Lon. "Didn't know you were a sculptor."

 

"Me?" Lon stared. "The only chisel I've ever held was a slice of cheesecake!"

 

"I could believe that," Johnny said, with an acid glare.

 

"Then do," I said. "Lon didn't do this."

 

Johnny swung around to stare up at me, disconcerted.

 

I sighed. The juvenile and the leading man—a natural antagonism if there ever was one. In most companies, the juvenile would nonetheless defer to the leading man's maturity and experience, but not when they had both graduated the year before.

 

Johnny recovered and turned back to glare at the nose putty fist. "It's not that great. I could do that well whittling."

 

"With a jackknife and a stick, maybe," I said, "but with nose putty? I mean, you do a pretty good fake nose for Act Two, but I wouldn't think they covered fists in your makeup class."

 

"They didn't," Johnny admitted.

 

"So somebody in the cast has unsuspected talents," I said, "but it's not Lon."

 

"No, I suppose not," Johnny said. Then, as though it were dragged out of him, "Sorry, Lon."

 

Lon stared in surprize, then grinned and said, "'S okay, Johnny," and went back to putting on his own makeup.

 

Not to lose too much face, Johnny glared up at me again. "It could have been one of the crew!"

 

"I suppose," I said. "I know a couple of them were acting majors before they saw the light."

 

"Saw the light?" Johnny's glare hardened, and every actor in the room looked up, taking offense.

 

"Well, I'm technically a techie at the moment," I explained. "The pitfalls of being a stage manager, halfway between onstage and off. When I'm acting, I knock the stagehands, but when I'm stage managing …"

 

"You knock the actors," Dulcie said, amused. "Just don't try to knock on me, Jack."

 

"You mean adore?"

 

"What else would you knock on?"

 

Everybody groaned and went back to their makeup. I made a mental note that I owed another one to Dulcie.

 

We were trying out a new comedy, hoping we'd get a big enough box office and good critical reviews to justify opening in New York. If we didn't, we might have to stay on the road until the production broke even—assuming we weren't running in the red on every performance. The plot, if you can call it that, was about a group of roommates who get fired from their various jobs and try to make a living by opening their own computer consulting business. They fall afoul of Finagle, of course, but the only flesh-and-blood antagonist is (predictably) the landlord, Mr. Cassandro, who is continually predicting doom for the enterprise and chivvying all the roommates to get honest jobs again, to which they reply, "We're trying!" again and again, until you're expecting the audience to join in with them. For an ending, Cassandro comes storming in to claim that one of the kids has parked in another tenant's space, and, when they deny it and refuse to move the car for the simple reason that none of them has the keys, Mr. Cassandro says he'll hot-wire the car and goes storming out.

 

JESSIE: Whose car do you think it could be?

 

ORIN: A sporty little red model? Isn't that Alice, down the hall?

 

NANCY: Oh no, it couldn't be! You know how paranoid Alice is.

 

BARRY: So?

 

NANCY: Well, she thinks her ex-boyfriend has booby-trapped her car, so she's afraid to start it until the bomb squad gets here.

 

ORIN: Bomb squad? (HE GLANCES AT THE WINDOW) Maybe it's a good thing they've been making cars you can't hotwire these last ten years.

 

BABS: Oh, Alice's car is older than that. (AN EXPLOSION IS HEARD OFFSTAGE.) ORIN: YOU don't suppose …

 

Sure enough, Mr. Cassandro stumbles in through the door, face smudged and clothing torn with a steering wheel hanging around his neck (and you can bet that Gertie, our costumer, had a lot of fun with that quick change!). Of course, we had to build the steering wheel out of soft plastic so that Lon could pull it apart, fasten it around his neck, then lock the ends together again. All in all, I was hoping we never missed that last cue. Carl had a backup laptop in his sound booth (assuming whatever theater we were in HAD a sound booth) just to make sure.

 

This theater did have a sound booth. Well, okay, it was a projection booth, the theater having been converted for movies in the thirties. Fortunately, the conversion had consisted of hanging a movie screen from the flies and walling off the back of the balcony to make a projection booth. When the movies moved out to the malls with twenty-screen "theaters," the community had made renovating the old theater part of its campaign to save the downtown. They had remoted the Lighting controls back to the projection booth and even installed an audio board at one end with a separate window for the audio operator to watch the stage.

 

They hadn't bothered modernizing the fly system, of course, so the drops and electrics were still being held up by rope and sandbags. It wasn't the only hemp house left in the country, but it had to be one of a very few. We all felt as though we were on a field trip for Theater History class.

 

But because it was an old vaudeville house, we actually had real dressing rooms—old and rickety, but real. And a greenroom, believe it or not, even if the walls had been whitewashed and you could hear the other actors' footsteps overhead. It was right under the stage, and looking up, you could see the grid of beams with heavy bolts holding the floor in place. Those beams cut the stage floor into squares, and each was numbered—A through E, one through four. They'd been trapdoors once; a touring company could open any one of them for a dramatic exit or entrance. Ophelia's grave could be anywhere onstage you wanted it. The statue could stomp Don Giovanni down to Hell anywhere within that grid. The financiers could follow the directions of the Madwoman of Chaillot down to the sewers from any point onstage.

 

That had been one of the abilities they'd lost with the conversion to a movie theater. When travelling troupes stopped coming through, who needed trapdoors in the stage? So they had bolted them all closed to prevent accidents.

 

Of course, the stairs down to the basement, where all this was, were old, worn, steep, and uneven, but even actors can be careful when the occasion calls for it.

 

I studied all this carefully, I assure you. As stage manager, I was definitely going to need to know who was in which dressing room, or supposed to be, just in case I needed to send someone to track them down for a late cue—the stage hadn't been updated any more than was strictly necessary, so there was no PA system into the dressing rooms and greenroom.

 

At the moment, Dulcie, Britney, and Arlene were in the women's dressing room while Andy, Lon, and Johnny were in the men's. There were smaller dressing rooms upstairs, presumably for the stars in whichever 1920s road shows had come through, but they were mercifully filled with old curtains, seats somebody had pulled out to make room for wheelchair access, and a set of antique electrical dimmers—

mercifully because their being unusable spared me the sizzling catfight that would have erupted over who got which dressing room to his- or herself, if they'd been available.

 

I confess to having spent ten minutes gazing at the old dimmers, in awe of the generations of stagehands and stage managers who had gone before me—and shuddered at the thought of electricity ever having gone through those immense old open wheels. Of course, their wires hadn't been so badly frayed when they were being used—at least, not when they'd been new.

 

I was down in the actors' territory on a legitimate errand, of course. 'Ten minutes till places!" I called as I went through.

 

"Who've we got in the house, Jack?" Dulcie asked as I sped by, so I put on the brakes and leaned back to look through her doorway long enough to answer, "Bluehairs, Dulcie. It's a matinee." Then I was off, leaving a trio of groans behind me.

 

All for effect, of course. The actresses knew our afternoon audience was most likely to be senior citizens. Who else has time to come to the theater on a Thursday afternoon? The high school kids would be here on Friday, of course—perfect thing for the teachers to do with the little blighters on the day when all their energy is directed toward getting out for the weekend. There would be wolf whistles at each actress's entrance and a muted roar like a minor earthquake when Dulcie (as Lettie) kissed Andy (as Jerry), and all of us would be fighting the urge to turn to the audience, and yell, "Get over it!"

 

 

It was enough to make a fellow call on St. Vidicon. I hadn't done that—yet. So far, everything could be explained as an accident, and there hadn't been enough of them to call for saintly intervention.

Well, okay, there had, but it still didn't seem like the decent thing to do. I mean, things do go wrong—

right?

 

They could also, of course, be the result of sabotage, but I didn't want to even think that one of my cast or Joe's crew could be trying to make it seem as though the production was jinxed.

 

Today, though, was going to be problem enough. 'Ten minutes till places!" I called as I sailed past the men's dressing room, then went up the narrow stairs, holding tight to the handrail every inch of the way, and settled down on the high stool behind the stage manager's desk. There had been one built in; I'd noticed where it had been ripped out to make room for a cabinet in the 1940s. Fortunately, we brought our own folding model.

 

I turned to the house stagehand (have to have at least one local around—union rules, but a good one; you need to have somebody available who knows the theater), and asked, "Has the asbestos gone up?"

 

"Half an hour ago," she said, with the requisite thinly-veiled contempt of the person who knows the local fire laws.

 

I nodded. Most shows don't use curtains at the beginnings and ends of performances anymore, so they don't use fire curtains, either—but this was a traditional play in everything except the amount of innuendo. When the fire curtain had gone up, it had revealed only the grand drape—one that probably hadn't been replaced since movie theaters actually opened a curtain as the movie started. The set was a very realistic living room with a railed balcony to indicate a second floor. I went through my precurtain checklist—all actors in costume and makeup, preset props in place, all actors present and sober, stagehands at their stations and so forth—then put on my headset, and asked, "Ashley, you there?"

 

"Of course," the electrician answered, bored and slightly resentful (even when she's running the lights instead of hanging and connecting them, she's an electrician).

 

"How about you, Rally?"

 

"Yeah, I'm here, Jack."

 

I frowned; our audio tech's voice sounded funny. I was trying to phrase a delicate inquiry when I heard a cavernous yawn right in my ear. My blood ran cold; a sleepy sound op is not what you really want five minutes before curtain.

 

Make that two; I glanced around and saw Andy, Dul-cie, and Britney standing by the door in the fake wall, waiting for their entrances. "Warn the audience," I told Ashley.

 

 

Through the crack between curtain and proscenium pillar, I could see the auditorium lights dim, then brighten again. Anybody in the lobby would be hurrying in. I counted off the next hundred twenty seconds, then said, "Houselights out," and the sliver of light darkened completely. The audience's noise stopped, except for a faint murmur of anticipation; the community might have had amateur theater, but a professional production was rare.

 

Professionals? Sure we were! We were being paid, weren't we?

 

"Curtain up," I said. Lyle hauled on a rope, and the act curtain rose.

 

The rising curtain revealed a luxurious living room.

 

The audience murmured in appreciation, and I started feeling optimistic. They were on our side, for a change.

 

And they stayed on our side. This was an audience who had come to be entertained and were old enough to know that they had to pay attention to get the most out of the performance. The cast felt it right away; Dulcie made her entrance, coming down the stairs in her slip, saying, "Darling, where did you put my pills? I missed today's dose."

 

The look of horror on Andy's face was priceless—in fact, he couldn't have bought it if he'd had money. The audience roared, and you could almost see Dulcie and Andy expand.

 

That's the way the performance went, from one laugh to another. Somebody even hissed when Lon told the roommates they'd have to move. Whoever it was hissed on his second entrance, too, and you could see him picking up energy. His character started exuding twice its usual amount of slime.

 

It was the perfect feedback loop, the kind you never get from the movies or TV, the kind that makes you realize live theater will always survive, one way or another. The actors drew energy from the audience's reactions, and the audience got a better and better performance.

 

The only thing that worried me was the lateness of the sound cues. Nothing serious, mind you—but the first one, the doorbell, was right on time, the telephone ringing was maybe half a second late, the car backfiring in the street was a full second. No big deal, you may think, but the actors were building unbelievable energy with the most perfect timing they'd ever had, and the late cues were throwing them off. At the act break, I stayed on the headset long enough to tell Rally to confirm my warning for every cue. He grunted, which I assumed was affirmative, so I took off my headset and went to check on the actors.

 

They were in high spirits indeed; you would have thought the ginger ale they were sharing was champagne. "Did you ever see such an audience?" Dulcie asked, as I came into the greenroom. "The old dears really love us!"

 

 

"It helps that Sinjun gave us such good dialogue," Andy said, "but we've never had this many laughs from it before!"

 

"We're brilliant!" Dulcie bubbled. "They've got me convinced that we're absolutely brilliant!"

 

And on it went. I grinned and went back upstairs to give the five-minute call. No need to worry about anybody being late for Act II—with an audience like that, those actors would be so eager to get back onstage that I might have to physically restrain them from jumping their entrances.

 

They were lined up in the wings a full two minutes early—not just the pair who were supposed to be in place when the curtain went up, but all of them, hovering within earshot of the audience and panting for a sip of applause. Andy's first line, "Who was it, then?" wasn't at all funny, but the audience wanted it to be, so they chuckled anyway — and Dulcie's answer, "The tack-counter," gave us a roar you could have heard a mile away.

 

But the knocking was late.

 

I know—how can knocking be late? Actors do it five, on the back of the set—but this knocking had to come from the sound booth, because it was supposed to start onstage, then travel out into the house and all the way around before it came back to the stage, when Andy was supposed to say, "Does he have to tap them as he counts them?" Only this time, the tapping didn't start.

 

"Go Cue Thirty-three!" I snapped into my mouthpiece.

 

Silence.

 

"Rally! Go!"

 

Finally, the tapping started.

 

I swung the mouthpiece away from my lips while I cursed in my softest tone. I was going to have to have Rally's hearing checked.

 

Right on cue (though the cue had been horribly late), Andy demanded, "Does he have to tap as he counts them?"

 

"She," Dulcie said. "The tack-counter is a woman."

 

"Well, go knock on the door where she's working and ask her to ease up on the tapping, would you?"

 

"It's not bothering me that much," Dulcie said. "You go knock her up, then."

 

 

The laugh was surprized, a little shocked, and totally delighted—much more than the line deserved.

What can I say? You had to have been there—and this audience would be glad they had been.

 

At least we were back on track. We would have stayed that way, too, if Rally hadn't kept missing cues. Well, not missing them, really, but late every time and getting later. I could tell it was bothering the actors, but the audience gave them a huge laugh after every late cue, and they relaxed again.

 

Then came the ending.

 

Mr. Cassandro went out the door, the roommates talked about the car being booby-trapped, and Dulcie said, "Oh, Alice's car is older than that."

 

"Go Cue Sixty-four," I said into my mouthpiece.

 

Silence.

 

There was supposed to be an explosion. There was silence.

 

"Go Cue Sixty-four!" I hissed—even now, I had to make sure the audience didn't hear me. "Rally!

Go Cue Sixty-four!"

 

Nothing.

 

I groaned. I sweated. I finally broke down and prayed. Not a very long prayer, mind you—only a simple, "St. Vidicon, protect us from Finagle!" Then once again, "Rally, go Cue Sixty-four!"

 

Dulcie went to the window to look out. The others took the cue and crowded around her. They waited.

 

And waited. And waited.

 

Now, time stretches when you're onstage and things go wrong—a second seems like five minutes—

but even so, it was an unholy wait, with me hissing into my headset, "Go Cue Sixty-four! Rally! Snap out of it! Go Cue Sixty-four!"

 

But the explosion still didn't happen.

 

Tony's disembodied presence hovered over Rally, where he lay with his head on his forearm, eyes closed, headset askew—which was why Tony could hear Jack calling, "Go Cue Sixty-four!" No denying it—Rally was firmly and irrevocably asleep. But why? He'd had a good eight hours the night before—

his first in three days; he'd been surviving on catnaps since they closed Cincinnati, but even so, he should have been able to stay awake. So Tony dropped down into the dregs at the bottom of the glass beside him and filtered through the molecules there. Admittedly, he didn't know what champagne molecules were supposed to look like, not even ginger ale molecules, but he did recognize the smell of a well-known sleeping tonic—the kind that was only supposed to be given at night and had a very light taste. Add that to a glass of champagne on top of a full meal with three nights of little sleep, and you had…

 

Sound cues coming later and later.

 

In fact, the amazing thing was that Rally had been able to come out of his stupor long enough to hit any sound cues at all.

 

Tony had a choice—he could slip into Rally's mind and try to wake him up, or he could drop into the computer and try to close a connection without tapping the space bar.

 

The mind wasn't really Tony's area, so he dived into the keyboard.

 

Without a body, he couldn't tap the spacebar, but he could shunt an electron across a gap—he had enough strength for that. He found the connection and the electrons piled up against the contact—if they'd been human, they would have been straining for release when the circuit closed. Tony jumped on the contact. He didn't have any mass, but he did have energy, and he only needed to move it a thirty-second of an inch.

 

It gave a little under the energy of his spirit, but not enough.

 

Chapter 14

 

In a panic, Tony jumped up and down on the contact. He may not have had any mass, but apparently he was gathering energy, because the contact finally moved— not enough, but it moved.

 

"May I help you?" asked a rich, resonant voice.

 

Tony started so violently he nearly leaped out of the circuit. Turning, he saw a distinguished-looking gentleman in a top hat and opera cape over a tuxedo, silver-headed walking stick in hand. His hair was silver, too, and so was his neatly-trimmed mustache.

 

"Who," Tony squeaked, "are you?"

 

"Horace Astin at your service." The old gent swept off his hat for an elaborate bow. "Member of the resident company of this theater back when it had one, in 1912. Collapsed in the wings right after my finest per-fonnance as Old Hamlet's Ghost. Perhaps that is why I prefer to haunt. Couldn't leave the theater, you know."

 

Tony didn't, but he did grasp the fact that there were now two spirits instead of one. "Think if we both jump on the contact, it might move?"

 

"It might," the ghost conceded, "but I have a simpler solution." He flipped his cane over and jammed the silver head between the contacts. With a snap, electrons flowed. Astin yanked his cane out.

 

Okay, the contact sprang up again, but it had only had to close once. Tony froze, listening to the horrendous noise of the car bomb that went on and on far longer than any explosion really could have—

and when it had almost died away, boomed again. The audience roared at the sound cue itself.

 

Trembling with relief, Tony wiped sweat from bis imaginary forehead. "Thanks very much, Mr.

Astin."

 

"Not at all, my good fellow. The show must go on, you know."

 

Tony didn't, but he wasn't about to say so. " 'Scuse me—gotta check on the action."

 

"Of course," Horace Astin said agreeably, and waved his hat as Tony sprang out of the laptop and peeked around the screen to see the stage. He was just in time to see Cassandro stagger back in through the door with the steering wheel around his neck—and the audience went wild, rocking the walls with laughter, hooting and cheering.

 

Rally slept blissfully through it all.

 

When the laughter began to slacken, I said, "Go Cue Sixty-five—curtain down!"

 

The curtain fell and the applause crashed on my free ear. I glanced at the stage, saw the actors lined up trembling with eagerness, and said, "Curtain up."

 

The applause grew even louder. The cast all bowed, straightened up, waited a second, then bowed again.

 

"Curtain down," I said.

 

As soon as it touched the stage floor, Andy was gesturing at me to raise it again. I waited a few seconds to build audience desire, then said, "Curtain up."

 

Another wave of applause hit, and the actors bowed again.

 

After five curtain calls, I decided enough was enough and called, "Go houselights."

 

The applause slackened, and the murmuring began as the audience gathered up their purses and hats and started for the door.

 

 

The actors came running to berate me, everyone sure they could have milked the applause for one more bow at least, but I wasn't there to tell them that the audience would have realized it was being milked and would have resented it. No, by the time they got to the stage manager's desk, I was halfway to the light booth to see what was the matter with Rally.

 

He was sound asleep.

 

Rally was sitting slumped forward with his head on his arms, a laptop to either side and a plastic cup knocked on its side next to his forearm. I picked up the glass and took a sniff. That definitely wasn't ginger ale. So the whole cast had been drinking champagne during intermission—just one very small glass, apparently, or it would have thrown their timing off—and one of them, not wanting to be selfish, had brought Rally a glass. I had a notion that if I could have afforded a chemical analysis, I would have found more in it than fermented grape juice.

 

Lyle edged in the door—sideways was the only way he would fit, and even then he had to duck—

and stared at Rally. "What happened to him?"

 

"We'll never know," I said, "and neither will he, I suspect. You want to grab his shoulders, Lyle?

We oughta get him to bed."

 

Lyle took Rally's shoulders, and I took his feet. As we went out the door, Lyle said, "There's a pile of old curtains in one of the stage-left dressing rooms."

 

"Flame-proofing," I warned. "If it's old enough, traces can get in the dust."

 

"So we throw a tarp over them," Lyle said. "I'll take first shift."

 

"Yeah, Rally shouldn't wake up in a strange place alone," I agreed. "Who's gonna cover for him tonight?"

 

"The local hand," Lyle grunted. "Let her do something while she's watching. Doesn't this count as a criminal offense, Jack?"

 

"What, slipping him a mickey? It's not enough to call the cops in for. Besides, the last thing I want is for us to get bogged down with the local law."

 

"Yeah, they might make us stay around for a couple of days." Lyle looked up at me. "Who do you think did it, Jack?"

 

"I don't know," I grunted, "but suddenly I'm beginning to suspect that all those 'accidents' that have been happening, may not have been so accidental after all."

 

Lyle was silent as we eased Rally out of the door to the balcony lobby and started down the main stairs. Then he said, "That almost-fight last night—you could say Jory got us into it…"

 

"What, by trying to get that local to quit drooling into Dulcie's neckline? Might as well say Dulcie started it by being so desirable."

 

But he had a point. I was going to have to review all the accidents and see where Jory had been a few minutes before.

 

Tony hated to leave Jack to his detective work alone, but he had a date with Sandy that night—at least, he hoped he did. Besides, St. Vidicon must have had him on a bungee cord or something, because the theater lobby grew redder and redder until Tony seemed to be swimming in wine. Then the wine developed lumps that turned into shapes, and he found he was walking down the maroon hallway again by Father Vidicon's side. "Thanks, Father. We got 'em through that one, anyway."

 

"The rest is their own concern," Father Vidicon said, "that is, until they call upon us again."

 

It was nice of the priest to include him, but he knew nobody was going to call upon Saint Tony.

Besides, the way he was feeling toward Sandy was scarcely saintly. "I'd better wake up," Tony said.

"Don't want to be late for work."

 

"Perish the thought," Father Vidicon agreed. "Remember, Tony—no closer than six inches."

 

Sandy and Tony were quite well behaved for several weeks after that, going to the theater and the ballet and the movies and spending Saturdays and most of Sundays together, roaming the city. Once she asked to see his apartment, which of course ended with a little light cuddling before they resolutely went back out to see if they could find any new sights.

 

There were minutes of very agreeable silence, staring into each other's eyes or gazing at the scenery in the park while they held hands, but most of the time, they were talking—sometimes serious, sometimes not, sometimes reducing each other to bundles of laughter. At work, Tony found it hard to concentrate on the latest problem he was trouble-shooting—images of Sandy kept popping up over the screenful of code.

 

After each date, though, he did see her home, and she always invited him in for brandy, and the chats always turned into cuddling sessions, which Tony usually managed to end before they turned into outright fore-play.

 

Finally, one night when he managed to stop, and said, "I… I'd better go," she turned cold as ice. "If you do, don't come back."

 

"What? I… I don't understand."

 

"You can't keep doing this to me! You can't keep getting me all worked up, then run out on me!"

 

 

"I don't mean to …"

 

"Don't mean to frustrate me? Don't mean to leave me hanging? But you do it."

 

"Only respect…"

 

"Or cowardice? What are you afraid of, anyway, Tony? Are women really all that frightening?"

 

"Not at all. You're wonderful creatures, you more than any."

 

"And your idea of proving that is to walk out on me?"

 

"You haven't said 'yes' yet."

 

"What do you think I'm saying now?"

 

"Not to the right question! If this doesn't work out between us, I don't want you doubly hurt!"

 

"It's gone too far for that already," Sandy said, her voice shaking. "Why? Are you planning to run out on me?"

 

"No, of course not! I want it to work out, want it to last forever! But you only want it for the moment!"

 

"Enough moments add up to a lifetime," Sandy returned, "and if they don't, I might as well have gotten something out of it. If I'm going to suffer the agony, I damn well want to have the ecstasy first, don't you think?"

 

A sudden stillness came over Tony, a sudden certainty. "I don't think you should have to suffer at all." He stood up. "Let me know when you're ready to hear me ask the right question." He caught up his jacket and went to the door.

 

Sandy caught up with him before he turned the knob and pressed it shut. "What if I don't believe in marriage?"

 

"It exists," Tony said.

 

"Oh sure, people get married, but I've never seen it work out the way it's supposed to! A lifetime of wrangling and quarreling, or some really bitter fights before a divorce—why take the chance?"

 

"Because I have seen it work out," Tony said. "Okay, not with joy and symphonies every step of the way, but I've seen couples in their sixties still together, still loving each other."

 

 

"Loving each other again," Sandy corrected, "And I notice you don't say still in love."

 

"No," Tony said. "The priest doesn't work magic when he says the words. There are rough spots, sometimes rough years, but people can make it work, and when they're in their sixties, they're awfully glad they did."

 

"After they fell out of love but had to keep living together," Sandy said. "I'm sorry, Tony, but I don't want to wait until I'm sixty-five to be happy."

 

"I don't want to wait either," Tony said softly, "but I will if I have to."

 

Sandy stared in surprize, and her hold on the door weakened enough for Tony to open it. She made a wild grab, but he stepped toward the opening, and she jolted into him, face-to-face. He kissed her, sweetly, sadly, then leaned back to gaze into her eyes, and whispered, "Good night."

 

He stepped out into the hall before she snapped, "Good-bye!" and slammed the door behind him.

 

Of course Tony knew he'd been really stupid, turning down an invitation like that. Any man in his right mind would have leaped at the chance to jump into bed with a beauty like Sandy. Did that constitute getting serious or just taking advantage? Or did all those dates with no sign of anything more than petting constitute taking advantage? He supposed sex could be interpreted as a sign of getting serious, though he'd known a lot of men for whom it was anything but.

 

"This is all your fault, you know," he told Father Vidicon in a dream that night. "I never thought of sex as a sin until I met you."

 

"Ah, the sad state of Catholic education!" Father Vidicon sighed. "I see that Finagle is afoot even in popular culture."

 

"Probably more there than anywhere," Tony said glumly. "Our TV sets tell us 'Go, go!' but the schools and the preachers tell us, 'Don't, don't!'"

 

"There is good sense in it," Father Vidicon said. "Sex should involve emotional commitment, Tony, and does when a woman is young. The heartbreak of the first break-up is far worse if bodies have been involved."

 

"I suppose so," Tony said, "but that's what a priest is supposed to say."

 

"Tony! You don't think I'd mislead you?"

 

"Not willingly," Tony said, "though you haven't been entirely forthcoming either."

 

 

"Me?" Father Vidicon cried in genuine surprize. "What information have I withheld from you?"

 

"Now that you ask," Tony said, "I've found myself wondering what you're doing while I'm off fighting little gremlkins."

 

"Those interludes do have their interesting sides."

 

"What about that run-in you had while I was convoying Gadget and Nick? You were fighting the minion who lay behind all their troubles, weren't you?"

 

"In a manner of speaking," St. Vidicon admitted.

 

Tony counted five paces, waiting for the priest to go on. When he didn't, Tony prodded, "You going to tell me about it?"

 

"Why bother?" Father Vidicon asked. "You can read about it on your computer."

 

"Hey, I've earned the right to hear about it from the horse's mouth! I mean …"

 

Father Vidicon laughed. "No offense taken, Tony. Well, enough; if you really want to know what happened, I'll tell you. Let's walk while we talk, though, shall we?" He set off down the hall, and as he told the story, his voice began to fall into the Renaissance rhythms and patterns of King James's scholars.

 

Saint Vidicon strode bravely onward through the throat of Hell. He was newly martyred, having died in place of a resistor, that the word of His Holiness the Pope might reach unto every corner of the world for the saving of its souls—but even ere he had come to Heaven, he had found himself pitted against the Imp of the Perverse, that he might achieve governance over the spirit of self-defeat, for the glory of God and the salvation of all who labor with video or keyboard. Yet having routed the Imp, he did not seek escape, but strode ahead in answer to the call he felt, the new vocation the Lord had given.

 

As he went, the crimson of the walls about him darkened down toward ruby, then darkened further still, toward purple. Protuberances began to rise from the floor, each taller than the last, excrescences that did stand upon slender stalks as high as his waist. Then did their tips begin to broaden and to swell until he saw that, every few paces, he did pass a glowing ball that stood by his hip. And he did see a strip upon the ceiling that did widen, with decorations that did glow upon it, curlicues and arabesques. It sprouted chandeliers, and square they were, or rectangular, and they did hang down from chains at each corner. Yet neither were they chains, but cables or, aye, rods. "These are like to tables," Father Vidicon did murmur. "Tables inverted." Then he did notice that a bulge, extruding from the ceiling, did broaden out, then sprouted upon a side. The good father frowned and bethought him, "

 

"Tis like unto a chair." And it was, in truth.

 

 

Thus did the saint realize that he did pace upon the ceiling of a hallway with a strip of carpet oriental, and with chairs and tables hanging above his head. And Lo! He did pass by a mirror set into the wall that did glow with the maroon of the wall across from it, and as he did step past, he saw himself inverted, with chest and hip vanishing upward. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head to rid himself of the sight, and when he did ope them, he did see that the walls now did flow past him toward his front; indeed, the mirror did slide past a second time, from back to fore. With every step he took, the walls went farther past, and dizziness did claim him. Then did thrills of danger course through his nerves, for he saw that he had come upon a region of inversion, where all was upside down and progress turned to regress, where every step forward took him two steps backward, and all was opposite to how it should have been. "I near the demon," the saint bethought himself, and knew that he came nigh the Spirit of Illogic.

 

Yet Saint Vidicon perceived that he could not approach that spirit unless it chanced that he might discover some way to progress. He stopped; the motion of the wall stopped with him, as it should; and Father Vidicon did grin with delight, then took one step backward. In truth, the wall did then move from front to back. He laughed with joy and set off, walking backward. The mirror slid past him again, going from the front, then toward the back, as was fit and proper. So thus, retreating ever, Father Vidicon went onward toward the Spirit of Contrariness.

 

And Lo! The spirit did come nigh.

 

The spirit approached, though he moved not; for he stood, arms akimbo, feet apart, sailing at Father Vidicon as he watched the good saint come; and the spirit's eyes were shielded behind two curving planes of darkness. From head to foot he was clothed in khaki, aye, even to his shirt, where it did show between lapels, and his necktie was of brown. Cleanshaven he was, and long-faced, smiling with delight full cynical, crowned with a cap high-peaked with a polished visor, and insigniae did gleam upon his shoulder boards.

 

Then Father Vidicon did halt some paces distant, filled with wariness, and quoth he, "I know thee, Spirit—for thou art Murphy!"

 

But, "Nay," quoth the spirit, "I am someone else by that same name."

 

Father Vidicon's face did darken then. "Deceive me not. Thou it is who hath enunciated that fell principle by which all human projects come to doom."

 

"No mortal man or woman declared that phrase," the spirit replied. "It sprang to life of itself among the living, and none on earth know why."

 

Father Vidicon frowned. "Dost thou say thou art a Form Platonic, an essence of that source within humans that doth enunciate perversity and doom?"

 

"The doom's within the doer," the spirit answered, "How may I exorcize it? Nay, 'tis they who bring it out, not I."

 

"Thou speakest false, fell foe!" Father Vidicon did cry. "Well thou dost know the wish to fail is buried deep in most and, left to lie, would sleep quiescent. 'Tis thou dost invest each mortal, thou who doth nurture and encourage that doom-laden wish!"

 

But the spirit's smile remained, untouched. "If I do, what boots it? Wouldst thou truly blame me for encouragement?"

 

"For nurture of foul folly, aye! As thou wouldst know, if thou didst not look upon the world through the fell filter of Inversion!" Thereupon did Father Vidicon leap forth to seize those darkened lenses of the spirit, to rip away the shadow's shades, crying, "Look not through your glasses, darkly!"

 

They came away within his hand, yet not only those dark lenses, but all the face, peeling off the spirit's head like to a shrivelled husk, exposing there within a mass of hair.

 

Father Vidicon gazed on the coiffure, stunned.

 

Slowly, then the spirit turned, hair sliding aside to show another face. Hooded eyes now gazed upon the saint, darkened indeed, but not in frames; for his eyes were naught but frosted glass, and his twisting mouth a grinning grimace.

 

Father Vidicon did swallow thickly and looked down into his hands, where he beheld the back side of the empty mask. 'Truth," he cried, "I should have thought! Thou has backward worn they wear!"

 

But the spirit chortled then, "Not so! Behold my buskins!"

 

Then Father Vidicon looked down and found that the spirit spoke in sooth. The heels of his shoes were there, and his toes did point away upon the other side. "Alas!" the good saint cried, "What boots it?" Then up he raised his gaze, and did declare, "Thy head's on backward!"

 

"In sooth." The spirit grinned. "Wouldst thou expect aught else?"

 

"Nay, surely!" Father Vidicon now clamped his jaw and folded all his features in a frown. "I should have known! Thou art the jaundiced Janus!"

 

'Two-faced in truth," the spirit did agree.

 

"That thou art not! Truth there cannot be in him who's two-faced. Thine hinder face was false!"

 

"What else?" The spirit shrugged. "Yet canst thou be sure? Mayhap another countenance doth lie beneath my hair, and I have truly eyes behind, as well as those before."

 

 

"Nay, that sight must be seen," the saint then said, and looking up to Heaven, he did pray: "Good Father, now forgive! That in my false pride and folly, I did think myself so fit for fighting such ectoplasmic enemies. I pray Thee now Thine aid to give, and send me here a weapon to withstand this Worker of our Woe!"

 

But the spirit chuckled. "What idle plea is this? What instrument could thy Patron place in thy palm that could reverse the perverse?"

 

A spark of light did gleam within the good priest's hand, glaring and glowing into glass, and Father Vidicon held up a mirror.

 

His foe laughed outright. "What! Wilt thou then fight the Spirit of Defeat with so small a service?"

 

"Aye," quoth Father Vidicon, "if it shows truly."

 

"Nay—for 'tis 'DARKLY, through a glass.' Dost thou not recall?"

 

But Father Vidicon held up the mirror to reflect the spirit's face into his eyes.

 

"Nay, I have another, then!" it cried. One arm slipped backward into its inner pocket and did whisk out another glass, a foot or more in width, and opposed it to the plate the good saint held, reflecting back reflections into the Reverend's regard.

 

"It will not serve!" the good priest cried, and even as he spoke, his mirror grew to half again the size of the spirit's, throwing back into its eyes the sight of its own face with a glass beside it, within which was his face, with a frame, within a face. The spirit shrieked and yanked his own glass aside, away, but its image held within the priest's reflector. "'Tis too late to take away!" the good priest cried.

"Dost thou not see thou hast begun a feedback uncontrolled?"

 

And so it was.

 

"It cannot serve!" the spirit wailed. "No feedback can sustain without a power input!"

 

"I have the Input of the greatest Power that doth exist," Saint Vidicon explained with quiet calm.

"All power in the Universe doth flow from this one Source!"

 

The mirror grew still brighter within the view of each—brighter then and brighter, white-hot, flaring, burning up the image of the Imp, and as its image burned, so did the spirit itself. For, "In truth,"

quoth Father Vidicon, "thou art naught BUT image."

 

Thus with wailing howl, the spirit frayed and dwindled, shimmering, burned to tatters, and was gone.

 

 

"So, at bottom, he was, at most, a hologram," Father Vidicon mused, "and what was formed by mirrors can by them be undone."

 

He laid the glass that had swallowed the spirit most carefully on its face and, folding his hands, cast his gaze upward. "Good Lord, I give Thee thanks that Thou hast preserved Thine unworthy servant a second time from such destruction! I pray Thee only that Thou wilt vouchsafe to me the strength of soul and humility that I will need to confront whatever adversary Thou wilt oppose to me."

 

The mirror winked, and glimmered, and was gone.

 

Father Vidicon gazed upon the place where it had been and sighed "I thank Thee, Lord, that thou hast heard me. Preserve me, thus, I pray, 'gainst all other hazards that may hover."

 

So saying, then, he signed himself with the Cross, and stood, and strode on farther down toward Hell.

 

But as Tony had been reading, Father Vidicon's words had been turning into print, scrolling upward

— and by the time they had turned into letters on a computer screen, he had been too much engrossed in the story to complain. Now that it was finished, he was too happy with the ending to feel cheated. After all, that was one fight every engineer wanted to win.

 

Anyway, it had taken his mind off Sandy for a little while.

 

A little. Now all he could think about was her, again.

 

"Sandy, honey, what's the matter?"

 

"Oh, nothing, Rachel." Sandy dabbed furiously with her hanky, blotting the tears.

 

"Nothing?" I find my friend crying in the bathroom and it's nothing? Tell Rachel what it really is."

 

"Just a mood." Sandy took out her compact and started trying to make repairs. She froze for a moment, repulsed by the tear-stained face in the mirror, then patted on more foundation with renewed vigor.

 

"What's his name?"

 

Sandy froze again, then went back to her makeup.

 

Rachel's eyes widened. "It's that computer guy, isn't it? The one I saw you with at Nepenthe the other night! What's the matter, honey? Did he dump you?"

 

"No, no, it's not his fault!" Sandy cried in alarm.

 

 

"So it is him!" Rachel came forward, arms wide. "Oh, poor Sandy! What did he do?"

 

"Nothing." Sandy's voice broke on the word. She tried to ignore it, tucking her compact away.

 

"Oh," Rachel said, and her tone spoke volumes. "That's too bad, honey. He seemed like such a nice guy."

 

"He is." Appalled, Sandy felt the tears starting again. "Oh Rachel, I think I did something really stupid."

 

When Tony was about worn-out with writing letters he didn't mail and moping in the doldrums, he acknowledged that his fascination with Sandy wasn't going to wear off and felt doom settle over him. He headed for bed, hoping things would look better in the morning, and finally managed to drift into sleep in spite of the images of Sandy that kept flashing and fading before his eyes. It wasn't much, as sleeps go, so he wasn't all that surprized to find himself walking down the maroon corridor next to Father Vidicon.

 

"You did as your conscience told you, Tony," Father Vidicon said. "You knew you'd be taking advantage of her, and you refused to."

 

"Any man in his right mind would have taken advantage of her!"

 

"Then it's a good thing you're not in your right mind." Father Vidicon clapped him on the shoulder.

"Cheer up! If she's really in love with you, she'll bolster her courage and marry you."

 

"So if she doesn't want to marry me, she must not really be in love with me," Tony said glumly

"That's not all that reassuring, Father Vidicon."

 

"And you think that if you accepted her offer, not to say blackmail, it might grow into a marriage?"

 

"In fact if not in name?" Tony shrugged. "There would be a chance, at least."

 

"Have faith in the young woman, Tony—and have faith in yourself. Give her a while to think it over before you do anything drastic."

 

"Give her a while. Yeah. Sure. Just how am I supposed to keep from going crazy while I'm waiting?"

 

"Well, as to that," St. Vidicon said, "I did have something in mind."

 

Chapter 15

 

 

Nancy loved the Merchant Marine—the long watches where a person had time to think, away from the noise and crowding of the cities and the prying and gossiping of the small towns. And it wasn't lonely; there were three other people on the crew, so she always had two others for company at dinner and, if she wanted, a chat over the intercom during her shift. Since they rotated watches, it wasn't always the same two, either—one week it would be Bruno and Sylvie for her companions, the next it would be Sylvie and Aubrey, the third it would be Aubrey and Alice. Of course, if there had been a larger crew, the way there had been back at the beginning of the Twenty-first century, rivalries might have cropped up, maybe even that old superstition against having women on board—but in the year 2052, automation was so advanced that one person alone could supervise the day-to-day running of a factory and a crew of four could navigate a tanker the size of three football fields.

 

Of course, if those four hadn't gotten along with each other, it could have been a minor hell—but in 2052, the company psychologists did a good job matching people, and since they all had sex-drive suppressant shots before they boarded ship, the ugly possibilities of jealousies and rivalries never arose.

All in all, it was a very good life—as long as all the equipment was working.

 

Truth to tell, Nancy would have vastly preferred to be aboard a ship that was hauling bananas, or cargo containers, or virtually anything but oil. Fortunately, biofuels had reduced the need to ship the stuff, but some countries who didn't have their own oil still did booming business manufacturing plastics, so here she was steering a million barrels of petroleum from the Persian Gulf across the Atlantic Ocean.

 

Tonight, though, the satellite navigation system had gone out.

 

Nightmares of the horrendous oil-tanker wrecks and petroleum spills of the last century haunted Nancy as she ran the diagnostic program on her navigation computer.

 

"Is it something we can fix?" the intercom asked in Bruno's anxious voice.

 

"Doesn't seem to be." Nancy bit her lip. "The computer says it's working fine. Must be the antenna coming in, or the satellite itself.'"

 

"We can check the antenna, anyway," Sylvie's voice said.

 

"Not at night, please," Nancy said firmly. She went around in back of the console. "I'd just as soon not lose one of you and have to blame myself… No, the antenna connection's in and solid." She didn't tell them her nasty sneaking suspicion—that if the computer could malfunction, so could its diagnostic program. Admittedly, the chances of that happening had to be a million to one, but she was beginning to feel that somebody in there had it in for her.

 

And her shipmates.

 

"So what do we do?" Sylvie asked, dread echoing in her voice. "Drop sea-anchors and call for help?"

 

"The calling for help part sounds good," Nancy agreed. "Bruno, drop anchor."

 

"Right," Bruno said.

 

The "anchor" was only metaphorical, this far out at sea; in 2052 it was really a program that adjusted the ship's screws to hold the massive tanker more or less in one place, as much as you could measure "place" in the middle of a trackless expanse of water.

 

"Uh-oh," Bruno said.

 

Nancy's stomach dropped. "I know what the 'uh' was, but what's the 'oh'?"

 

"The sea-anchor isn't holding."

 

Nancy's stomach hollowed. "Run the diagnostic program."

 

"Will do."

 

Nancy waited, biting her lip and hoping—but her stomach was so hollow that a cuttlefish was thinking of taking up residency.

 

"The diagnostic program is hanging,"

 

"Hanging?" Sylvie cried. "That computer's guaranteed against hanging or locking up!"

 

"I think the warranty just ran out," Bruno told her. "Okay, Nancy, you're the navigator—what do we do?"

 

"We'll have to steer by the stars."

 

"Do you know the stars that well?" Bruno asked, voice heavy with doubt.

 

"Second thing they made us learn in navigator school," Nancy assured him.

 

"What was the first?"

 

"How to use the old tools—sextant, compass, clock, even cross-staff."

 

"Oh." Bruno packed massive relief into one word. "So as long as you can see the stars, we're okay."

 

 

"Okay," Nancy agreed, "but I want to stay well away from the coast until daylight." She looked up at the stars through the transparent ceiling. "We're headed west southwest." She glanced at the wall clock that said "GREENWICH" under it in big letters. "Sixty-three degrees east longitude." Back up at the stars, guessing Polaris's angle above the horizon, at 2:00 A.M. local time … "Can't be sure of the latitude, but we should be about twenty degrees northward."

 

"That puts us out in the middle of the ocean, doesn't it?" Sylvie asked, relieved.

 

"Far enough out that there shouldn't be a problem," Nancy agreed. "Bruno, I'll have to call you course corrections to hold us in place."

 

"Will do."

 

Nancy felt the throbbing of the great engines slacken, almost die. "Maintaining headway?"

 

"Screws turning over just enough," Bruno assured her. "I'll cut in the nose screws just a little to make sure our bearing doesn't drift."

 

Nancy felt the high-pitched vibration begin, though she didn't hear anything, of course—the insulation was too good for that.

 

"Uh, Nancy," Sylvie said, her voice full of foreboding.

 

"What is it, Sylvie?"

 

"You're not gonna like the weather."

 

Nancy looked up just in time to see Polaris disappear. The cuttlefish in her stomach wrapped its tentacles around her spine. "I'll get out the compass."

 

"Maybe it's just overcast." Bruno was forcing the optimism.

 

"I don't like the odds," Sylvie said.

 

"Me neither," Bruno agreed. "What are the chances of a storm blowing up just when our GPS

system goes out?"

 

"We can still hope those clouds aren't bringing a storm," Sylvie answered.

 

Nancy did more than hope—she knew what improbable coincidences meant. As she opened the emergency closet and hauled out the compass, she muttered, "St. Vidicon, protect us from Finagle!"

 

The sensation of being sucked down a drain was familiar to Tony now. What wasn't, was where he would end up. As the location stabilized, he looked around him and discovered he was in his element—

silicon. "Inside a computer again," he breathed, and relaxed.

 

But the silicon turned translucent and he saw tentacles waving. As they came closer, the silicon turned transparent, and he saw two huge baleful eyes follow the tentacles. Tony stared—what was a squid doing inside a computer?

 

Of course—more hands to twist potentials wrong.

 

"Who are you?" Tony demanded.

 

"I am the scuttlefish," the squid answered in hollow tones.

 

Tony began to develop a very bad feeling. "Scuttle" meant sinking a ship. "I take it we're all at sea."

 

"You surely are," the scuttlefish answered. "What do you here, small and soft one?"

 

Yes, definitely a very bad feeling. "I'm going to keep this tanker from driving ashore and being wrecked on a rock."

 

"Oh no, you must not do that," the scuttlefish chided.

 

"The tanker must crash and the oil must spill—worse than any oil spill your kind have wrought.

Only then will the people of the world rise in protest; only then will governments band together to outlaw the shipping of rock-oil. No, this ship must lose its way and shiver upon the rocks."

 

Tony shuddered. "What a horrible thought!"

 

"I find it delightful," the scuttlefish returned.

 

"But the death! The misery! The birds who won't be able to fly because the oil will glue their feathers to their bodies! The otters and other sea animals who will die slicked with slime!"

 

"Indeed," the scuttlefish agreed. "It is for their sakes that the governments will unite."

 

"But all the fish who will be poisoned, the fishermen who will starve from empty nets!"

 

"Oh, not starve, surely," the scuttlefish said. "Your kind is adept at keeping their own from starvation when they want to. No, they may lose their boats, may lose their houses, but they shall not starve."

 

"They won't lose anything if I can help it!" Tony pushed himself upward, swimming through silicon, twisting and turning through the trails of circuits.

 

Something caught his ankle and pulled him back. "You shall not go. The rocks must wreck the ship."

 

Looking down, Tony saw a tentacle wrap around his ankle and another arrowing toward his other ankle. "Let go!"

 

"Begone," the scuttlefish retorted. "You have the power to disappear, to go back whence you came.

If you do not, I shall hold you here—or draw you in."

 

Other tentacles lifted, and for the first time Tony saw the glistening beak at their center—but the squid had given him an idea. "The disappearing part makes sense, at least." And he did.

 

He reappeared on the surface of the chip. Here, there was no illumination of electrons rushing through conductors—but Tony seemed to be emitting a glow of his own. By it, he searched the circuit board. The first thing to check, of course, was the antenna dish's connection. He oriented himself by the glimmer of microwave radiation and went toward it.

 

"Forfend, foolish mortal!"

 

Looking back, Tony saw tentacles slap onto the edge of the chip and the arrow-shape of the scuttlefish's top rise. He didn't wait to see the eyes but ran toward the antenna signal's glimmer.

 

"I have ten legs! I can move more quickly than you!"

 

"They're arms." Tony came to the edge of the board and looked over. "I don't know about you, but I can't walk on my hands too well."

 

"I can! Disappear while you may!"

 

"Got to finish my job first." Tony saw that the connection from the dish's lead seemed solidly connected. He dived into it to investigate—and heard a bellow of anger behind him.

 

He swam through silicon, following the glow of electron flow, knowing he would have to be quick, because once it was back inside the chip, the scuttlefish would be able to move faster than he—at least, if its jet worked the way its real cousins' did, in water.

 

Suddenly he was in darkness.

 

Tony could have shouted "Eureka!" because found it he had—the source of the malfunction, or rather its site. He traced the circuit flow backward until he saw light again, and saw that it stopped where another chip was plugged into the board. He ran from chip to chip, figuring out the logic of the circuit board, and realized that the darkened chip was the one that converted the incoming signal from microwave frequency in gigahertz, down to something the rest of the circuit could handle more easily—

megahertz, the frequency range of I'M radio. He knelt to peer at the base—and saw that the chip was halfway out of its socket. Something had jarred the GPS receiver hard enough to loosen this component.

 

Or something wedge-shaped had driven in and pried it loose—something very slender at the tip but that thickened amazingly, something that was very strong— or both.

 

"Foolish mortal, I come!"

 

Turning, Tony saw the squid slithering along the surface of the board. Sure enough, if it couldn't swim, it couldn't move very fast.

 

Fast enough, though. Tony would have to think of some way to jar this chip back into place, and he'd have to do it quickly.

 

Very quickly.

 

"Nancy, do you hear a moaning?"

 

Nancy looked up in alarm, then ran to look at the night-vision screen. She cranked up the gain, zoomed in to the limit—and saw spray rising into the air. "It's waves crashing on a reef! Bruno, what's the report on the sea-anchor?"

 

"It's doing the best it can." Bruno was silent a moment, checking his screen, then said, "No, we're holding steady. Sure, the current's been carrying us north-northeast at six knots, but we're holding our place in it."

 

"We must have been a lot closer to shore than I thought."

 

"What shore?" Sylvie's voice asked.

 

"I don't know!" Nancy cried. "I thought it was the Canaries, but they shouldn't have been this close!

 

Bruno, turn the helm seaward one hundred eighty degrees—south-southwestward! And give us full power!"

 

"Will do." But Bruno's voice was strained. "Don't know if we can counter this current, though—it's pretty strong."

 

Nancy felt the whole ship come alive with the throbbing of the huge engines, and the spray stopped growing larger in the scope.

 

 

Well, it almost stopped.

 

"That's good, Bruno, that's a lot better, but we're still drifting shoreward!"

 

"That's all the power I've got, Nancy."

 

Nancy felt as though she were shrivelling. At least it would take them a lot longer before the tanker broke open on the rocks.

 

Maybe until daybreak. If there were light, a rescue tow could find them—if she could tell their position to the Coast Guard of whatever country they were approaching. And she could, if only the GPS

would kick back in.

 

"St. Vidicon, protect us from Finagle!"

 

Tony reminded himself that at a quarter of an inch in height but with ordinary human proportions, he had a lot more strength than he was used to—probably even stronger than an ant, proportionately. He gathered himself and leaped.

 

The scuttlefish cried out in anger as Tony soared through the air and landed on top of the wayward chip—not that it did any good; his disembodied self was a spirit, after all, and might have had a great deal of energy but also had absolutely no mass.

 

All right, use energy. Tony ran to the higher edge of the chip, the one whose pins were actually out of their sockets, and jumped. He couldn't leap very high, of course—the cover of the unit was only half an inch above his head—but he landed sitting on the edge.

 

No result—nothing—as far as he could tell, his energy hadn't done anything, not without mass to give it downward force.

 

Something made a slapping sound.

 

Tony leaped up, turning, and saw a tentacle tip hooked over the far end of the chip. Another slap and another, and five tentacle tips had lined up beside it. The fleshy arrowhead of the scuttlefish's end rose into view—and Tony realized what he was going to do.

 

The scuttlefish's eyes came into view. "Foolish fellow! Do you not know you are spirit only and can do nothing here?"

 

"Maybe," Tony said, "but if I really believe I have a form, maybe I can have the characteristics of that form— such as strength and weight!"

 

"Ridiculous!" the scuttlefish snapped, but perhaps too quickly, too angrily. "You are nothing but an idea and a small one at that, not a bonfire but a candle flame, and as such can be quickly snuffed!" It lowered its arrowhead and launched itself at Tony.

 

The surf moaned on the rocks, and Nancy glanced quickly over her shoulder. In the predawn half-light, she could see the spray shooting high as the waves crashed on the reef, now only a quarter of a mile away. In minutes the surf would lift the tanker high, then drop it on the reef; it would break open, spilling a million barrels of oil into the sea, killing fish, killing kelp, slicking marine mammals with oil…

 

And probably killing herself and her shipmates with it. "St. Vidicon," she cried, "if you're going to do anything, please do it fast!"

 

"Who's St. Vidicon?" Sylvie's voice asked, but Nancy didn't have time to tell her. A huge wave rose under the tanker's bow, lifting it high, bearing it toward the reef.

 

Tony stood tall, a clear target for the scuttlefish, waiting as the fleshy arrowhead shot toward him.

At the last second, he leaped high. The scuttlefish hissed in anger and swerved up toward him.

 

Tony shot through the casing and emerged into the darkness of the bridge but didn't have time to notice; he heard a faint but distinct "bong" and dived right back into the receiver. He shot past the slanting bulk of the scuttlefish, jammed between chip and casing, on down to its tentacles. One great circular eye stared at him as the scuttlefish thrashed its tentacles, trying to reach him—and in the process, started to straighten. Tony thumbed his nose at the monster; the scuttlefish roared in anger and thrashed its tentacles in an effort to grab the insolent mortal who dared defy it—and jammed its length more and more solidly between casing and chip. As it thrashed, its body pushed the chip downward ever so slightly. The scuttlefish was so intent on its prize that it didn't notice, but Tony did—noticed the glowing trails of electron flow, and knew the GPS system was working again.

 

"Mayday, mayday!" Nancy called into the radio. "USS oil tanker Fortune is stranded without navigation!"

 

"Coast Guard here," answered an accented voice. "Can you see any landmarks, Fortune?"

 

Nancy couldn't restrain a shout of joy. It almost drowned out the mellow tone of the GPS system coming back on-line. She whirled to stare, then grinned, and said to her screen, "Correction—we have our navigation system back." Then, remembering that the fix might not last, she read the Coast Guard her position, reading off the GPS screen, then added, "We have our engines at full power, but we seem to be caught in a rip tide that's driving us onto …"

 

"Onto Fortress Reef!" the radio answered her. "Do the best you can to hold your position, Fortune—

we'll have a tug to you as quickly as we can."

 

Nancy went limp with relief. "Thank Heaven—and thank you, Coast Guard."

 

 

"You're welcome. We want your oil in our refineries, not on our beaches."

 

Slowly, bit by bit, the current pushed the fighting tanker toward the reef. Nancy held her breath and hoped the Coast Guard would be there in time.

 

The chip jolted into place, creating just enough room for the scuttlefish to free itself. Realizing it had been tricked, it plunged toward Tony with a shriek of rage.

 

Tony leaped high, hands joined above his head to dive out of the GPS receiver. The scuttlefish was right behind him, both of them diminutive, both of them pure energy. Neither would have been visible in daylight, but the bridge was darkened, only a pool of light on Nancy's console, so out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a mite shooting past her and swung at it irritably, her attention on the receiver. Her palm missed Tony but swatted the scuttlefish, and it gave a high, thin shriek as it passed through her skin into the muscles of her palm.

 

Nancy frowned, wondering what the tiny noise had been, but she had other things to worry about—

worry a lot. What if the tug didn't get there in time? Maybe she should just get it over with quickly, turn the ship's bow toward the reef and let the engines drive them onto the rocks…

 

She gave herself a shake; what was she thinking of? The tug would get there in time, they would live, and so would the fish that swam off this coast. Relief gave rise to joy, and joy drowned out the momentary urge to self-defeat. She frowned, thinking she heard a high, thin sound again, then decided that it must have been the wind past the corner of the bridge.

 

Tony, however, heard the scuttlefish's wail of anger as it drowned in a rising tide of optimism, and knew that its last attempt to scuttle the ship, by shooting a suicidal impulse into the navigator's brain, had failed. He grinned, wishing Nancy well even as the darkened bridge seem to turn red, deep red. A floor of sorts pressed up against the soles of his feet, and he found himself walking on the yielding surface next to Father Vidicon.

 

"Well done, Tony!" The priest clapped him on the shoulder. "You saved a great many lives that time!"

 

"Yes, but only four of them human." Tony savored the taste of triumph.

 

"A life is a life," Father Vidicon said. "You also saved Nancy from her own private purgatory of self-blame, which she did not deserve."

 

"She didn't," Tony agreed, "but I'm afraid she'll have a small pessimistic streak running through her for the rest of her life."

 

"Nothing that her natural common sense can't overcome," St. Vidicon said, "something you might want to remember yourself, Tony. After all, it is time for you to wake up and rejoin the world of the living."

 

"Yes," Tony said, "the living, and Sandy! Good night, Father Vidicon."

 

"Good morning, Tony."

 

Tony woke up, feeling amazingly rested, considering what his spirit had been doing that night. He swung out of bed, debating how best to renew contact with Sandy. After all, a week and a half had gone by without seeing her, and Tony decided it was do-or-die time. He'd try once more to renew the relationship, but if she didn't want to, he'd have to stop and get used to life without her again. There was, after all, a very thin line between devotion and harassment. What was the worst that could happen?

 

Well, the worst was that she might tell him to get out of her life and stay out, but the way he was feeling now, even that would be an improvement. At least it would be something definite, even if it was only a definite ending.

 

He would just have to tell her that this would be his last attempt to get in contact, if she didn't want him to—but how best to say that?

 

Clear the way, Tony.

 

Tony frowned; the voice inside his head sounded suspiciously familiar—and it was also suspicious that, calm though it was, he could hear it over the city traffic as he walked the block from the subway to the office.

 

Still, the voice had a point—and Tony suddenly realized he could check and see how to phrase his next contact. He stopped into a florist's and ordered a dozen red roses. It helped knowing where Sandy worked.

 

Chapter 16

 

"Ms. Clavier?"

 

Sandy wrenched herself out of her unseeing trance and looked up at the delivery girl with Rachel hovering behind her.

 

The teenager handed her a long white box with a grin, but all she said was, "Sign here, please."

 

Sandy signed in a daze, then remembered to say, "Thank you."

 

"You're welcome, lucky lady." The kid popped her gum and went out the door.

 

 

Rachel was still hovering. "Come on, open it! I'm dying of curiosity!"

 

It didn't even occur to Sandy to tell her friend to mind her own business; she untied the ribbon with fingers that felt like sausages. The roses glowed at her like life restored.

 

"Oh Sandy, they're beautiful!"

 

Other co-workers looked up from their desks and exclaimed approval and envy as Sandy lifted the bouquet out of the box.

 

"Hold on, I'll find a vase!" Rachel bustled off.

 

That was fortunate—at least she wouldn't see Sandy open the card. She slid it out of the diminutive envelope and read:

 

I'm very sorry, but I can still hope.