XIX

Fourteen hours later I had moved only twentyfive kilometers east of where I had had to leave the tube system. An hour of that I had spent in shopping, most of an hour in eating, over two hours in close consultation with a specialist, a heavenly six hours in sleeping, and almost four in moving cautiously east parallel to the border fence without getting close to it-and now it was dawn and I did approach the fence, right up to it, and was walking it, a bored repairman.

Pembina is just a village; I had to go back to Fargo to find a specialist-a quick trip by local capsule. The specialist I wanted was the same sort as “Artists, Ltd.” of Vicksburg save that such entrepreneurs do not advertise in the Imperium; it took time and some cautious grease to find him. His office was downtown near Main Avenue and University Drive but it was behind a more conventional business; it would not easily be noticed.

I was still wearing the faded blue neodenim jump suit I had been wearing when I dived off the Skip to M’Lou, not through any special affection for it but because a one-piece blue suit of coarse cloth is the nearest thing to an international unisex costume you can find. It will get by even at Ell-Five or in Luna City, where a monokini is more likely. Add a scarf and a smart housewife will wear it to shop; carry a briefcase and you are a respected businessman; squat with a hatful of pencils and it’s a beggar’s garb. Since it is hard to soil, easy to clean, won’t wrinkle, and almost never wears out, it is ideal for a

courier who wishes to fade into the scene and can’t waste time or luggage on clothes.

To that jump suit had been added a greasy cap with “my” union badge pinned to it, a well-worn hip belt with old but serviceable tools, a bandolier of repair links over one shoulder and a torch kit to install them over the other.

Everything I had was well worn including my gloves. Zippered into my right hip pocket was an old leather wallet with IDs showing that I was “Hannah Jensen” of Moorhead. A worn newspaper clipping showed that I had been a high-school cheerleader; a spotted Red Cross card gave my blood type as 0 Rh pos sub 2 (which in fact it is) and credited me with having won my gallon pin-but the dates showed that I had neglected to donate for over six months.

Other mundane trivia gave Hannah a background in depth; she even carried a Visa card issued by Moorhead Savings and Loan Company-but on this item I had saved Boss more than a thousand crowns: Since I did not expect to use it, it lacked the invisible magnetic signature without which a credit card is merely a piece of plastic.

It was just full light and I had, I figured, a maximum of three hours to get through that fence-only that long because the real fence maintenance men started working then and I was most unanxious to meet one. Before that time Hannah Jensen should disappear… possibly to resurface in the late afternoon for a final effort. Today was go-for-broke; my cash crowns were used up. True, I still had my Imperium credit card-but I am extremely leery of electronic sleuths. Had my three attempts yesterday to call Boss, all with the same card, tripped some subprogram under which 1 could be identified? I seemed to have gotten away with using the card for tube fare immediately thereafter … but had I really escaped all electronic traps? I did not know and did not want to find out-I simply wanted to get through that fence.

I sauntered along, resisting a powerful urge to fall out of character by hurrying. I wanted a place where I could cut the fence without being watched, despite the fact that the ground was scorched for about fifty meters on each side of the fence. I had to accept that; what I wanted was a stretch shielded along the scorched band by trees and bush about like Normandy hedgerows.

Minnesota does not have Normandy hedgerows.

Northern Minnesota almost does not have trees-or at least not in the stretch of the border I was covering. I was ey~ing a piece of fence, trying to tell myself that a wide reach of open space with no one in sight was just as good as being shielded, when a police APV came into sight cruising slowly west along the fence. I gave them a friendly wave and kept on trudging east.

They circled, came back, and squatted, about fifty meters from me. I turned and went toward them, reaching the car as the best boy got out, followed by his driver, and I saw by their uniforms (hell, damn, and spit) that they were not Minnesota Provincial Police but Imperials.

Best boy says to me, “What are you doing here this early?”

His tone was aggressive; I answered it to match: “I was working, until you interrupted me.”

“The hell you say. You don’t go on until eight hundred hours.”

I answered, “Get the news, big man. That was last week. Two shifts now. First shift comes on at ‘can.’ Shifts change at noon; second shift goes off at ‘can’t.’

“Nobody notified us.”

“You want the Superintendent to write you a personal letter? Give me your badge number and I’ll tell him you said so.”

“None of your lip, slitch. I’d as lief run you in as look at you.”

“Go ahead. A day’s rest for me … while you explain why this stretch was not maintained.”

“Stow it.” They started climbing back in.

“Either of you turkeys got a toke?” I asked.

The driver said, “We don’t hit on duty and neither should you.”

“Brown nose,” I answered politely.

The driver started to reply, but best boy slammed the lid, and they took off-right over my head, forcing me to duck. I don’t think they liked me.

I went back to the fence while concluding that Hannah Jensen was not a lady. She had no excuse to be rude to the Greenies merely because they are unspeakably vile. Even black widows, body lice, and hyenas have to make a living although I could never see why.

I decided that my plans were not well thought out; Boss would not approve. Cutting that fence in broad daylight was too conspidu

ous. Better to pick a spot, then hide until dark, and return to it. Or spend the night on plan number two: Check the possibility of going under the fence at Roseau River.

I wasn’t too crazy about plan number two. The lower reach of the Mississippi had been warm enough but these northern streams would chill a corpse. I had checked the Pembina late the day before yesterday. Brrr! A last resort.

So pick a piece of fence, decide exactly how you are going to cut it, then try to find some trees, wrap yourself in some nice warm leaves, and wait for dark. Rehearse every move, so that you go through that fence like pee through snow.

At this point I topped a slight rise and came face to face with another maintenance man, male type.

When in doubt, attack. “What the hell are you doing, buster?”

“I’m walking the fence. My stretch of the fence. What are you doing, sister?”

“Oh, fer Gossake! I’m not your sister. And you are either on the wrong stretch or the wrong shift.” I noticed with unease that the well-dressed fence-walker carries a walkie-talkie. Well, I had not been one very long; I was still learning the job.

“Like hell,” he answered. “Under the new schedule I come on at dawn; I’m relieved at noon. Maybe by you, huh? Yeah, that’s probably it; you read the roster wrong. I had better call in.”

“You do that,” I said, moving toward him.

He hesitated. “On the other hand, maybe-” I did not hesitate.

I do not kill everyone with whom I have a difference of opinion and I would not want anyone reading this memoir to think that I do. I didn’t even hurt him other than temporarily and not much; I merely put him to sleep rather suddenly.

From a roll on my belt I taped his hands behind him and fastened his ankles together. If! had had some wide surgical tape, I would have gagged him but all I had was two-centimeter mechanics friction tape, and I was far more anxious to cut fence than I was to keep him horn yelling for help to the coyotes and jackrabbits. I got busy.

A torch good enough to repair fence will cut fence-but my torch was a bit better than that; I had bought it out the back door of Fargo’s leading fence (the other sort offence). It was a steel-cutting laser

rather than the oxyacetylene job it appeared to be. In moments I had a hole big enough, barely, for Friday. I stooped to leave.

“Hey, take me with you!”

I hesitated. He was saying insistently that he was just as anxious to get away from the goddam Greenies as I was-untie me!

What I did next is matched in folly only by Lot’s wife. I grabbed the knife at my belt, cut the tape at his wrists, at his ankles-dived through my scuttle hole and started to run. I didn’t wait to see whether or not he came through, too.

There was one of the rare stands of trees about half a kilometer north of me; I headed that way at a new record speed. That heavy tool belt impeded me; I shucked it without slowing. A moment later I brushed that cap off and “Hannah Jensen” went back to NeverNever Land, as torch, gloves, and repair links were still in the Imperium. All that was left of her was a wallet I would jettison when I was not so busy.

I got well inside the trees, then circled back and found a place to observe my back track, as I was uncomfortably aware that I was wearing a tail.

My late prisoner was about halfway from fence to trees … and two APVs were homing in on him. The one closer to him carried the big Maple Leaf of British Canada. I could not see the insigne on the other as it was headed right toward me, coming across the international boundary.

The BritCan police car grounded; my quondam guest appeared to surrender without argument-reasonable, as the APV from the Imperium grounded immediately thereafter, at least two hundred meters inside British Canada-and, yes, Imperial Police-possibly the car that had stopped me.

I’m not an international lawyer but I’m sure wars have started over less. I held my breath, extended my hearing to the limit, and listened.

There were no international lawyers among those two sorts of police, either; the argument was noisy but not coherent. The Imperials were demanding surrender of the refugee under the doctrine of hot pursuit and a Mountie corporal was maintaining (correctly, it seemed to me) that hot pursuit applied only to criminals caught in

the act, but the only “crime” here was entering British Canada not at a port of entry, a matter not lying in the jurisdiction of the Imperial Police. “Now get that crock off BritCan soil!”

The Greenie gave a monosyllabic nonresponse that annoyed the Mountie. He slammed the lid and spoke through his loudspeaker: “I arrest you for violation of British Canadian air and ground space. Get out and surrender. Do not attempt to take off.”

Whereupon the Greenies’ car took off at once and retreated across the international border-then went elsewhere. Which may have been exactly what the Mountie intended to accomplish. I held very still, as now they would have time to give their attention to me.

I assume conclusively that my companion escapee now paid me for his ticket through the fence: No search was made for me. Certainly he saw me run into the woods. But it is unlikely that the RCMP saw me. No doubt cutting the fence sounded alarms in police stations on both sides of the border; this would be a routine installation for electronics people-even to pinpointing the break-and so I had assumed in planning to do it fast.

But counting the number of warm bodies that passed through a gap would be a separate electronics problem-not impossible but an added expense that might not be considered worthwhile. As may be, my nameless companion did not snitch on me; no one came looking for me. After a time a BritCan car fetched a repair crew; I saw them pick up the tool belt I had discarded near the fence. After they left another repair crew showed up on the Imperium side; they inspected the repair and went away.

I wondered a bit about tool belts. On thinking back I could not recall seeing such a belt on my erstwhile prisoner when he surrendered. I concluded that he had had to shed his belt to go through the fence; that hole was just barely big enough for Friday; for him it must have been a jam fit.

Reconstruction: The BritCans saw one belt, on their side; the Greenies saw one belt, on their side. Neither side had any reason to assume that more than one wetback had passed through the hole as long as my late prisoner kept mum.

Pretty decent of him, I think. Some men would have held a grudge over that little tap I had to give him.

I stayed in those woods until dark, thirteen tedious hours. I did not want to be seen by anyone until I reached Janet (and, with luck, Ian); an illegal immigrant does not seek publicity. It was a long day but in middle training my mind-control guru had taught me to cope with hunger, thirst, and boredom when it is necessary to remain quiet, awake, and alert. When it was full dark I started out. I knew the terrain as well as one can from maps, as I had studied all of it most carefully in Janet’s house less than two weeks earlier. The problem ahead of me was neither complex nor difficult: move approximately one hundred and ten kilometers on foot before dawn while avoiding notice.

The route was simple. I must move east a trifle to pick up the road from Lancaster in the Imperium to La Rochelle in British Canada, at the port of entryÄeasy to spot. Go north to the outskirts of Winnipeg, swing to the left around the city and pick up the north-south road to the port. Stonewall was just a loud shout horn there, with the Tormey estate nearby. All of the last and more difficult part I knew not just horn maps but from having recently been over it in a surrey with nothing to distract me but a little friendly groping.

It was just dawn when I spotted the Tormey outer gates. I was tired but not in too bad shape. I can maintain the walk-jog-runwalk-jog-run routine for twentyfour hours if necessary and have done so in training; keeping it up all night is acceptable. Mostly my feet hurt and I was very thirsty. I punched the announcing button in happy relief.

And at once heard: “Captain Ian Tormey speaking. This is a recording. This house is protected by the Winnipeg Werewolves Security Guards, Incorporated. I have retained this firm because I do not consider their reputation for being triggerhappy to be justified; they are simply zealous in protecting their clients. Calls coded to this house will not be relayed but mail sent here will be forwarded. Thank you for listening.”

And thank you, Ian! Oh, damn, damn, damn! I knew that I had no reason to expect them to remain at home… but my mind had never entertained the thought that they might not be at home. I had “transferred,” as the shrinks call it; with my Ennzedd family lost,

Boss missing and perhaps dead, the Tormey estate was “home” and Janet the mother I had never had.

I wished that I were back on the Hunters’ farm, bathed in the warm protectiveness of Mrs. Hunter. I wished that I were in Vicksburg, sharing mutual loneliness with Georges.

In the meantime the Sun was rising and soon the roads would begin to fill and I was an illegal alien with almost no BritCan dollars and a deep need not to be noticed, not to be picked up and questioned, and light-headed from fatigue and lack of sleep and hunger and thirst.

But I did not have to make difficult decisions as one was forced on me, Hobson’s choice. I must again hole up like an animal, and quickly, before traffic filled the roads.

Woods are not common anywhere near Winnipeg but I recalled some hectares left wild, back and around to the left, off the main road, and more or less behind the Tormey placeÄuneven land, below the low hill on which Janet had built. So I went in that direction, encountering one delivery wagon (milk) but no other traffic.

Once abreast the scrub I left the road. The footing became very uneven, a series of gullies, and I was going “across the furrows.” But quickly I encountered something even more welcome than trees: a tiny stream, so narrow I could step across it.

Which I did, but not until I had drunk from it. Clean? Probably contaminated but I gave it not a thought; my curious “birthright” protects me against most infection. The water tasted clean and I drank quite a lot and felt much better physicallyÄbut not the sick weight in my heart.

I went deeper into the scrub, looking for a place where I could not only hide but could dare risk sleeping. Six hours of sleep two nights ago seemed awfully far away but the trouble with hiding in the wild this close to a big city is that a troop of Boy Scouts is awfully likely to come tromping through and step on your face. So I hunted for a spot not only bushy but inaccessible.

I found it. Quite a steep stretch up one side of a gully and made still more inaccessible by thornbushes, which I located by Braille.

Thornbushes?

It took me about ten minutes to find it as it looked like an exposed

face of a boulder left over from the time when the great ice flow had planed all this country down. But, when I looked closely, it did not look quite like rock. It took still longer to get fingers into any purchase and lift it, then it swung up easily, partly counterbalanced. I ducked inside quickly and let it fall back into placeÄ

Äand found myself in darkness save for fiery letters: PRIVATE

PROPERTYÄKEEP OUT

I stood very still and thought. Janet had told me that the switch that disarmed the deadly booby traps was “concealed a short distance inside.”

How long is a “short distance”?

And how concealed?

It was concealed well enough simply because the place was dark as ink except for those ominous glowing letters. They might as well have spelled “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

So whip out your pocket torch, Friday, powered with its own tiny lifetime Shipstone, and search. But don’t go too far!

There was indeed a torch in a jumpbag I had left behind me in the Skip to M’Lou. It might even be shining, entertaining fish on the bottom of the Mississippi. And I knew that there were other torches stockpiled straight down this black tunnel.

I didn’t even have a match.

If I had a Boy Scout, I could make a fire by rubbing his hind legs together. Oh, shut up, Friday!

I sank down to the floor and let myself cry a little. Then I stretched out on that (hard, cold) (welcome and soft) concrete floor and went to sleep.

xx

I woke up a long time later and the floor was indeed hard and cold. But I felt so enormously rested that I did not mind. I stood up and rubbed the kinks out and realized that I no longer felt hopelessÄjust hungry.

The tunnel was now well lighted.

That glowing sign still warned me not to go any farther but the tunnel was no longer black; the illumination seemed about equal to a well-lighted living room. I looked around for the source of the light.

Then my brain came back into gear. The only illumination came from the glowing sign; my eyes had adjusted while I slept. I understand that human people also experience this phenomenon, but possibly to a lesser degree.

I started to hunt for the switch.

I stopped and started using my brain instead. That’s harder work than using muscles but it’s quieter and burns fewer calories. It’s the only thing that separates us from the apes, although just barely. If I were a concealed switch, where would I be?

The significant parameters of this switch had to be that it must be well enough hidden to frustrate intruders but it nevertheless must save Janet’s life and that of her husbands. What did that tell me?

It would not be too high for Janet to reach; therefore I could reach it, we are much the same size. So that switch was in my reach without using a stool.

Those floating, glowing letters were about three meters inside the door. The switch could not be much past that point because Janet had told me that the second warning, the one that promised death, was triggered not far insideÄ”a few meters” she had said. “A few” is rarely over ten.

Janet would not hide the switch so thoroughly that one of her husbands, dodging for his life, would have to remember exactly where it was. The simple knowledge that there was such a switch must be sufficient clue to let him find it. But any intruder who did not know that there was such a switch must not notice it.

I moved down the tunnel until I stood right under that glowing sign, looked up. The light from that warning sign made it easy to see anywhere but that small part of the tunnel arch just above the letters. Even with my dark-adjusted and enhanced vision I could not see the ceiling directly over the sign.

I reached up and felt the ceiling where I could not see it. My fingers encountered something that felt like a button, possibly the end of a solenoid. I pushed it.

The warning sign blinked out; ceiling lights came on, shining far down the tunnel.

Frozen food and the means to cook it and big towels and hot and cold running water and a terminal in the Hole on which I could get the current news and summaries of past news … books and music and cash money stored in the Hole against emergency and weapons and Shipstones and ammunition and clothes of all sorts that fit me because they fitted Janet and a clock-calendar in the terminal that told me that I had slept thirteen hours before the hardness of the concrete “bed” woke me and a comfy soft bed that invited me to finish the night by sleeping again after I had bathed and eaten and satisfied my hunger for news … a feeling of total security that let me calm down until I no longer had to use mind control to suppress my real feelings in order to function…

The news told me that British Canada had scaled the emergency down to “limited emergency.” The border with the Imperium remained closed. The Qu‚bec border was still closely controlled but permits were granted for any legitimate business. The remaining dispute between the two nations lay in how much reparation Qu‚-

bee should pay for what was now admitted to be a military attack made through error and/or stupidity. The internment order was still in effect but over 90 percent of Qu‚becois internees had been released on their own paroles … and about 20 percent of internees from the Imperium. So I had done well to dodge because, no question about it, I was a suspicious character.

But it looked as if Georges could come home whenever he wished. Or were there angles I did not understand?

The Council for Survival promised a third round of “educational” killings ten days plus or minus two days from the last round. The Stimulators followed this a day later with a matching statement, one which again condemned the so-called Council for Survival. The Angels of the Lord did not this time make any announcement, or at least none that issued through the BritCan Data Net.

Again I had tentative conclusions, shaky ones: The Stimulators were a dummy organization, all propaganda, no field operatives. The Angels of the Lord were dead and/or on the run. The Council for Survival had extremely wealthy backing willing to pay for more unprofessional stooges to be sacrificed in mostly futile attemptsÄ but that was merely a guess, to be dropped in a hurry if the third round of attacks turned out to be efficient and professionalÄwhich I did not expect, but I have a long record for being wrong.

I still couldn’t decide who was back of this silly reign of terror. It could not be (I felt certain) a territorial nation; it might be a multinational, or a consortium, although I could see no sense in it. It could even be one or more extremely wealthy individualsÄif they had holes in their heads.

Under “retrieval” I also punched “Imperium” and “Mississippi River” and “Vicksburg” as singles, each pair, and the triple. Negative. I added in the names of the two vessels and tried all the combinations. Still negative. Apparently what had happened to me and several hundred others had been suppressed. Or was it considered trivial?

Before I left I wrote Janet a note telling her what clothes I had taken, how many BritCan dollars I had taken and added that amount to what she had given me earlier, and I detailed what I had charged to

her Visa card: one capsule fare Winnipeg to Vancouver, one shuttle fare Vancouver to Bellingham, nothing since. (Or had I paid my fare to San Jose with her card, or was that when Georges started being masterful? My expense accounts were in the bottom of the Mississippi.)

Having taken enough of Janet’s cash to get me out of British Canada (I hoped!) I was strongly tempted to leave her Visa card with my note to her. But a credit card is an insidious thingÄjust a cheap little piece of plastic … that can equate to great stacks of gold bullion. It was up to me to protect that card personally and at any cost, until I could place it in Janet’s hand. Nothing less was honest.

A credit card is a leash around your neck. In the world of credit cards a person has no privacy… or at best protects her privacy only with great effort and much chicanery. Besides that, do you ever know what the computer network is doing when you poke your card into a slot? I don’t. I feel much safer with cash. I’ve never heard of anyone who had much luck arguing with a computer.

It seems to me that credit cards are a curse. But I’m not human and probably lack the human viewpoint (in this as in so many, many other things).

I set out the next morning, dressed in a beautiful three-piece pantsuit in powder-blue glass (I felt sure that Janet was beautiful in it and it made me feel beautiful despite the evidence of mirrors), and intending to hire a rig in nearby Stonewall, only to find that I had a choice of a horsedrawn omnibus or a Canadian Railways APV, both going to the tube station, Perimeter and McPhillips, where Georges and I had left on our informal honeymoon. Much as I prefer horses I picked the faster method.

Going into town would not let me pick up my luggage, still in bond at the port. But was it possible to pick it up from transit bond without being pinpointed as an alien from the Imperium? I decided to order it forwarded from outside British Canada. Besides, those bags were packed in New Zealand. If I could live without them this long, I could live without them indefinitely. How many people have died because they would not abandon their baggage?

I have this moderately efficient guardian angel who sits on my

shoulder. Only days ago Georges and I had walked right up to the proper turnstile, stuck Janet’s and Ian’s credit cards into the slot without batting an eye, and zipped merrily to Vancouver.

This time, although a capsule was then loading, I discovered that I was headed on past the turnstiles toward the British Canadian Tourist Bureau travel office. The place was busy, so there was no danger of an attendant rubbernecking what I was doingÄbut I waited until I could get a console in a corner. One became available; I sat down and punched for capsule to Vancouver, then stuck Janet’s card into the slot.

My guardian angel was awake that day; I snatched the card out, got it out of sight fast, and hoped that no one had caught the stink of scorched plastic. And I left, quick-march and nose in the air.

At the turnstiles, when I asked for a ticket to Vancouver, the attendant was busy studying the sports page of the Winnipeg Free Press. He lowered his paper slightly, peered at me over it. “Why don’t you use your card like everyone else?”

“Do you have tickets to sell? Is this money legal tender?”

“That’s not the point.”

“It is to me. Please sell me a ticket. And give me your name and clock number in accordance with that notice posted back of your head.” I handed him the exact amount.

“Here’s your ticket.” He ignored my demand for his identification; I ignored his failure to comply with the regulations. I did not want a hooraw with his supervisor; I simply wanted to create a diversion from my own conspicuous eccentricity in using money rather than a credit card.

The capsule was crowded but I did not have to stand; a Galahad left over from the last century stood up and offered me his seat. He was young and not bad-looking and clearly was being gallant because he classed me as having the apposite female qualities.

I accepted with a smile and he stood over me and I did what I could to repay him by leaning forward a bit and letting him look down my neckline. Young Lochinvar seemed to feel repaidÄhe stared the whole wayÄand it cost me nothing and was no trouble. I appreciated his interest and what it got me in comfortÄsixty minutes is a long time to stand up to the heavy surges of an express capsule.

As we got out at Vancouver he asked me if I had any plans for lunch. Because, if I didn’t, he knew of a really great place, the Bayshore Inn. Or if I liked Japanese or Chinese foodÄ I said that I was sorry but I had to be in Bellingham by noon. Instead of accepting the brush-off, his face lit up. “That’s a happy

coincidence! I’m going to Bellingham, too, but I thought I would wait until after lunch. We can have lunch together in Bellingham. Is it a deal?”

(Isn’t there something in international law about crossing international boundaries for immoral purposes? But can the simple, straightforward rut of this youngster correctly be classed as “immoral”? An artificial person never understands human people’s sexual codes; all we can do is memorize them and try to stay out of trouble. But this isn’t easy; human sexual codes are as contorted as a plate of spaghetti.)

My attempt at polite brush-off having failed, I was forced to decide quickly whether to be rude or to go along with his clear purpose. I scolded myself: Friday, you are a big girl now; you know better. If you intended to give him no hope whatever of getting you into bed, the time to back out was when he offered you his seat at Winnipeg.

I made one more attempt: “It’s a deal,” I answered, “if I am allowed to pay the check, with no argument.” This was a dirty trick on my part, as we both knew that, if he let me pay for lunch, that canceled his investment in me of one hour of standing up and hanging on and fighting the surge of the capsule. But barnyard protocol did not allow him to claim the investment; his act of gallantry was supposed to be disinterested, knightly, no reward expected.

The dirty, sneaking, underhanded, rutty scoundrel proceeded to chuck protocol.

“All right,” he answered.

I swallowed my astonishment. “No argument later? It’s my check?”

“No argument,” he agreed. “Obviously you don’t want to be under the nominal obligation of the price of a lunch even though I issued the invitation and therefore should have a host’s privilege. I don’t know what I have done to annoy you but I will not force on you even a trivial obligation. There is a McDonald’s at surface level

as we arrive in Bellingham; I’ll have a Big Mac and a Coke. You pay for it. Then we can part friends.”

I answered, “I’m Marjorie Baldwin; what is your name?”

“I’m Trevor Andrews, Marjorie.”

“Trevor. That’s a nice name. Trevor, you are dirty, sneaky, underhanded, and despicable. So take me to the best restaurant in Bellingham, ply me with fine liquor and gourmet food, and you pay the check. I’ll give you a fair chance to sell your fell designs. But I don’t think that you will get me into bed; I’m not feeling receptive.”

That last was a lie; I was feeling receptive and very ruttyÄhad he possessed my enhanced sense of smell he would have been certain of it. Just as I was certain of his rut toward me. A human male cannot possibly dissemble with an AP female who has enhanced senses. I learned this at menarche. But of course I am never offended by male rut. At most I sometimes imitate a human woman’s behavior by pretending to be offended. I don’t do this often and tend to avoid it; I’m not that convincing an actress.

From Vicksburg to Winnipeg I had felt no sexual urge. But, with a double night’s sleep, a hot, hot bath with lots of soap, plenty of food, my body now was restored to its normal behavior. So why was I lying about it to this harmless stranger? “Harmless?” In any rational sense, yes. Short of corrective surgery I am sterile. I am not inclined to catch even a sniffle and I am specifically immunized against the four commonest venereal diseases. I was taught in crŠche to class coition with eating, drinking, breathing, sleeping, playing, talking, cuddlingÄthe pleasant necessities that make life a happiness instead of a burden.

I lied to him because human rules call for a lie at that point in the danceÄand I was passing as human and didn’t dare be honestly myself.

He blinked down at me. “You feel that I would be wasting my investment?”

“I’m afraid so. I’m sorry.”

“You’re mistaken. I never try to get a woman into bed; if she wants me in her bed, she will find some way to let me know. If she does not want me there, then I would not enjoy being there. But you seem to be unaware of the fact that it is worth the price of a

good lunch just to sit and look at you, while ignoring any silly babble that comes out of your mouth.”

“Babble! That had better be a very good restaurant. Let’s catch the shuttle.”

I had thought that I might have to argue my way through the barrier on arrival.

But the CHI officer looked most carefully at Trevor’s IDs before validating his tourist card, then barely glanced at my San Jose MasterCard and waved me on through. I waited for Trevor just past the CHI barrier and looked at the sign THE BREAKFAST BAR while feeling double d‚j… vu.

Trevor joined me. “If I had seen,” he said mournfully, “that gold card you were flashing just now, I would not have offered to pay for the lunch. You’re a wealthy heiress.”

“Now look, buster,” I answered, “a deal’s a deal. You told me it

was worth the price just to sit and drool over me, In spite of my

`babble.’ I’m willing to cooperate to the extent of easing the neckline

a little. One button, maybe two. But I won’t let you back out. Even

a rich heiress likes to show a profit now and then.”

“Oh, the shame and the pity of it all!”

“Quit complaining. Where’s this gourmet restaurant?”

“Well, nowÄ Marjorie, I’m forced to admit that I don’t know the restaurants in this glittering metropolis. Will you name the one you prefer?”

“Trevor, your seduction technique is terrible.”

“So my wife says.”

“I thought you had that harness-broken look. Get out her picture. Back in a moment; I’m going to find out where we eat.”

I caught the CHI officer between shuttles, asked him for the name of the best restaurant. He looked thoughtful. “This isn’t Paris, you know.”

“I noticed.”

“Or even New Orleans. If I were you, I would go to the Hilton dining room.”

I thanked him, went back to Trevor. “We’re eating in the dining room, two floors up. Unless you want to send out your spies. Now let’s see her picture.”

He showed me a wallet picture. I looked at it carefully, then gave a respectful whistle. Blondes intimidate me. When I was little, I thought I could get to be that color if I scrubbed hard enough. “Trevor, with that at home why are you picking up loose women on the streets?”

“Are you loose?”

“Quit trying to change the subject.”

“Marjorie, you wouldn’t believe me and you would babble. Let’s go up to the dining room before all the martinis dry up.”

Lunch was okay but Trevor did not have Georges’ imagination, knowledge of cooking, and skill at intimidating a maŒtre d’h”tel. Without Georges’ flair the food was good, standard, North American cuisine, the same in Bellingham as in Vicksburg.

I was preoccupied; discovering that Janet’s credit card had been invalidated had upset me almost more than the horrid disappointment of not finding Ian and Janet at home. Was Janet in trouble? Was she dead?

And Trevor had lost some of the cheerful enthusiasm a stud should display when the game is afoot. Instead of staring lecherously at me, he too seemed preoccupied. Why the change in manner? My demand to see a picture of his wife? Had I made him self-conscious thereby? It seems to me that a man should not engage in the hunt unless he is on such terms with his wife or wives that he can recount the lurid details at home to be giggled over. Like Ian. I don’t expect a man to “protect my reputation” because, to the best of my knowledge and belief, they never do. If I want a man to refrain from discussing my sweaty clumsiness in bed, the only solution is to stay out of bed with him.

Besides, Trevor had mentioned his wife first, hadn’t he? I reviewed itÄyes, he had.

After lunch he perked up some. I was telling him to come back here after his business appointment because I was punching in as a guest in order to have comfort as well as privacy in making satellite calls (true) and that I might stay overnight (also true), so come back and call me and I would meet him in the lounge (conditionally trueÄI was so lonely and troubled I suspected that I would tell him to come straight up).

He answered, “I’ll call first so that you can get that man out but I’ll come straight up. No need to make the trip twice. But I’ll send the bubbly up; I won’t carry it.”

“Hold it,” I said. “You have not yet sold me your nefarious purpose. All I promised was the opportunity to present your sales talk. In the lounge. Not in my bedroom.”

“Marjorie, you’re a hard woman.”

“No, you’re a hard man. I know what I’m doing.” A sudden satori told me that I did know. “How do you feel about artificial persons? Would you want your sister to marry one?”

“Do you know one who might be willing to? Sis is getting to be a bit long in the tooth; she can’t afford to be particular.”

“Don’t try to evade me. Would you marry one?”

“What would the neighbors think? Marjorie, how do you know I haven’t? You saw my wife’s picture. Artifacts are supposed to make the very best wives, horizontally or vertically.”

“Concubines, you mean. It isn’t necessary to marry them. Trevor, you not only are not married to one; you don’t know anything about them but the popular myths … or you wouldn’t say `artifact’ when the subject is `artificial persons.’

“I’m sneaky, underhanded, and despicable. I misused the term so that you would not suspect that I am one.”

“Oh, babble! You aren’t one, or I would know it. And while you probably would go to bed with one, you wouldn’t dream of marrying one. This is a futile discussion; let’s adjourn it. I need about two hours; don’t be surprised if my room terminal is busy. Tape a message and curl up with a good drink; I’ll be down as soon as possible.”

I punched in at the desk and went up, not to the bridal suiteÄin the absence of Georges that lovely extravagance would have made me tristeÄbut to a very nice room with a good, big, wide bed, a luxury I had ordered from a deep suspicion that Trevor’s low-key (almost reverse) salesmanship was going to cause him to wind up in it. The difficult louse.

I put the thought aside and got to work.

I called the Vicksburg Hilton. No, Mr. and Mrs. Perreault had punched out. No, no forwarding address. Sorree!

So was I, and that synthetic computer voice was no comfort. I called McGill University in Montr‚al and wasted twenty minutes

“learning” that, Yes, Dr. Perreault was a senior member of this university but was now at the University of Manitoba. The only new fact was that this Montr‚al computer synthesized English or French with equal ease and always answered in the language in which it was addressed. Very clever, these electron pushersÄtoo clever, in my opinion.

I tried Janet’s (Ian’s) call code in Winnipeg, learned that their terminal was out of service at the subscribers’ request. I wondered why I had been able to receive news on the terminal in the Hole earlier this day. Did “out of service” mean only “no incoming calls”? Was such arcanum a close-held secret of ST. and T.?

ANZAC Winnipeg bounced me around through parts of its computer meant for the traveling public before I got a human voice to admit that Captain Tormey was on leave because of the Emergency and the interruption of flights to New Zealand.

Ian’s Auckland code answered only with music and an invitation to record a message, which was no surprise as Ian would not be there until semiballistic service resumed. But I had thought that I might catch Betty and/or Freddie.

How could one go to New Zealand with the SBs out of service? You can’t ride a seahorse; they’re too small. Did those big waterborne, Shipstone-driven freighters ever carry passengers? I didn’t think they had accommodations. Hadn’t I heard somewhere that some of them didn’t even have crews?

I believed that I had a detailed knowledge of ways to travel superior to the professional knowledge of travel agents because, as a courier, I often moved around by means that tourists can’t use and ordinary commercial travelers don’t know about. It vexed me to realize that I had never given thought to how to outwit the fates when all SBs are grounded. But there is a way, there is always a way. I ticked it off in my mind as a problem to solveÄlater.

I called the University of Sydney, spoke with a computer, but at last got a human voice that admitted knowing Professor Farnese but he was on sabbatical leave. No, private call codes and addresses were never given outÄsorry. Perhaps customer service might help me.

The Sydney information service computer seemed lonely, as it

was willing to chat with me endlesslyÄanything but admit that either Federico or Elizabeth Farnese was in its net. I listened to a sales pitch for the World’s Biggest Bridge (it isn’t) and the World’s Grandest Opera House (it is), so come Down Under andÄ I switched off reluctantly; a friendly computer with a Strine accent is better company than most people, human or my sort.

I then tackled the one I had hoped to be able to skip: Christchurch. There was a probability that Boss’s HQ had sent word to me care of my former family when the move was madeÄif it was a move and not a total disaster. There was a very remote possibility that Ian, unable to send a message to me in the Imperium, would send one to my former home in hopes that it would be forwarded. I recalled that I had given him my Christchurch call code when he gave me the code for his Auckland flat. So I called my erstwhile homeÄ

Äand got the shock that one gets in stepping on a step that isn’t there. “Service is discontinued at the terminal you have signaled. Calls are not being relayed. In emergency please signal ChristchurchÄ” A code followed that I recognized as Brian’s office.

I found myself doing the time-zone correction backward to get a wrong answer that would let me put off callingÄthen I snapped out of it. It was afternoon here, just past fifteen, so it was tomorrow morning in New Zealand, just past ten, a most likely time of day for Brian to be in. I punched his call, got a satellite hold of only a few seconds, then found myself staring into his astonished face. “Marjorie!”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Marjorie. How are you?”

“Why are you calling me?”

I said, “Brian, please! We were married seven years; can’t we at least speak politely with each other?”

“Sorry. What can I do for you?”

“I am sorry to disturb you at work but I called the house and found the terminal out of service. Brian, as you no doubt know from the news, communications with the Chicago Imperium have been interrupted by the Emergency. The assassinations. What the newscasters have been calling Red Thursday. As a result of this I am in California; I never did reach my Imperium address. Can you tell

me anything about mail or messages that may have come for me? You see, nothing has reached me.”

“I really could not say. Sorry.”

“Can’t you even tell me whether anything had to be forwarded? Just to know that a message had been forwarded would help me in tracing it.”

“Let me think. There would have been all that money you drew outÄno, you took the draft for that with you.”

“What money?”

“The money you demanded we return to youÄor be faced with an open scandal. A bit more than seventy thousand dollars. Marjorie, I am surprised that you have the gall to show your face .

when your misbehavior, your lies, and your cold cupidity destroyed our family.”

“Brian, what in the world are you talking about? I have not lied to anyone, I don’t think I have misbehaved, and I have not taken one penny out of the family. `Destroyed the family’ how? I was kicked out of the family, out of a clear blue skyÄkicked out and sent packing, all in a matter of minutes. I certainly did not `destroy the family.’ Explain yourself.”

Brian did, in cold and dreary detail. My misbehavior was all of a piece with my lies, of course, that ridiculous allegation that I was a living artifact, not human, and thereby I had forced the family to ask for an annulment. I tried to remind him that I had proved to him that I was enhanced; he brushed it aside. What I recalled, what he recalled, did not match. As for the money, I was lying again; he had seen the receipt with my signature.

I interrupted to tell him that any signature that appeared to be mine on any such receipt had to be a forgery as I had not received a single dollar.

“You are accusing Anita of forgery. Your boldest lie yet.”

“I’m not accusing Anita of anything. But I received no money from the family.”

I was accusing Anita and we both knew it. And possibly accusing Brian as well. I recalled once that Vickie had said that Anita’s nipples erected only over fat credit balances … and I had shushed her and told her not to be catty. But there were hints from others that

Anita was frigid in bedÄa condition that an AP can’t understand. In retrospect it did seem possible that her total passion was for the family, its financial success, its public prestige, its power in the community.

If so, she must hate me. I did not destroy the family, but kicking me out appeared to be the first domino in its collapse. Almost immediately after I left, Vickie went to Nuku’alofa … and instructed a solicitor to sue for divorce and financial settlement. Then Douglas and Lispeth left Christchurch, married each other separately, then entered the same sort of suit.

One tiny crumb of comfort. I learned from Brian that the vote against me had not been six to nothing but seven to nothing. An improvement? Yes. Anita had ruled that voting must be by shares; the major stockholders, Brian, Bertie, and Anita, had voted first, casting seven votes against me, a clear majority to expel meÄ whereupon Doug, Vickie, and Lispeth had abstained from voting.

A very small crumb of comfort, however. They had not bucked Anita, not tried to stop her, they had not even warned me of what was afoot. They abstained… then stood aside and let the sentence be executed.

I asked Brian about the childrenÄand was told bluntly that they were none of my business. He then said that he was quite busy and must switch off, but I held him for one more question: What was done with the cats?

He looked about to explode. “Marjorie, are you utterly heartless? When your acts have caused so much pain, so much real tragedy, you want to know about something as trivial as cats?”

I restrained my anger. “I do want to know, Brian.”

“I think they were sent to the SPCA. Or it might have been to the medical school. Good-bye! Please do not call me again.”

“The medical schoolÄ” Mister Underfoot tied to a surgical table while a medical student took him apart with a knife? I am not a vegetarian and I am not going to argue against the use of animals in science and in teaching. But if it must be done, dear God if there is One anywhere, don’t let it be done to animals who have been brought up to think they are people!

SPCA or medical school, Mister Underfoot and the younger

cats were almost certainly dead. Nevertheless, if SBs had been running, I would have risked going back to British Canada to catch the next trajectory for New Zealand in the forlorn hope of saving my old friend. But without modern transportation Auckland was farther away than Luna City. Not even a forlorn hopeÄ I dug deep into mind-control training and put matters I could not

help out of my mindÄ

Äand found that Mister Underfoot was still brushing against my leg.

On the terminal a red light was blinking. I glanced at the time, noted that it had been just about the two hours I had estimated; that light was almost certainly Trevor.

So make up your mind, Friday. Put cold water on your eyes and go down and let him try to persuade you? Or tell him to come on up, take him straight to bed, and cry on him? At first, that is. You certainly don’t feel lecherous this minute … but tuck your face into a nice, warm male shoulder and let your feelings sag and pretty soon you will feel eager. You know that. Female tears are reputed to be a powerful aphrodisiac to most men and your own experience bears that out. (Crypto-sadism? Machismo? Who cares? It works.)

Invite him up. Have some liquor sent up. Maybe even put on some lip paint, try to look sexy. No, the hell with lip paint; it would not last long anyway. Invite him up; take him to bed. Cheer yourself up by doing your damnedest to cheer him up. Give it everything you’ve got!

I fitted a smile onto my face and answered the terminal.

And found myself speaking to the hotel’s robot voice: “We are holding a box of flowers for you. May we send them up?”

“Certainly.” (No matter who or what, a box of flowers is better than a slap in the belly with a wet fish.)

Shortly the dumbwaiter buzzed; I went to it and took out a floral package as big as a baby’s coffin, put it on the floor to open it.

Long-stemmed, dusky red roses! I decided to give Trevor a better time than Cleopatra ever managed on her best days.

After admiring them I opened the envelope that came with them, expecting just a card with perhaps a line asking me to call the lounge, or such.

No, a note, almost a letter:

Dear Marjorie,

I hope that these roses will be at least as welcome as I would have been.

I must confess that I have run away. Something came up that made me realize that I must desist from my attempts to force my company on you.

I am not married. I don’t know who that pretty lady is; the picture is just a prop. As you pointed out, my sort is not considered suitable for marriage. I’m an artificial person, dear lady. “My mother was a test tube; my father was a knife.” So I should not be making passes at human women. I pass for human, yes, but I would rather tell you the truth than to continue to try to pass with youÄthen have you learn the truth later. As you would, eventually, as I am the dirt-proud sort who would sooner or later tell you.

So I would rather tell you now than hurt you later.

My family name is not Ancirews, of course, as my sort do not have families.

But I can’t help wishing that you were an AP yourself. You really are sweet (as well as extremely sexy) and your tendency to babble about matters, such as APs, that you don’t understand, is probably not your fault. You remind me of a little fox terrier bitch I once had. She was cute and very affectionate, but quite willing to fight the whole world by herself if that was the program for the day. I confess to liking dogs and cats better than most people; they never hold it against me that I’m not human.

Do enjoy the roses,

Trevor

I wiped my eyes and blew my nose and went down fast and rushed through the lounge and then through the bar and then down one floor to the shuttle terminal and stood by the turnstiles leading to the departing shuttles … and stood there, and waited, and waited, and waited some more, and a policeman began eyeing me and finally he came over and asked me what I wanted and did I need help?

I told him the truth, or some of it, and he let me be. I waited and waited and he watched me the whole time. Finally he came over again and said, “Look here, if you insist on treating this as your beat, I’m going to have to ask to see your license and your medical certificate, and take you in if either one is not in order. I don’t want to do that; I’ve got a daughter at home about your age and I’d like to think that a cop would give her a break. Anyhow you ought not to be in the business; anybody can see from your face that you’re not tough enough for it.”

I thought of showing him that gold credit cardÄI doubt that there is a streetwalker anywhere who carries a gold credit card. But the old dear really did think that he was taking care of me and I had humiliated enough people for one day. I thanked him and went up to my room.

Human people are so cocksure that they can always spot an APÄ blah! We can’t even spot each other. Trevor was the only man I had ever met whom I could have married with an utterly clear conscienceÄand I had chased him away.

But he was too sensitive!

Who is too sensitive? You are, Friday.

But, damn it, most humans do discriminate against our sort. Kick a dog often enough and he becomes awfully jumpy. Look at my sweet Ennzedd family, the finks. Anita probably felt selfrighteous about cheating meÄI’m not human.

Score for the day: Humans 9ÄFriday 0.

Where is Janet?

xxi

After a short nap that I spent standing on an auction block, waiting to be sold, I woke upÄwoke up because prospective buyers were insisting on inspecting my teeth and I finally bit one and the auctioneer started giving me a taste of the whip and woke me. The Be!lingham Hilton looked awfully good.

Then I made the call I should have made first. But the other calls had to be made anyhow and this call cost too much and would have been unnecessary if my last call had paid off. Besides, I don’t like to phone the Moon; the time lag upsets me.

So I called Ceres and South Africa Acceptances, Boss’s bankerÄ or one of them. The one who took care of my credit and paid my bills.

After the usual hassle with synthetic voices that seemed more deliberately frustrating than ever through the speed-of-light lag, I finally reached a human being, a beautiful female creature who clearly (it seemed to me) had been hired to be a decorative receptionistÄone-sixth gee is far more effective than a bra. I asked her to let me speak to one of the bank’s officers.

“You are speaking to one of the vice-presidents,” she answered. “You managed to convince our computer that you needed help from a responsible officer. That’s quite a trick; that computer is stubborn. How may I help you?”

I told a portion of my unlikely story. “So it took a couple of weeks

to get inside the Imperium and when I did, all my contact codes were sour. Does the bank have another call code or address for me?”

“We’ll see. What is the name of the company for which you work?”

“It has several names. One is System Enterprises.”

“What is your employer’s name?”

“He doesn’t have a name. He is elderly, heavyset, one-eyed, rather crippled, and walks slowly with two canes. Does that win a prize?”

“We’ll see. You told me that we backed your MasterCard credit issued through the Imperial Bank of Saint Louis. Read the card’s number, slowly.”

I did so. “Want to photograph it?”

“No. Give me a date.”

“Ten sixtyÄsix.”

“Fourteen ninety-two,” she answered.

“Four thousand four B.C.,” I agreed.

“Seventeen seventy-six,” she riposted.

“Two thousand twelve,” I answered.

“You have a grisly sense of humor, Miss Baldwin. All right, you’re tentatively you. But if you’re not, I’ll make a small bet with you that you won’t live past the next checkpoint. Mr. Two-Canes is reputed to be unamused by gatecrashers. Take down this call code. Then read it back to me.”

I did so.

One hour later I was walking past the Palace of the Confederacy in San Jose, again headed for the California Commercial Credit Building and firmly resolved not to get into any fights in front of the Palace no matter what assassinations were being attempted. I thought about the fact that I was on the exact spot I had been on, uh, two weeks ago?Äand if this relay point sent me to Vicksburg I would go quietly mad.

My appointment at the CCC Building was not with MasterCard but with a law firm on another floor, one I had called from Bellingham after obtaining the firm’s terminal code from the Moon. I had just reached the corner of the building when a voice almost in my ear said, “Miss Friday.”

I looked quickly around. A woman in a Yellow Cab uniform.

I looked again. “Goldie!”

“You ordered a cab, miss? Across the Plaza and down the street. They won’t let us squat here.”

We crossed the Plaza together. I started to babble, bursting with euphoria. Goldie shushed me. “Do please try to act like a cab fare, Miss Friday. The Master wants us to be inconspicuous.”

“Since when do you call me miss?”

“Better so. Discipline is very tight now. My picking you up is a special permission, one that would never have been granted if I had not been able to point out that I could make positive identification without buzz words.”

“Well. All right. Just don’t call me miss when you don’t have to. Golly gosh, Goldie darling, I’m so happy to see you I could cry.”

“Me, too. Especially since you were reported dead just this Monday. And I did cry. And several others.”

“Dead? Me? I haven’t even been close to being dead, not at all, not anywhere. I haven’t been in the slightest danger. Just lost. And now I’m found.”

“I’m glad.”

Ten minutes later I was ushered into Boss’s office. “Friday reporting, sir,” I said.

“You’re late.”

“I came the scenic route, sir. Up the Mississippi by excursion boat.”

“So I heard. You seem to be the only survivor. I meant that you are late today. You crossed the border into California at twelve-ohfive. It is now seventeen-twenty-two.”

“Damn it, Boss; I’ve had problems.”

“Couriers are supposed to be able to outwit problems and move fast anyhow.”

“Damn it, Boss, I wasn’t on duty, I wasn’t being a courier, I was still on leave; you’ve no business chewing me out. If you hadn’t moved without notifying me, I wouldn’t have had the slightest trouble. I was here, two weeks ago, in San Jose, just a loud shout from right here.”

“Thirteen days ago.”

“Boss, you’re nitpicking to avoid admitting that it was your fault, not mine.”

“Very well, I will accept the blame if any in order that we may cease quibbling and stop wasting time. I made extreme effort to notify you, much more than the routine alert MSG that was sent to other field operatives not at headquarters. I regret that this special effort failed. Friday, what must I do to convince you that you are unique and invaluable to this organization? In anticipation of the events tagged Red ThursdayÄ”

“Boss! Were we in that?” I was shocked.

“What causes you to entertain such an obscene idea? No. Our intelligence staff projected itÄin part from data you delivered from Eli-FiveÄand we started making precautionary arrangements in good time, so it seemed. But the first attacks took place in advance of our most pessimistic projection. At the onset of Red Thursday we were still moving impedimenta; it was necessary to crash our way across the border. With bribes, not with force. The notices of change of address and of call code had gone out earlier but it was not until we were here and our comm center reestablished that I was notified that you had not made routine acknowledgment.”

“For the bloody good reason that I did not receive routine notice!”

“Please. On learning that you had not acknowledged, I attempted to call you at your New Zealand home. Possibly you are aware that there was an interruption in satellite serviceÄ”

“I heard.”

“Precisely. The call got through some thirty-two hours later. I spoke to Mrs. Davidson, a woman about forty, rather sharp features. Senior wife in your S-group?”

“Yes. Anita. Both Lord High Executioner and Lord High Everything Else.”

“That was the impression I received. I received also an impression that you had become persona non grata.”

“I’m sure that it was more than an impression. Go ahead, Boss; what did the old bat have to say about me?”

“Almost nothing. You had left the family quite suddenly. No,

you had left no forwarding address or call code. No, she would not accept a message for you or forward any that arrived. I’m very busy; Marjorie has left us in a dreadful mess. Good-bye.” -

“Boss, she had your Imperium address. She also had the address in Luna City of Ceres and South Africa because I made my monthly payments to her through them.”

“I could see the situation. My New Zealand representative”Äthe first I had ever heard of one!Ä”obtained for me the business address of your S-group’s senior husband, Brian Davidson. He was more polite and somewhat more helpful. From him we learned what shuttle you had taken from Christchurch and that led us to the passenger list of the semibaliistic you took from Auckland to Winnipeg. There we lost you briefly, until my agent there established that you had left the port in the company of the skipper of the semiballistic. When we reached himÄCaptain TormeyÄhe was helpful, but you had left. I am pleased to be able to tell you that we were able to return the favor to Captain Tormey. An inside source enabled us to let him know that he and his wife were about to be picked up by the local police.”

“Fer Gossake! What for?”

“The nominal charge is harboring an enemy alien and harboring an unregistered Imperium subject during a declared emergency. In fact the Winnipeg office of the provincial police are not interested in you or in Dr. Perreault; that is an excuse to pull in the Tormeys. They are wanted on a much more serious charge that has not been filed. A Lieutenant Melvin Dickey is missing. The last trace of him is an oral statement made by him as he left police HQ that he was going to Captain Tormey’s home to pick up Dr. Perreault. Foul play is suspected.”

“But that’s not evidence against Jan and Ian! The Tormeys.”

“No, it is not. That is why the provincial police intend to hold them on a lesser charge. There is more. Lieutenant Dickey’s APV crashed near Fargo in the Imperium. It was unoccupied. The police are very anxious to check that wreck for fingerprints. Possibly they are doing so at this very moment as, about one hour ago, a news bulletin reported that the common border between the Chicago Imperium and British Canada had been reopened.”

“Oh, my God!”

“Compose yourself. On the controls of that APV there were indeed fingerprints that were not Lieutenant Dickey’s. They matched Captain Tormey’s prints on file with ANZAC Skyways. Note the tense I used; there were such prints; there no longer are. Friday, although I found it prudent to move our seat of operations out of the Imperium, after many years I am not without contacts there. And agents. And past favors I can collect. No prints matching those of Captain Tormey are now in that wreckage but there are prints on it from many sources living and dead.”

“Boss, may I kiss your feet?”

“Hold your tongue. I did not do this to frustrate the British Canadian police. My field agent in Winnipeg is a clinical psychologist as well as having our usual training. It is his professional opinion that either Captain Tormey or his wife could kill in self-defense but that it would take extreme conditions indeed to cause either of them to kill a policeman. Dr. Perreault is described as being even less disposed toward violent solutions.”

“I killed him.”

“So I assumed. No other explanation fitted the data. Do you wish to discuss it? Is it any of my business?”

“Uh, perhaps not. Except that you made it your business when you got rid of those damning fingerprints. I killed him because he was threatening Janet, Janet Tormey, with a gun. I could have simply disabled him; I had time to pull my punch. But I meant to kill him and I did.”

“I would beÄand will beÄmuch disappointed in you if you ever simply injure a policeman. A wounded policeman is more dangerous than a wounded lion. I had reconstructed it much as you described save that I had assumed that you were protecting Dr. Perreault… since you seemed to find him an acceptable surrogate husband.”

“He’s that, all right. But it was that crazy fool threatening Janet’s life that made me go spung! Boss, until this happened I didn’t know that I loved Janet. Didn’t know I could love a woman that intensely. You know more than I do about how I was designed, or so you have hinted. Are my glands mixed up?”

“I know quite a lot about your design but I shan’t discuss it with

you; you have no need to know. Your glands are no more mixed up than those of any healthy humanÄspecifically, you do not have a redundant Y chromosome. All normal human beings have soi-disant mixed-up glands. The race is divided into two parts: those who know this and those who do not. Stop the stupid talk; it ill befits a genius.”

“Oh, so I’m a genius now. Hully gee, Boss.”

“Don’t be pert. You are a supergenius but you are a long way from realizing your potential. Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules on sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers. Let us return to our muttons. Is it possible that this body will be found?”

“I would bet long odds against it.”

“Any point in discussing it with me?”

“Uh, I don’t think so.”

“Then I have no need to know and will assume that the Tormeys can safely return home as soon as the police conclude that they cannot establish corpus delicti. While corpus delicti does not require a corpse, it is enormously more difficult to make a charge of murder stand up without one. If arrested, a good lawyer would have the Tormeys out in five minutesÄand they would have a very good lawyer, I assure you. You may be pleased to know that you helped them to escape from the country.”

“I did?”

“You and Dr. Perreault. By leaving British Canada as Captain and Mrs. Tormey, and by using their credit cards and by filling out tourist-card applications in their names. You two left a trail that `proved’ that the Tormeys fled the country immediately after Lieutenant Dickey disappeared. This worked so well that the police wasted several days trying to trace down the suspects in the California ConfederacyÄand blaming inefficiency of their colleagues in the Confederacy for their lack of success. But I’m somewhat surprised that the Tormeys were not arrested in their own home as my agent had no great difficulty interviewing them there.”

(I’m not. If a cop shows upÄzip! down the Hole. If it’s not a cop and he satisfies Ian that he is okayÄ) “Boss, did your Winnipeg agent mention my name? My `Marjorie Baldwin’ name, I mean.”

“Yes. Without that name and a picture of you, Mrs. Tormey

would never have let him in. Without the Tormeys I would have lacked necessary data for picking up your rather elusive trail. We benefitted each other. They helped you to escape; we helped them to escape, after I told themÄafter my agent told themÄthat they were being actively sought. A pleasant ending.”

“How did you get them out?”

“Friday, do you wish to know?”

“Urn, no.” (When will I learn? Had Boss wished to disclose the method, he would have told me. “Careless slips sink ships.” Not around Boss.)

Boss came out from behind his desk… and shocked me. Ordinarily he does not move around much and in his old office his ubiquitous tea service was within his reach at his desk. Now he rolled out. No canes. A powered wheelchair. He guided it to a side table, started fiddling with tea things.

I stood up. “May I pour?”

“Thank you, Friday. Yes.” He left the service table, rolled back to his place behind his desk. I took over, which let me stand with my back to himÄthat was what I needed right then.

There is no reason to feel shock when a cripple decides to substitute a powered wheelchair for canesÄit is simply efficiency. Except that this was Boss. If the Egyptians at Giza woke up some morning and found the Pyramids switched around and the Sphinx with a new nose, they would not be more shocked than was I. Some thingsÄand some peopleÄare not supposed to change.

After I had served his teaÄwarm milk, two lumpsÄand had poured mine, I sat back down, my composure restored. Boss uses the very latest technology and quite old-fashioned customs; I have never known him to ask a woman to wait on him but if a woman is present and offers to pour tea, it is a certainty that he will accept graciously and turn the incident into a minor ceremony.

He chatted of other matters until we each had finished one cup. I refilled his cup, did not myself take another; he resumed business. “Friday, you changed names and credit cards so many times that we were always one jump behind you. We might not have traced you to Vicksburg had not your progress suggested something about your plan. Although it is not my practice to interfere with an agent no

matter how closely he is being watched, I might have decided to head you off from going up the riverÄknowing that that expedition was doomedÄ “Boss, what was that expedition? I never believed the song and

dance.”

“A coup d’etat. A clumsy one. The Imperium has had three Chairmen in two weeks… and the current one is no better and no more likely to survive. Friday, a well-run tyranny is a better base for my work than is any form of free government. But a well-run tyranny is almost as scarce as an efficient democracy. To resumeÄyou got away from us in Vicksburg because you moved without hesitation. You were aboard that comic-opera troopship and gone before our Vicksburg agent knew that you had signed up. I was vexed with him. So much so that I have not yet disciplined him. I must wait.”

“No reason to discipline him, Boss. I moved fast. Unless he breathed down my neckÄwhich I notice and always take stepsÄhe could not have kept up with me.”

“Yes, yes, I know your techniques. But I think that you will agree that I was understandably annoyed when it was reported to me that our man in Vicksburg actually had you physically in sight… and twentyfour hours later he reports you dead.”

“Maybe, maybe not. A man got too close on my heels coming into Nairobi earlier this yearÄbreathed down my neck and it was his last breath. If you have me shadowed again, better warn your agents.”

“I do not ordinarily use a shadow on you, Friday. With you, point checks work better. Fortunately for all of us you did not stay dead. While the terminals of my contact agents in Saint Louis have all been tapped by the government, I still get some use from them. When you attempted to report in, three times and never got caught, I heard of it at once and deduced that it had to be you, then knew it with certainty when you reached Fargo.”

“Who in Fargo? The paper artist?”

Boss pretended not to hear. “Friday, I must get back to work. Complete your report. Make it brief.”

“Yes, sir. I left that excursion boat when we entered the Imperiurn, proceeded to Saint Louis, found your contact call codes

trapped, left, visited Fargo as you noted, crossed into British Canada twenty-six klicks east of Pembina, crossed to Vancouver and down to Bellingham today, then reported to you here.”

“Any trouble?”

“No, sir.”

“Any novel aspects of professional interest?”

“No, sir.”

“At your convenience tape a detailed report for staff analysis. Feel free to suppress facts not yours to disclose. I will send for you some time in the next two or three weeks. You start school tomorrow morning. Oh-nine hundred.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t grunt; it is not pleasing in a young woman. Friday, your work has been satisfactory but it is time you entered on your true profession. Your true profession at this stage, perhaps I should say. You are woefully ignorant. We will change that. Nine o’clock tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.” (Ignorant, huh? Arrogant old bastard. Gosh, I was glad to see him. But that wheelchair fretted me.)

xxii

Pajaro Sands used to be a resort seaside hotel. It’s a nowhere place on Monterey Bay outside a nowhere city, Watsonville. Watsonville is one of the great oil export ports of the world and has all the charm of cold pancakes with no syrup. The nearest excitement is in the casinos and bawdy houses of Carmel, fifty kilometers away. But I don’t gamble and am not interested in sex for hire, even the exotic sorts to be had in California. Not many from Boss’s headquarters patronized Carmel as it was too far away to go by horse other than for a weekend, there was no direct capsule, and, while California is liberal in authorizing power vehicles, Boss did not release his APVs for anything but business.

The big excitements for us at Pajaro Sands were the natural attractions that caused it to be built, surf and sand and sunshine.

I enjoyed surfboarding until I became skilled at it. Then it bored me. I usually sunned a bit each day and swam a little and stared out at the big tankers suckling at the oil moles and noted with amusement that the watchstander aboard each ship often was staring back, with binoculars.

There was no reason for any of us to be bored as we had full individual terminal service. People are so used to the computer net today that it is easy to forget what a window to the world it can beÄ and I include myself. One can grow so canalized in using a terminal only in certain waysÄpaying bills, making telephonic calls, listening to news bulletinsÄthat one can neglect its richer uses. If a subscriber is willing to pay for the service, almost anything can be done at a terminal that can be done out of bed.

Live music? I could punch in a concert going on live in Berkeley this evening, but a concert given ten years ago in London, its conductor long dead, is just as “live,” just as immediate, as any listed on today’s program. Electrons don’t care. Once data of any sort go into the net, time is frozen. All that is necessary is to remember that all the endless riches of the past are available any time you punch for them.

Boss sent me to school at a computer terminal and I had far richer opportunities than any enjoyed by a student at Oxford or the Sorbonne or Heidelberg in any earlier year.

At first it did not seem to me that I was going to school. At breakfast the first day I was told to report to the head librarian. He was a fatherly old dear, Professor Perry, whom I had met first during basic training. He seemed harriedÄunderstandably, as Boss’s library was probably the bulkiest and most complex thing shipped from the Imperium to Pajaro Sands. Professor Perry undoubtedly had weeks of work ahead before everything would be straightened outÄand in the meantime all Boss would expect would be utter perfection. The work was not made easier by Boss’s eccentric insistence on paper books for much of his library rather than cassettes or microfiche or disks.

When I reported to him, Perry looked bothered, then pointed to a console over in one corner. “Miss Friday, why don’t you sit down over there?”

“What am I to do?”

“Eh? That’s hard to say. No doubt we’ll be told. Urn, I’m awfully busy now and terribly understaffed. Why don’t you just get acquainted with the equipment by studying anything you wish?”

There wasn’t anything special about the equipment except that there were extra keys giving direct access to several major libraries such as Harvard’s and the Washington Library of the Atlantic Union and the British Museum without going through a human or network linkupÄplus the unique resource of direct access to Boss’s library, the one right beside me. I could even read his bound paper

books if I wanted to, on my terminal’s screen, turning the pages from th keyboard and never taking the volume out of its nitrogen

environment. -

That morning I was speed-searching the index of the Tulane University library (one of the best in the Lone Star Republic), looking for history of Old Vicksburg, when I stumbled onto a cross-reference to spectral types of stars and found myself hooked. I don’t recall why there was such a cross-referral but these do occur for the most unlikely reasons.

I was still reading about the evolution of stars when Professor Perry suggested that we go to lunch.

We did but I made some notes first about types of mathematics I wanted to study. Astrophysics is fascinatingÄbut you have to talk the language.

That afternoon I got back to Old Vicksburg and was footnoted to Show Boat, a musical play concerning that eraÄand then spent the rest of the day looking at and listening to Broadway musical plays from the happy days before the North American Federation fell to pieces. Why can’t they write music like that today? Those people must have had fun! I certainly didÄI played Show Boat, The Student Prince, and My Fair Lady one after the other and noted a dozen more to play later. (This is going to school?)

Next day I resolved to stick to serious study of professional subjects in which I was weak, because I felt sure that once my tutors (whoever they were) assigned my curriculum, I would have no time at all for my own choicesÄearlier training in Boss’s outfit had taught me the need for a twenty-six-hour day. But at breakfast my friend Anna asked me, “Friday, what can you tell me about the influence of Louis Onze on French lyric poetry?”

I blinked at her. “Is there a prize? Louis Onze sounds like a cheese to me. The only French verse I can recall is `Mademoiselle from ArmentiŠres.’ If that qualifies.”

“Professor Perry said that you are the person to ask.”

“He’s pulling your leg.” When I reached the library Papa Perry looked up from his console. I said, “Good morning. Anna said that you had told her to ask me about the effect of Louis the Eleventh on French verse.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Would you mind not bothering me now? This bit of programming is very tricky.” He looked back down and closed me out of his world.

Frustrated and irritated I punched up Louis XI. Two hours later I came up for air. I had not learned anything about poetryÄso far as I could tell the Spider King had never even rhymed ton con with c’est hon or ever been a patron of the art. But I learned a lot about politics in the fifteenth century. Violent. Made the little scrapes I had been in seem like kiddie quarrels in the crŠche.

I spent the rest of the day punching up French lyric verse since 1450. Good in spots. French is suited to lyric poetry, more so than is EnglishÄit takes an Edgar Allan Poe to wring beauty consistently out of the dissonances of English. German is unsuited to lyricism, so much so that translations fall sweeter on the ear than do the German originals. This is no fault of Goethe or Heine; it is a defect of an ugly language. Spanish is so musical that a soappowder commercial in Spanish is more pleasing to the ear than the best free verse in EnglishÄthe Spanish language is so beautiful that much of its poetry sounds best if the listener does not understand the meaning.

I never did find out what effect, if any, Louis XI had on verse.

One morning I found “my” console occupied. I looked inquiringly at the head librarian. Again he looked harried. “Yes, yes, we’re quite crowded today. Um, Miss Friday, why not use the terminal in your room? It has the same additional controls and, if you need to consult me, you can do so even more quickly than you can here. Just punch local seven and your signature code and I’ll instruct the computer to give you priority. Satisfactory?”

“Just fine,” I agreed. I enjoyed the warm camaraderie of the library study room but in my own room I could take off my clothes without feeling that I was annoying Papa Perry. “What should I study today?”

“Goodness. Isn’t there some subject you are interested in that merits further listening? I dislike disturbing Number One.”

I went to my room and went on with French history since Louis Onze and that led me to the new colonies across the Atlantic and that led me into economics and that took me to Adam Smith and

from there to political science. I concluded that Aristotle had had his good days but that Plato was a pretentious fraud and that led to my being called three times by the dining room wiTh the last call including a recorded message that any later arrival would mean nothing but cold night-rations and a live message from Goldie threatening to drag me down by my hair.

So I rushed down, barefooted and still zipping into a jump suit. Anna asked what I had been doing that was so urgent I would forget to eat. “Most unFridayish.” She and Goldie and I usually ate together, with or without male companyÄresidents at HQ were a club, a fraternity, a noisy family, and some two dozen of them were “kissing friends” of mine.

“Improving my brain,” I said. “You are looking at the World’s Greatest Authority.”

“Authority on what?” Goldie asked.

“Anything. Just ask me. The easy ones I answer at once; the hardest ones I’ll answer tomorrow.”

“Prove it,” said Anna. “How many angels can sit on the point of a needle?”

“That’s an easy one. Measure the angels’ arses. Measure the point of the needle. Divide A into B. The numerical answer is left as an exercise for the student.”

“Smart-aleck. What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

“Even easier. Switch on a recorder, using any nearby terminal. Clap with one hand. Play back the result.”

“You try her, Goldie. She’s been eating meat.”

“What is the population of San Jose?”

“Ah, that’s a hard one! I’ll report tomorrow.”

This fiddling went on for over a month before it filtered through my skull that someone (Boss, of course) was in fact trying to force me to become “the World’s Greatest Authority.”

At one time there really was a man known as “the World’s Greatest Authority.” I ran across him in trying to nail down one of the many silly questions that kept coming at me from odd sources. Like this: Set your terminal to “research.” Punch parameters in succession “North American culture,” “English-speaking,” “midÄtwenti

eth century,” “comedians,” “the World’s Greatest Authority.” The answer you can expect is “Professor Irwin Corey.” You’ll find his routines timeless humor.

Meanwhile I was being force-fed, like a Strasbourg goose.

Nevertheless it was a very happy time. Often, as often as not, one of my true friends would invite me to share a bed. I don’t recall ever refusing. Rendezvous would usually be arranged during afternoon sunbathing and the prospect added a tingle to the sensuous pleasure of lying in the sun. Because everyone at HQ was so civilizedÄsweet through and throughÄit was possible to answer, “Sorry, Terence asked me first. Tomorrow maybe? No? Okay, sometime soon”Ä and have no hurt feelings. One of the shortcomings of the S-group I used to belong to was that such arrangements were negotiated among the males under some protocol that was never explained to me but was not free from tension.

The silly questions speeded up. I found myself just getting acquainted with the details of Ming ceramics when a message showed up in my terminal saying that someone in staff wanted to know the relationships between men’s beards, women’s skirts, and the price of gold. I had ceased to wonder at silly questions; around Boss anything can happen. But this one seemed supersilly. Why should there be any relationship? Men’s beards did not interest me; they tickle and often are dirty. As for women’s skirts, I knew even less. I have almost never worn skirts. Skirted costumes can be pretty but they aren’t practical for travel and could have gotten me killed three or four timesÄand when you’re home, what’s wrong with skin? Or as near as local custom permits.

But I had learned not to ignore questions merely because they were obvious nonsense; I tackled this one by calling up all the data I could, including punching out some most unlikely association chains. I then told the machine to tabulate all retrieved data by categories.

Durned if I didn’t begin to find connections!

As more data accumulated I found that the only way I could see all of it was to tell the computer to plot and display a three-dimensional graphÄand that looked so promising that I told it to convert to holographic in color. Beautiful! I did not know why these three variables fitted together but they did. I spent the rest of that day

changing scales, X versus Y versus Z in various combinationsÄ magnifying, shrinking, rotating, looking for minor cycloid relations under the obvious gross ones… and noticed a shallOw double sinusoidal hump that kept showing up as I rotated the holoÄand suddenly, for no reason I can assign, I decided to subtract the double sunspot curve.

Eureka! As precise and necessary as a Ming vase! Before dinnertime I had the equation, just one line that encompassed all the silly data I had spent five days dragging out of the terminal. I punched the chief of staff’s call and recorded that oneline equation, plus definitions of variables. I added no comment, no discussion; I wanted to force the faceless joker to ask for my opinions.

I got the same answer backÄi.e., none.

I fiddled for most of a day, waiting, and proving to myself that I could retrieve a group picture from any year and, through looking only at male faces and female legs, make close guesses concerning the price of gold (falling or rising), the time of that picture relative to the double sunspot cycle, andÄshortly and most surprisingÄ whether the political structure was falling apart or consolidating.

My terminal chimed. No face. No pat on the back. Just a displayed message: “Operations requests soonest depth analysis of possibility that plague epidemics of sixth, fourteenth, and seventeenth centuries resulted from political conspiracy.”

Fooey! I had wandered into a funny farm and was locked up with the inmates.

Oh, well! The question was so complex that I might be left alone a long time while I studied it. That suited me; I had grown addicted to the possibilities of a terminal of a major computer hooked into a world research netÄI felt like Little Jack Homer.

I started by listing as many subjects as possible by free association:

plague, epidemiology, fleas, rats, Daniel Defoe, Isaac Newton, conspiracies, Guy Fawkes, Freemasonry, Illuminati, OTO, Rosicrucians, Kennedy, Oswald, John Wilkes Booth, Pearl Harbor, Green Bowlers, Spanish influenza, pest control, etc.

In three days my list of possibly related subjects was ten times as long.

In a week I knew that one lifetime was not nearly long enough to study in depth all of my list. But I had been told to tackle the subject

so I started inÄbut I placed my own meaning on “soonest”Äi.e., I would study conscientiously at least fifty hours per week but when and how I wished and with no cramming or rawhiding… unless somebody came along and explained to me why I should work harder or differently.

This went on for weeks.

I was wakened in the middle of the night by my terminalÄoverride alarm; I had shut it off as usual when I went to bed (alone, I don’t recall why). I answered sleepily, “All right, all right! Speak up, and it had better be good.”

No picture. Boss’s voice said, “Friday, when will the next major Black Death epidemic occur?”

I answered, “Three years from now. April. Starting in Bombay and spreading worldwide at once. Spreading off planet at first transport.

“Thank you. Good night.”

I dropped my head to the pillow and went right back to sleep.

I woke up at seven hundred as usual, held still for several moments and thought, while I grew colder and colderÄdecided that I really had heard from Boss in the night and really had given him that preposterous answer.

So bite the bullet, Friday, and climb the Thirteen Steps. I punched “local one.” “Friday here, Boss. About what I told you in the night. I plead temporary insanity.”

“Nonsense. See me at ten-fifteen.”

I was tempted to spend the next three hours in lotus, chanting my beads. But I have a deep conviction that one should not attend even the End of the World without a good breakfast… and my decision was justified as the special that morning was fresh figs with cream, corned-beef hash with poached eggs, and English muffins with Knott’s Berry Farm orange marmalade. Fresh milk. Colombian high-altitude coffee. That so improved things that I spent an hour trying to find a mathematical relationship between the past history of plague and the date that had popped into my sleep-drenched mind. I did not find one but was beginning to see some shape to the curve when the terminal gave me a three-minute warning I had punched in.

I had refrained from having my hair cut and my neck shaved but otherwise I was ready. I walked in on the tick. “Friday reporting,

sir. -

“Sit down. Why Bombay? I would think that Calcutta would be a more likely center.”

“It might have something to do with long-range weather forecasts and the monsoons. Fleas can’t stand hot, dry weather. Eighty percent of a flea’s body mass is water and, if the percentage drops below sixty, the flea dies. So hot, dry weather will stop or prevent an epidemic. But, Boss, the whole thing is nonsense. You woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me a silly question and I gave you a silly answer without really waking up. I probably pulled it out of a dream. I’ve been having nightmares about the Black Death and there really was a bad epidemic that started in Bombay. Eighteen ninety-six and following.”

“Not as bad as the Hong Kong phase of it three years later. Friday, the analytical section of Operations says that the next Black Death epidemic won’t start until a year later than your prediction. And not Bombay. Djakarta and Ho Chi Minh City.”

“That’s preposterous!” I stopped abruptly. “Sorry, sir, I guess I was back in that nightmare. Boss, can’t I study something pleasantem than fleas and rats and Black Death? It’s ruining my sleep.”

“You may. You are through studying plagueÄ”

“Hooray!”

“Äother than to whatever extent your intellectual curiosity causes you to tidy up any loose ends. The matter now goes to Operations for action. But action will be based on your prediction, not on that of the mathematical analysts.”

“I have to say it again. My prediction is nonsense.”

“Friday, your greatest weakness is lack of awareness of your true strength. Wouldn’t we look silly if we depended on the professional analysts but the outbreak was one year earlier, as you predicted? Catastrophe. But to be a year early in taking prophylactic measures does no harm.”

“Are we going to try to stop it?” (People have been fighting rats and fleas throughout history. So far, the rats and fleas are ahead.)

“Heavens, no! In the second place, the contract would be too big

for this organization. But in the first place I do not accept contracts that I cannot fulfill; this is one such. In the third place, from the strictest humanitarian viewpoint, any attempt to stop the processes by which overcrowded cities purge themselves is not a kindness. Plague is a nasty death but a quick one. Starvation also is a nasty death … but a very slow one.”

Boss grimaced, then continued. “This organization will limit itself to the problem of keeping Pasteurella pestis from leaving this planet. How will we do this? Answer at once.”

(Ridiculous! Any government public health department, faced with such a question, would set up a blue-ribbon study group, insist on ample research funds, and schedule a reasonable timeÄfive years or moreÄfor orderly scientific investigation.) I answered at once, “Explode them.”

“The space colonies? That seems a drastic solution.”

“No, the fleas. Back during the global wars of the twentieth century somebody discovered that you could kill off fleas and lice by taking them up to high altitude. They explode. About five kilometers as I recall but it can be looked up and checked by experiment. I thought of it because I noticed that Beanstalk Station on Mount Kenya was above the critical altitudeÄand almost all space traffic these days goes up the Beanstalk. Then there is the simple method of heat and drynessÄworks but not as fast. But the key to it, Boss, is absolutely no exceptions. Just one case of diplomatic immunity or one VIP allowed to skip the routines and you’ve had it. One lapdog. One gerbil. One shipment of laboratory mice. If it took the pneumonic form, Ell-Five would be a ghost town in a week. Or Luna City.”

“If I did not have other work for you, I would put you in charge. How about rats?”

“I don’t want the job; I’m sick of the subject. Boss, killing a rat is no problem. Stuff it into a sack. Beat the sack with an ax. Then shoot it. Then drown it. Burn the sack with the dead rat in it. Meanwhile its mate has raised another litter of pups and you now have a dozen rats to replace it. Boss, all we’ve ever been able to do with rats is fight them to a draw. We never win. If we let up for a moment the rats pull ahead.” I added sourly, “I think they’re the second team.” This plague assignment had depressed me.

“Elucidate.”

“If Homo sapiens doesn’t make itÄhe keeps trying to kill himself offÄthere are the rats, ready to take over.” -

“Piffle. Soft-headed nonsense. Friday, you overstress the human will to die. We have had the means to commit racial suicide for generations now and those means are and have been in many hands. We have not done so. In the second place, to replace us, rats would have to grow enormously larger skulls, develop bodies to support them, learn to walk on two feet, develop their front paws into delicate manipulative organsÄand grow more cortex to control all this. To replace man another breed must become man. Bah. Forget it. Before we leave the subject of plague, what conclusions did you reach concerning the conspiracy theory?”

“The notion is silly. You specified sixth, fourteenth, and seventeenth centuries … and that means sailing ships or caravans and no knowledge of bacteriology. So here we have the sinister Dr. Fu Manchu in his hideaway raising a million rats and the rats are infested with fleasÄeasy. Rats and fleas are infected with the bacillusÄpossible even without theory. But how does he hit his target city? By ship? In a few days all the million rats will be dead and so would be the crew. Even harder to do it overland. To make such a conspiracy work in those centuries would require modern science and a largish time machine. Boss, who thought up that silly question?”

“I did.”

“I thought it had your skid to it. Why?”

“It caused you to study the subject with a much wider approach than you otherwise would have given it, did it not?”

“Uh…” I had spent much more time studying relevant political history than I had spent studying the disease itself. “I suppose so.”

“You know so.”

“Well, yes. Boss, there ain’t no such animal as a well-documented conspiracy. Or sometimes too well documented but the documents contradict each other. If a conspiracy happened quite some time ago, a generation or longer, it becomes impossible to establish the truth. Have you ever heard of a man named John F. Kennedy?”

“Yes. Chief of state in the middle twentieth century of the Federation then occupying the land between CanadaÄBritish Canada

and Qu‚becÄand the Kingdom of Mexico. He was assassinated.”

“That’s the man. Killed in front of hundreds of witnesses and every aspect, before, during, and after, heavily documented. All that mountain of evidence adds up to is this: Nobody knows who shot him, how many shot him, how many times he was shot, who did it, why it was done, and who was involved in the conspiracy if there was a conspiracy. It isn’t even possible to say whether the murder plot was foreign or domestic. Boss, if it is impossible to untangle one that recent and that thoroughly investigated, what chance is there of figuring out the details of the conspiracy that did in Gaius lulius Caesar? Or Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot? All that can truthfully be said is that the people who come out on top write the official versions found in the history books, history that is no more honest than is autobiography.”

“Friday, a¤tobiography is usually honest.”

“Huh! Boss, what have you been smoking?”

“That will do. Autobiography is usually honest but it is never truthful.”

“I missed a turn.”

“Think about it. Friday, I can’t spend more time on you today; you chatter too much and change the subject. Hold your tongue while I say some things. You are now permanently on staff work. You are getting older; no doubt your reflexes are a touch slower. I will not again risk you in field workÄ”

“I’m not complaining!”

“Pipe down. ÄBut you must not get swivel-chair spread. Spend less time at the console, more time in exercise; the day will come when your enhanced reflexes will again save your life. And possibly the lives of others. In the meantime give thought to the day when you will have to shape your life unassisted. You should leave this planet; for you there is nothing here. The Balkanization of North America ended the last chance of reversing the decay of the Renaissance Civilization. So you should think about offplanet possibilities not only in the solar system but elsewhereÄplanets ranging from extremely primitive to well developed. Investigate for each the cost and the advantages of migrating there. You will need money; do you want my agents to collect the money of which you were cheated in New Zealand?”

“How did you know I was cheated?”

“Come, come! We are not children.”

may I think about it?” -

“Yes. Concerning your ex-migration: I recommend that you not move to the planet Olympia. Otherwise I have no specific advice other than to migrate. When I was younger, I thought I could change this world. Now I no longer think so but for emotional reasons I must keep on fighting a holding action. But you are young and, because of your unique heritage, your emotional ties to this planet and to this portion of humanity are not great. I could not mention this until you shuffled off your sentimental connection in New ZealandÄ”

“I didn’t `shuffle’ it off; I was kicked out on my arse!”

“So. While you are deciding, look up Benjamin Franklin’s parable of the whistle, then tell meÄno, ask yourselfÄwhether or not you paid too much for your whistle. Enough of thatÄ Two assignments for you: Study the Shipstone corporate complex, including its interlocks outside the complex. Second, the next time I see you I want you to tell me precisely how to spot a sick culture. That’s all.”

Boss turned his attention to his console, so I stood up. But I was not ready to accept so abrupt a dismissal as I had had no opportunity to ask important questions. “Boss. Don’t I have any duties? Just random study that goes nowhere?”

“It goes somewhere. Yes, you have duties. First, to study. Second, to be awakened in the middle of the nightÄor stopped in the hallwayÄ to answer silly questions.”

“Just that?”

“What do you want? Angels and trumpets?”

“Well … a job title, maybe. I used to be a courier. What am I now? Court jester?”

“Friday, you are developing a bureaucratic mind. `Job title’ indeed! Very well. You are staff intuitive analyst, reporting to me only. But the title carries an injunction: You are forbidden to discuss anything more serious than a card game with any member of the analytical section of the general staff. Sleep with them if you wishÄI know that you do, in two casesÄbut limit your conversation to the veriest trivia.”

“Boss, I could wish that you spent less time under my bed!”

“Only enough to protect the organization. Friday, you are well aware that the absence of Eyes and Ears today simply means that they are concealed. Be assured that I am shameless about protecting the organization.”

“You are shameless, unlimited. Boss, answer me one more question. Who is behind Red Thursday? The third wave sort of fizzled; will there be a fourth? What’s it all about?”

“Study it yourself. If I told you, you would not know; you simply would have been told. Study it thoroughly and some nightÄwhen you are sleeping aloneÄI will ask you. You will answer and then you will know.”

“Fer Gossake. Do you always know when I’m sleeping alone?”

“Always.” He added, “Dismissed,” and turned away.

xxiii

As I left the sanctum sanctorum I ran into Goldie coming in. I was feeling grouchy and simply nodded. Not sore at Goldie. Boss! Damn him. Supercilious, arrogant voyeur! I went to my room and got to work, so that I could stop fuming.

First I punched for the names and addresses of all the Shipstone corporations. While these were printing I called for histories of the complex. The computer named two, an official company history combined with a biography of Daniel Shipstone, and an unofficial history footnoted “muckrake.” Then the machine suggested several other sources.

I told the terminal to print out both books and I asked it for printouts of other sources if four thousand words or less, summarized if not. Then I looked over the corporations list:

Daniel Shipstone Estate, Inc. Muriel Shipstone Memorial Research Laboratories

Shipstone Tempe

Shipstone Gobi

Shipstone Aden

Shipstone Sahara

Shipstone Arica

Shipstone Death Valley

Shipstone Karroo

Shipstone NeverNever

Shipstone Ell-Four

Shipstone Ell-Five

Shipstone Stationary

Shipstone Tycho

Shipstone Ares

Shipstone Deep Water

Shipstone Unlimited, Ltd.

Sears-Montgomery, Inc.

Prometheus Foundation

Coca-Cola Holding Company Billy Shipstone School for

Interworld Transport Corporation Handicapped Children

Jack and the Beanstalk, Pty. Wolf Creek Pass Nature Preserve

Morgan Associates A¤o Nuevo Wild Life Refuge

Out-Systems Colonial Shipstone Visual Arts Museum

Corporation and School

I looked at this list with easily controlled enthusiasm. I had known that the Shipstone trust had to be bigÄwho does not have half a dozen Shipstones within easy reach, not counting the big one in your basement or foundation? But now it seemed to me that studying this monster would be a lifetime career. I was not that much interested in Shipstones.

I was nibbling around the edges when Goldie stopped by and told me that it was time to put on the nosebag. “And I have instructions to see to it that you do not spend more than eight hours a day at your terminal and you are to take a full weekend every week.”

“Ah so. Tyrannical old bastard.”

We started for the refectory. “Friday . .

“Yes, Goldie?”

“You are finding the Master grumpy and sometimes difficult.”

“Correction. He is always difficult.”

“Mmm, yes. But what you may not know is that he is in constant pain.” She added, “He can no longer take drugs to control it.”

We walked in silence while I chewed and swallowed that one. “Goldie? What is wrong with him?”

“Nothing, really. I would say that he is in good health… for his age.

“How old is he?”

“I don’t know. From things I have heard I know that he is over a hundred. How much over I can’t guess.”

“Oh, no! Goldie, when I went to work for him, he could not have been more than seventy. Oh, he used canes but he was very spry. He moved as fast then as anyone.”

“Well … it’s not important. But you might remember that he hurts. If he is rude to you, it is pain talking. He thinks highly of you.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Ah … I’ve talked too much about my patient. Let’s eat.”

In studying the Shipstone corporate complex I did not attempt to study Shipstones. The wayÄthe only wayÄto study Shipstones would be to go back to school, get a Ph.D. in physics,-add on some intense postdoctoral study in both solid state and plasma, get a job with one of the Shipstone companies and so impress them with your loyalty and your brilliance that you are at long last part of the inner circle controlling fabrication and quality.

Since that involves about twenty years that I should have started back in my teens, I assumed that Boss did not intend me to take that route.

So let me quote from the official or propaganda history:

Prometheus, a Brief Biography and Short Account of the Unparalleled Discoveries of Daniel Thomas Shipstone, &S., MA., Ph.D., LL.D., L.H.D., and of the Benevolent System He Founded.

Äthus young Daniel Shipstone saw at once that the problem was not a shortage of energy but lay in the transporting of energy. Energy is everywhereÄin sunlight, in wind, in mountain streams, in temperature gradients of all sorts wherever found, in coal, in fossil oil, in radioactive ores, in green growing things. Especially in ocean depths and in outer space energy is free for the taking in amounts lavish beyond all human comprehension.

Those who spoke of “energy scarcity” and of “conserving energy” simply did not understand the situation. The sky was “raining soup”; what was needed was a bucket in which to carry it.

With the encouragement of his devoted wife Muriel (n‚e Greentree), who went back to work to keep food on the table, young Shipstone resigned from General Atomics and became the most American of myth-heroes, the basement inventor. Seven frustrating and weary years later he had fabricated the first Shipstone by hand. He had foundÄ What he had found was a way to pack more kilowatt-hours into a

smaller space and a smaller mass than any other engineer had ever dreamed of. To call it an “improved storage battery” (as some early accounts did) is like calling an H-bomb an “improved firecracker.” What he had achieved was the utter destruction of the biggest industry (aside from organized religion) of the western world.

For what happened next I must draw from the muckraking history and from other independent sources as I just don’t believe the sweetness and light of the company version. Fictionalized speech attributed to Muriel Shipstone:

“Danny Boy, you are not going to patent the gadget. What would it get you? Seventeen years at the most… and no years at all in threefourths of the world. If you did patent or try to, Edison, and P. G. and E., and Standard would tie you up with injunctions and law suits and claimed infringements and I don’t know what all. But you said yourself that you could put one of your gadgets in a room with the best research team G.A. has to offer and the best they could do would be to melt it down and the worst would be that they would blow themselves up. You said that. Did you mean it?”

“Certainly. If they don’t know how I insert theÄ”

“Hush! I don’t want to know. And walls have ears. We don’t make any fancy announcements; we simply start manufacturing. Wherever power is cheapest today. Where is that?”

The muckraking author fairly frothed at the “cruel, heartless monopoly” held by the Shipstone complex over the prime necessities of “all the little people everywhere.” I could not see it that way. What Shipstone and his companies did was to make plentiful and cheap what used to be scarce and dearÄthis is “cruel” and “heartless”?

The Shipstone companies do not have a monopoly over energy. They don’t own coal or oil or uranium or water power. They do lease many, many hectares of desert land … but there is far more desert not being cropped for sunshine than the Shipstone trust is using. As for space, it is impossible to intercept even one percent of all the sunshine going to waste inside the orbit of Luna, impossible by a factor of many millions. Do the arithmetic yourself otherwise you’ll never believe the answer.

So what is their crime?

Twofold:

a) The Shipstone companies are guilty of supplying energy to the human race at prices below those of their competitors;

b) They meanly and undemocratically decline to share their industrial secret of the final assembly stage of a Shipstone.

This latter is, in the eyes of many people, a capital offense. My

terminal dug out many editorials on “the people’s right to know,” others on “the insolence of giant monopolies,” and other displays of

righteous indignation. -

The Shipstone complex is mammoth, all right, because they supply cheap power to billions of people who want cheap power and want more of it every year. But it is not a monopoly because they don’t own any power; they just package it and ship it around to wherever people want it. Those billions of customers could bankrupt the Shipstone complex almost overnight by going back to their old waysÄburn coal, burn wood, burn oil, burn uranium, distribute power through continent-wide stretches of copper and aluminum wires and/or long trains of coal cars and tank cars.

But no one, so far as my terminal could dig out, wants to go back to the bad old days when the landscape was disfigured in endless ways and the very air was loaded with stinks and carcinogens and soot, and the ignorant were scared silly by nuclear power, and all power was scarce and expensive. No, nobody wants the bad old waysÄeven the most radical of the complainers want cheap and convenient power… they just want the Shipstone companies to go away and get lost.

“The people’s right to know”Äthe people’s right to know what? Daniel Shipstone, having first armed himself with great knowledge of higher mathematics and physics, went down into his basement and patiently suffered seven lean and weary years and thereby learned an applied aspect of natural law that let him construct a Shipstone.

Any and all of “the people” are free to do as he didÄhe did not even take out a patent. Natural laws are freely available to everyone equally, including flea-bitten Neanderthals crouching against the cold.

In this case, the trouble with “the people’s right to know” is that it strongly resembles the “right” of someone to be a concert pianistÄ but who does not want to practice.

But I am prejudiced, not being human and never having had any rights.

Whether you prefer the saccharine company version or the vitriolic muckraker’s version, the basic facts about Daniel Shipstone and the

Shipstone complex are well known and beyond argument. What surprised me (shocked me, in fact) was what I learned when I started digging into ownership, management, and direction.

My first hint came from that basic printout when I saw what companies were listed as Shipstone complex companies but did not have “Shipstone” in their names. When one pauses for a Coke … the deal is with Shipstone!

Ian had told me that Interworld had ordered the destruction of AcapulcoÄdoes this mean that the trustees of Daniel Shipstone’s estate ordered the killing of a quarter of a million innocent people? Can these be the same people who run the best hospital/school for handicapped children in the world? And Sears-MontgomeryÄhell’s bells, I own some Sears-Montgomery stock myself. Do I share by concatenation some part of the guilt for the murder of Acapulco?

I programmed the machine to display how the directorates interlocked inside the Shipstone complex, and then what directorships in other companies were held by directors of Shipstone companiesÄand the results were so startling that I asked the computer to list stock ownership of one percent or more of the voting stock in all Shipstone companies.

I spent the next three days fiddling with and rearranging and looking forbetter ways to display the great mass of data that came back in answer to those two questions.

At the end of that time I wrote out my conclusions:

a) The Shipstone complex is all one company. It just looks like twenty-eight separate organizations.

b) The directors and/or stockholders of the Shipstone complex own or control everything of major importance in all the major territorial nations in the solar system.

c) Shipstone is potentially a planetwide (systemwide?) government. I could not tell from the data whether it acted as such or not as control (if indeed it were exerted) would be through corporations not overtly part of the Shipstone empire.

d) It scared me.

Something I had noticed in connection with one Shipstone company (Morgan Associates) caused me to run a search on credit companies and banks. I was unsurprised but depressed to learn that the

very company now extending me credit (MasterCard of California) was in effect the same company as the one guaranteeing payment (Ceres and South Africa Acceptances) and that was duplicated right down the line, whether it was Maple Leaf, Visa, Credit Qu‚bec, or what. That is not news; fiscal theorists have been asserting that as long as I can remember. But it struck home when I saw it spelled out in terms of directorates interlocking and ownership shared.

On impulse I suddenly asked the computer: “Who owns you?”

I got back: “Null Program.”

I rephrased it, conforming most carefully to its language. The computer represented by this terminal was a most forgiving machine and very smart; ordinarily it did not mind somewhat informal programming. But there are limits to what one may expect in machine understanding of verbal language; a reflexive question such as this might call for semantic exactness.

Again: “Null Program.”

I decided to sneak up on the idea. I asked it the following question, doing it step by step exactly in accordance with this computer’s language, computer grammar, computer protocol: “What is the ownership of the information-processing network that has terminals throughout British Canada?”

The answer was displayed and flashed several times before wipingÄand it wiped without my order: “Requested data are not in my membanks.”

That scared me. I knocked off for the day and went swimming and sought out a friend to share a bed with me that night, not waiting to be asked. I wasn’t superhorny, I was superlonely and dern well wanted a warm living body close to mine to “protect” me from an intelligent machine that refused to tell me who (what) it really was.

During breakfast next morning Boss sent word to me to see him at ten hundred. I reported, somewhat mystified because in my opinion there had not been nearly enough time for me to complete my two assignments: Shipstone, and the marks of a sick culture.

But when I came in, he handed me a letter, of the old-fashioned sort, sealed into an envelope and physically forwarded, just like junk mail.

I recognized it, for I had sent itÄto Janet and Ian. But I was surprised to see it in Boss’s hands, as the return address on it was phony. I looked and saw that it had been readdressed to a law firm in San Jose, the one that had been my contact to find Boss. “Pixies.”

“You can hand it back to me and I will send it to Captain Tormey when I know where he is.”

“Uh, when you know where the Tormeys are, I will write a very different letter. This one is sort of blind.”

“Commendably so.”

“You’ve read it?” (Damn it, Boss!)

“I read everything that is to be forwarded to Captain and Mrs. TormeyÄand Dr. Perreault. By their request.”

“I see.” (Nobody tells me a damn thing!) “I wrote the way I did, phony name and all, because the Winnipeg police might open it.”

“They undoubtedly did. I think you covered adequately. I regret that I did not inform you that all mail sent to their home would be forwarded to me. If indeed the police are forwarding all of it. Friday, I do not know where the Tormeys are … but I have a contact method that I can useÄonce. The plan is to use it when the police drop all charges against them. I expected that weeks ago. It has not taken place. From this I conclude that the police in Winnipeg are very much in earnest in their intention of hanging the disappearance of Lieutenant Dickey on the Tormeys as a murder charge. Let me ask you again: Can that body be found?”

I thought hard, trying to put “worst case” on it. If the police ever moved in on that house, what would they find? “Boss, have the police been inside that house?”

“Certainly. They searched it the day after the owners departed.”

“In that case the police had not found the body the morning of the day I reported here. If they found it, or were to find it, since that date, would you know?”

“I think it probable. My lines of communication into that police headquarters are less than perfect but I pay highest for freshest information.”

“Do you know what was done with the livestock? Four horses, a cat and five kittens, a pig, maybe other animals?”

“Friday, where is your intuition leading you?”

“Boss, I don’t know exactly how that body is hidden. But Janet, Mrs. Tormey, is an architect who specialized in two-tier active defense of buildings. What she did about her animals would tell me whether or not she thought there was the slightest possibility of that body ever being found.”

Boss made a notation. “We’ll discuss it later. What are the marks of a sick culture?”

“Boss, fer Gossake! I’m still learning the full shape of the Shipstone complex.”

“You will never learn its full shape. I gave you two assignments at once so that you could rest your mind with a change of pace. Don’t tell me that you’ve given no thought to the second assignment.”

“Thought is about all I’ve given to it. I’ve been reading Gibbon and studying the French Revolution. Also Smith’s From the Yalu to the Precipice.”

“A very doctrinaire treatment. Read also Penn’s The Last Days of the Sweet Land of Liberty.”

“Yes, sir. I did start making tallies. It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn’t the whole population.”

“A very bad sign. Particularism. It was once considered a Spanish vice but any country can fall sick with it.”

“I don’t really know Spain. Dominance of males over females seems to be one of the symptoms. I suppose the reverse would be true but I haven’t run across it in any of the history I’ve listened. Why not, Boss?”

“You tell me. Continue.”

“So far as I have listened, before a revolution can take place, the population must lose faith in both the police and the courts.”

“Elementary. Go on.”

“Well … high taxation is important and so is inflation of the currency and the ratio of the productive to those on the public payroll. But that’s old hat; everybody knows that a country is on the skids when its income and outgo get out of balance and stay that wayÄeven though there are always endless attempts to wish it away by legislation. But I started looking for little signs, what some call silly-season symptoms. For example, did you know that it is against

the law here to be naked outside your own home? Even in your own home if anybody can see in?”

“Rather difficult to enforce, I suspect. What significance do you see in it?”

“Oh, it isn’t enforced. But it can’t be repealed, either. The Confederacy is loaded with such laws. It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can’t be enforced weakens all other laws. Boss, did you know that the California Confederacy subsidizes whores?”

“I had not noticed it. To what end? For their armed forces? For their prison population? Or as a public utility? I confess to some surprise.”

“Oh, not that way at all! The government pays them to keep their legs crossed. Take it off the market entirely. They are trained, licensed, examinedÄand stockpiled. Only it doesn’t work. The designated `surplus artists’ draw their subsidy checks … then go right ahead peddling tail. When they aren’t supposed to do it even for fun because that hurts the market for the unsubsidized whores. So the hookers’ union, who sponsored the original legislation to support the union scale, is now trying to work out a voucher system to plug up the holes in the subsidy law. And that won’t work either.”

“Why won’t it work, Friday?”

“Boss, laws to sweep back the tide never do work; that’s what King Canute was saying. Surely you know that?”

“I wanted to be sure that you knew it.”

“I think I’ve been insulted. I ran across a goody. In the California Confederacy it is against the law to refuse credit to a person merely because that person has taken bankruptcy. Credit is a civil right.”

“I assume that it does not work but what form does noncompliance take?”

“I have not yet investigated, Boss. But I think a deadbeat would be at a disadvantage in trying to bribe a judge. I want to mention one of the obvious symptoms: Violence. Muggings. Sniping. Arson. Bombing. Terrorism of any sort. Riots of courseÄbut I suspect that little incidents of violence, pecking away at people day after day, damage a culture even more than riots that flare up and then die down. I guess that’s all for now. Oh, conscription and slavery and arbitrary compulsion of all sorts and imprisonment without bail

and without speedy trialÄbut those things are obvious; all the histories list them.”

“Friday, I think you have missed the most alarming symptom of all.

“I have? Are you going to tell me? Or am I going to have to grope around in the dark for it?”

“Mmm. This once I shall tell you. But go back and search for it. Examine it. Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named … but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”

“Really?”

“Pfui. I should have forced you to dig it out for yourself; then you would know it. This symptom is especially serious in that an individual displaying it never thinks of it as a sign of ill health but as proof of his/her strength. Look for it. Study it. Friday, it is too late to save this cultureÄthis worldwide culture, not just the freak show here in California. Therefore we must now prepare the monasteries for the coming Dark Age. Electronic records are too fragile; we must again have books, of stable inks and resistant paper. But that may not be enough. The reservoir for the next renaissance may have to come from beyond the sky.” Boss stopped and breathed heavily. “Friday . .

“Yes, sir?”

“Memorize this name and address.” His hands moved at his console; the answer appeared on his high screen. I memorized it.

“Do you have it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Shall I repeat it for check?”

“No, sir.”

“You are sure?”

“Repeat it if you wish, sir.”

“Mmm. Friday, would you be so kind as to pour a cup of tea for me before you leave? I find that my hands are unsteady today.”

“My pleasure, sir.”

xxiv

Neither Goldie nor Anna showed up next day at breakfast. I ate by myself and consequently fairly quickly; I dawdle over food only when shared with company. This was just as well for I was just standing up, finished, when Anna’s voice came over the speaking system:

“Attention, please. I have the unhappy duty to announce that during the night our Chairman died. By his wish there will be no memorial service. The body has been cremated. At nine hundred hours, in the large conference room, there will be a meeting to wind up the affairs of the company. Everyone is urged to attend and to be on time.”

I spent the time until nine o’clock crying. Why? Feeling sorry for myself, I suppose. I’m certain that’s what Boss would think. He didn’t feel sorry for himself, he didn’t feel sorry for me, and he scolded me more than once for self-pity. Self-pity, he said, is the most demoralizing of all vices.

Just the same, I was feeling sorry for myself. I had always spatted with him, even way back when he broke my indentures-and made me a Free Person after I had run away from him. I found myself regretting every time I had answered him back, been impudent, called him names.

Then I reminded myself that Boss would not have liked me at all if I had been a worm, subservient, no opinions of my own. He had

to be what he was and I had to be what I was and we had lived for years in close association that had never, not once, involved even touching hands. For Friday, that is a record. One I arh not interested in surpassing.

I wonder if he knew, years ago when I first went to work for him, how quickly I would have swarmed into his lap had he invited it. He probably did know. As may be, even though I had never touched his hand, he was the only father I ever had.

The big conference room was very crowded. I had never seen even half that number at meals and some of the faces were strange to me. I concluded that some had been called in and had been able to arrive quickly. At a table at the front of the room Anna sat with a total stranger. Anna had folders of paper, a formidable terminal relay, and secretarial gear. The stranger was a woman about Anna’s age but with a stern schoolmarmish look instead of Anna’s warmth.

At two seconds past nine the stranger rapped loudly on the table. “Quiet, please! I am Rhoda Wainwright, Executive Vice-Chairman of this company and chief counsel to the late Dr. Baldwin. As such I am now Chairman pro tem and paymaster for the purpose of winding up our affairs. You each know that each of you was bound to this company by contract to Dr. Baldwin personallyÄ”

Had I ever signed such a contract? I was bemused by “the late Dr. Baldwin.” Was that really Boss’s name? How did it happen that his name matched my commonest nom de guerre? Had he picked it? That was so very long ago.

“Äsince you are all now free agents. We are an elite outfit and Dr. Baldwin anticipated that every free company in North America would wish to recruit from our ranks once his death released you. There are hiring agents in each of the small conference rooms and in the lounge. As your names are called please come forward to receive and sign for your packet. Then examine it at once but do not, repeat do not, stand at this table and attempt to discuss it. For discussion you must wait until all the others have received their termination packets. Please remember that I have been up all nightÄ”

Hire out with some other free company at once? Did I have to? Was I broke? Probably, except for what was left of that two hundred

thousand bruins I had won in that silly lotteryÄand most of that I probably owed to Janet on her Visa card. Let me see, I had won 230.4 grams of fine gold, deposited with MasterCard as Br. 200,000 but credited as gold at that day’s fix. I had drawn thirty-six grams of that as cash andÄ But I must reckon my other account, too, the one through Imperial Bank of Saint Louis. And the cash and the Visa credit I owed Janet. And Georges ought to let me pay half ofÄ Someone was calling my name.

It was Rhoda Wainwright, looking vexed. “Please be alert, Miss Friday. Here is your packet and sign here to receipt for it. Then move aside to check it.”

I glanced at the receipt. “I’ll sign after I’ve checked it.”

“Miss Friday! You’re holding up the proceedings.”

“I’ll step aside. But I won’t sign until I confirm that the packet matches the receipt list.”

Anna said soothingly, “It’s all right, Friday. I checked it.”

I answered, “Thanks. But I’ll handle it just the way you handle classified documentsÄsight and touch.”

The Wainwright biddy was ready to boil me in oil but I simply moved aside a couple of meters and started checkingÄa fair-size packet: three passports in three names, an assortment of IDs, very sincere papers matching one or another identity, and a draft to “Marjorie Friday Baldwin” drawn on Ceres and South Africa Acceptances, Luna City, in the amount of Au-0.999 grams 297.3Ä which startled me but not nearly as much as the next item did:

adoption papers by Hartley M. Baldwin and Emma Baldwin for female child Friday Jones, renamed Marjorie Friday Baldwin, executed at Baltimore, Maryland, Atlantic Union. Nothing about Landsteiner CrŠche or Johns Hopkins, but the date was the day I left Landsteiner CrŠche.

And two birth certificates: one was a delayed birth certificate for Marjorie Baldwin, born in Seattle, and one was for Friday Baldwin, borne by Emma Baldwin, Boston, Atlantic Union.

Two things were certain about each of these documents: Each was phony and each could be relied on utterly; Boss never did things by halves. I said, “It checks, Anna.” I signed.

Anna accepted the receipt from me, adding quietly: “See me after.”

“Suits. Where?”

“See Goldie.”

“Miss Friday! Your credit card, please!” Wainwrigfit again.

“Oh.” Well, yes, with Boss gone and the company dissolved, I could not use my Saint Louis credit card again. “Here it is.”

She reached for it; I held on. “The punch, please. Or the shears. Whatever you’re using.”

“Oh, come now! I’ll incinerate yours along with many others, after I check the numbers.”

“Ms. Wainwright, if I am to surrender a credit card charged against meÄand I am; no argument about thatÄit will be destroyed or mutilated, rendered useless, right in front of me.”

“You are very tiresome! Don’t you trust anyone?”

“No.”

“Then you’ll have to wait, right here, until everyone else is through.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” I think MasterCard of California uses a phenolic-glass laminate; in any case their cards are tough, as credit cards must be. I had been careful not to show any enhancements around HQ, not because it would matter there but because it isn’t polite. But this was a special circumstance. I tore the card two ways, handed her the bits. “I think you can still make out the serial number.

“Very well!” She sounded as annoyed as I felt. I turned away. She snapped, “Miss Friday! Your other card, please!”

“What card?” I was wondering who among my dear friends was suddenly being deprived of that utter necessity of modern life, a valid credit card, and being left with only a draft and some small change. Clumsy. Inconvenient. I felt certain that Boss had not planned it that way.

“MasterCard … of… California, Miss Friday, issued in San Jose. Hand it over.”

“The company has nothing to do with that card. I arranged that credit on my own.”

“I find that hard to believe. Your credit on it is guaranteed by Ceres and South AfricaÄthat is to say, by the company. The affairs of which are being liquidated. So hand over that card.”

“You’re mixed up, counselor. While payment is made through

Ceres and South Africa, the credit involved is my own. It’s none of your business.”

“You’ll soon find out whose business it is! Your account will be canceled.”

“At your own risk, counselor. If you want a law suit that will leave you barefooted. Better check the facts.” I turned away, anxious not to say another word. She had me so angry that, for the moment, I was not feeling grief over Boss.

I looked around and found that Goldie had already been processed. She was sitting, waiting. I caught her eye and she patted an empty chair by her; I joined her. “Anna said for me to see you.”

“Good. I made a reservation at Cabana Hyatt in San Jose for Anna and me for tonight, and told them that there might be a third. Do you want to come with us?”

“So soon? Are you already packed?” What did I have to pack? Not much, as my New Zealand luggage was still sitting in bond in Winnipeg port because I suspected that the Winnipeg police had placed a tag on itÄso there it would sit until Janet and Ian were in the clear. “I had expected to stay here tonight but I really hadn’t thought about it.”

“Anyone can sleep here tonight but it’s not being encouraged. The managementÄthe new managementÄwants to get everything done today. Lunch will be the last meal served. If anyone is still here tonight at dinnertime, it’s cold sandwiches. Breakfast, nit.”

“Fer Gossake! That doesn’t sound like anything Boss would have planned.”

“It isn’t. This womanÄ The Master’s arrangements were with the senior partner, who died six weeks ago. But it doesn’t matter; we’ll just leave. Coming with us?”

“I suppose so. Yes. But I had better see these recruiters first; I’m going to need a job.”

“Don’t.”

“Why not, Goldie?”

“I’m looking for a job, too. But Anna warned me. The recruiters here today all have arrangements with La Wainwright. If any of them are any good, we can get in touch with them at Las Vegas Labor Mart … without handing this snapping turtle a commission. I know what I wantÄhead nurse in a field hospital of a crack

Goldie said, “We had to have her to sign those drafts.”mercenary outfit. All the best ones are represented in Las Vegas.”

“I guess that’s the place for me to look, too. Goldie, I’ve never had to hunt for a job before. I’m confused.”

“You’ll do all right.”

Three hours later, after a hasty lunch, we were in San Jose. Two APVs were shuttling between Pajaro Sands and the National Plaza; Wainwright was getting rid of us as fast as possibleÄI saw two flatbed trucks, big ones, each drawn by six horses, being loaded as we left, and Papa Perry looking harried. I wondered what was being done with Boss’s libraryÄand felt a little separate, selfish sadness that I might never again have such an unlimited chance to feed the Elephant’s Child. I’ll never be a big brain but I’m curious about everything and a terminal hooked directly to all the world’s best libraries is a luxury beyond price.

When I saw what they were loading I suddenly recalled something with near panic. “Anna, who was Boss’s secretary?”

“He didn’t have one. I sometimes helped him if he needed an extra hand. Seldom.”

“He had a contact address for my friends Ian and Janet Tormey. What would have become of it?”

“Unle~s it’s in this”Äshe took an envelope from her bag and handed it to meÄ”it’s gone… because I have had standing orders for a long time to go to his personal terminal as soon as he was pronounced dead and to punch in a certain program. It was a wipe order, I know, although he did not say so. Everything personal he had in the memory banks was erased. Would this item be personal?”

“Very personal.”

“Then it’s gone. Unless you have it there.”

I looked at what she had handed me: a sealed envelope with nothing but “Friday” on the outside. Anna added, “That should have been in your packet but I grabbed it and held it out. That nosy slitch was reading everything she could get her hands on. I knew that this was private from Mr. Two-CanesÄDr. Baldwin, I should say nowÄto you. I was not going to let her have it.” Anna sighed. “I worked with her all night. I didn’t kill her. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

Riding with us was one of the staff officers, Burton McNyeÄa quiet man who rarely expressed opinions. But now he spoke. “I’m sorry you restrained yourself. Look at me; I have no cash, I always used my credit card for everything. That snotty shyster wouldn’t give me my closing check until I handed over my credit card. What happens with a draft on Lunar bank? Can you cash it, or do they simply accept it for collection? I may be sleeping in the Plaza tonight.”

“Mr. McNyeÄ”

“Yes, Miss Friday?”

“I’m no longer `Miss’ Friday. Just Friday.”

“Then I’m Burt.”

“Okay, Burt. I’ve got some cash bruins and a credit card that Wainwright could not touch, although she tried. How much do you need?”

He smiled and reached over and patted my knee. “All the nice things I’ve heard about you are true. Thanks, dear, but I’ll handle it. First I’ll take this to the Bank of America. If they won’t cash it offhand, perhaps they will advance me some pending collection. If not, I shall go to her office in the CCC Building and stretch out on her desk and tell her that it is up to her to find me a bed. Damn it; the Chief would have seen to it that each of us got a few hundred in cash; she did it on purpose. Maybe to force us to sign up with her buddies; I wouldn’t put it past her. If she makes any fuss, I’m feeling just ornery enough to find out whether or not I remember any of the things they taught me in basic.”

I answered, “Burt, don’t ever tackle a lawyer with your hands. The way to fight a lawyer is with another lawyer, a smarter one. Look, we’ll be in the Cabana. If you can’t cash that draft, better accept my offer. It won’t inconvenience me.”

“Thanks, Friday. But I’m going to choke her until she gives in.”

The room Goldie had reserved turned out to be a small suite, a room with a big waterbed and a living room with a couch that opened into a double bed. I sat down on the couch to read Boss’s letter while Anna and Goldie used the bathÄthen got up to use it myself when they came out. When I came out, they were on the big bed, sound asleepÄnot surprising; both of them had been up all

night in nervously exhausting work. I kept very quiet and sat back

down, resumed reading the letter: -

Dear Friday, Since this is my last opportunity to communicate with you, I must

tell you things I have not been able to say while alive and still your employer.

Your adoption: You do not remember it because it did not happen that way. You will find that all records are legally correct. You are indeed my foster daughter. Emma Baldwin has the same sort of reality as your Seattle parents, i.e., real for all practical and legal purposes. You need be careful of only one thing: Don’t let your several identities trip each other. But you have walked that tight-wire many times, professionally.

Be sure to be present or represented at the reading of my will. Since I am a Lunar citizen

(Huh?)

this will be at Luna City immediately after my death, Luna Republic not having all the lawyer-serving delays one finds in most Earthside countries. Call Fong, Tomosawa, Rothschild, Fong, and Finnegan, Luna City. Do not anticipate too much; my will does not relieve you of the necessity of earning a living.

Your origin: You have always been curious about this, understandably so. Since your genetic endowment was assembled from many sources and since all records have been destroyed, I can tell you little. Let me mention two sources of your genetic pattern in whom you may take pride, two known to history as Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Green. There is a memorial to them in a crater near Luna City, but it is hardly worth the trip as there is nothing much to see. If you will query the Luna City Chamber of Commerce concerning this memorial, you can obtain a cassette with a reasonably accurate account of what they did. When you hear it, you will know why I told you to suspend judgment on assassins. Assassination is usually a dirty business . .

but honorable hatchet men can be heroes. Play the cassette and judge for yourself.

The Greens were colleagues of mine many years ago. Since their work was very dangerous, I had caused each of them to deposit genetic material, four of her ova, a supply of his sperm. When they were killed, I caused gene analysis to be made with an eye to posthumous childrenÄonly to learn that they were incompatible; simple fertilization would have caused reinforcement of some bad alleles.

Instead, when creation of artificial persons became possible, their genes were used selectively. Yours was the only successful design; other attempts at including them were either not viable or had to be destroyed. A good genetic designer works the way a good photographer does: A perfect result derives from a willingness to discard drastically any attempt less than perfect. There will be no more attempts using the Greens; Gail’s ova are gone and Joe’s sperm is probably no longer useful.

It is not possible to define your relationship to them but it is equivalent to something between granddaughter and great-granddaughter, the rest of you being from many sources but you can take pride in the fact that all of you was most carefully selected to maximize the best traits of H. sapiens. This is your potential; whether or not you achieve your potential is up to you.

Before your records were destroyed, I once scratched my curiosity by listing the sources that went into creating you. As near as I can recall they are:

Finnish, Polynesian, Amerindian, Innuit, Danish, red Irish, Swazi, Korean, German, Hindu, EnglishÄand bits and pieces from elsewhere since none of the above is pure. You can never afford to be racist; you would bite your own tail!

All that the above really means is that the best materials were picked to design you, regardless of source. It is sheer luck that you wound up beautiful as well.

[“Beautiful”! Boss, I do own a mirror. Was it possible he had really thought so? Surely, I’m built okay; that just reflects the fact that I’m a crack athlete-which in turn reflects the fact that I was planned, not born. Well, it’s nice that he thought so if he did . .

because it’s the only game in town; I’m me, whatever.]

On one point I owe you an explanation if not an apology. It was intended that you should be reared by selected parents as their natural child. But when you still weighed less than five kilos, I was sent toprison. Although I was able, eventually, to escape, I could not return to Earth until after the Second Atlantic Rebellion. The scars of this mix-up are still with you, I know. I hope that you someday will purge yourself of your fear and mistrust of “human” persons; it gains you nothing and handicaps you mightily. Someday, somehow, you must realize emotionally what you know intellectually, that they are as tied to the Wheel as you are.

As for the rest, what can I say in a last message? That unfortunate coincidence, my conviction at just the wrong time, left you too easily bruised, much too sentimental. My dear, you must cure yourself utterly of all fear, guilt, and shame. I think you have rooted out self pity

[The hell I have!]

but, if not, you must work on it. I think that you are immune to the temptations of religion. If you are not, I cannot help you, any more than I could keep you from acquiring a drug habit. A religion is sometimes a source of happiness and I would not deprive anyone of happiness. But it is a comfort appropriate for the weak, not for the strongÄand you are strong. The great trouble with religionÄany religionÄis that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reasonÄbut one cannot have both.

I have one last thing to tell you-for my own satisfaction, for my own pride. I am one of your “ancestors”-not a major one but some of my genetic pattern lives on in you. You are not only my foster daughter but also in part my natural daughter as well. To my great pride.

So let me close this with a word I could not say while I was aliveÄ Love,

Hartley M. Baldwin

I put the letter back into its envelope and curled up and indulged in that worst of vices, self-pity, doing it thoroughly, with plenty of tears. I don’t see anything wrong with crying; it lubricates the psyche.

Having gotten it out of my system I got up and washed my face and decided that I was all through grieving over Boss. I was pleased and flattered that he had adopted me and it warmed me all through to know that a bit of him was used in designing meÄbut he was still Boss. I thought that he would allow me one cathartic session of grief but if I kept it up, he would be annoyed with me.

My chums were still sawing wood, exhausted, so I closed the door that shut them off, was pleased to note that it was a sound-silencer door, and I sat down at the terminal, stuck my card into the slot, and coded Fong, Tomosawa, and so forth, having routed through exchange service to get the code, then coding directly; it’s cheaper that way.

I recognized the woman who answered. Low gee certainly is better than a bra; if I lived in Luna City, I would wear only a monikini, too. Oh, stilts, maybe. An emerald in my bellybutton. “Excuse me,” I said. “Somehow I’ve managed to code Ceres and South Africa when I intended to punch for Fong, Tomosawa, Rothschild, Fong, and Finnegan. My subconscious is playing tricks. Sorry to have bothered you and thanks for the help you gave me a few months ago.”

“Wups!” she answered. “You didn’t punch wrong. I’m Gloria Tomosawa, senior partner in Fong, Tomosawa, et al., now that Grandpa Fong has retired. But that doesn’t interfere with my being a vice-president of Ceres and South Africa Acceptances; we are also the legal department of the bank. And I’m the chief trust officer, too, which means that I’m going to have business with you. Everybody here is sorry as can be at the news of Dr. Baldwin’s death and I hope that it did not distress you too muchÄMiss Baldwin.”

“Hey, back up and start over!”

“Sorry. Usually when people call the Moon they want to make it as brief as possible because of the cost. Do you want me to repeat all that, a sentence at a time?”

“No. I think I’ve assimilated it. Dr. Baldwin left a note telling me to be at the reading of his will or to be represented. I can’t be there. When will it be read and can you advise me as to how I can get someone in Luna City to represent me?”

“It will be read as soon as we get official notification of death from the California Confederacy, which should be any time now as our

San Jose representative has already paid the squeeze. Someone to represent youÄwill I do? Perhaps I should say that Grandpa Fong was your father’s Luna City attorney for many years . . so I inherited him and now that your father has died, I inherit you. Unless you tell me otherwise.”

“Oh, would you?ÄMissÄMrs. TomosawaÄis it Miss or Mrs.?”

“I could and I would and it’s Mrs. It had better be; I have a son as old as you are.”

“Impossible!” (This beauty-contest winner twice my age?)

“Most possible. Here in Luna City we are all old-fashioned cubes, not like California. We get married and we have babies and always in that order. I wouldn’t dare be a Miss with a son your age; nobody would retain me.”

“I mean the idea that you have a son my age. You can’t have a baby at the age of five. Four.”

She chuckled. “You say the nicest things. Why don’t you come here and marry my son? He’s always wanted an heiress.”

“Am I an heiress?”

She sobered. “Urn. I can’t break the seal on that will until your father is officially dead, which he is not, in Luna City, not yet. But he will be shortly and there is rio sense in making you call back. I drafted that will. I checked it for changes when I got it back. Then I sealed it and put it into my safe. So I know what’s in it. What I’m about to tell you, you don’t know until later today. You’re an heiress but fortune-hunters won’t be chasing you. You are not getting a gram in cash. Instead the bank is instructedÄthat’s meÄto subsidize you in migrating off Earth. If you pick Luna, we pay your fare. If you picked a bounty planet, we would give you a Scout knife and pray for you. If you pick a high-priced place like Kaui or Halcyon, the trust pays your fare and your contribution and assists you with starting capital. If you never do migrate off Terra, on your death funds earmarked to assist you revert to the other purposes of the trust. But your migration needs have first call. Exception: If you migrate to Olympia, you pay for it yourself. Nothing from the trust.”

“Dr. Baldwin said something about that. What’s so poisonous about Olympia? I don’t recall a colony world named that.”

“You don’t? No, I guess you’re too young. That’s where those

self-styled supermen went. No real point in warning you against it, however; the corporation doesn’t run ships there. Dear, you are running up a fancy comm bill.”

“I guess so. But it would cost me more if I had to call back. All I mind is having to pay for the speed-of-light dead time. Can you switch hats and be Ceres and South Africa for a moment? Or maybe not; I may need legal advice.”

“I’m wearing both hats, so fire away. Ask anything; today there’s no fee. My advertising loss leader.”

“No, I pay for what I get.”

“You sound like your late father. I think he invented tanstaafl.”

“He’s not really my father, you know, and I never thought of him as such.”

“I know the score, dear; I drew up some of the papers about you. He thought of you as his daughter. He was inordinately proud of you. I was most interested when you first called meÄhaving to keep quiet about things I knew but looking you over. What is on your mind?”

I explained the trouble I had had with Wainwright over credit cards. “Certainly MasterCard of California has given me a credit ceiling far beyond my needs or assets. But is that any of her business? I haven’t even used up my predeposit and I’m about to back it up with my closing pay. Two hundred and ninety-seven and threetenths grams, fine.”

“Rhoda Wainwright never was worth a hoot as a lawyer; when Mr. Esposito died, your father should have changed representation. Of course it’s none of her business what credit MasterCard extends to you, and she has no authority over this bank. Miss BaldwinÄ”

“Call me Friday.”

“Friday, your late father was a director of this bank and is, or was, a major stockholder. Although you do not receive any of his wealth directly, you would have to run up an enormous unsecured debt and neglect to reduce it for quite some time and refuse to answer queries about it before your account would be red-flagged. So forget it. But, now that Pajaro Sands is closing down, I do need another address for you.”

“Uh, right now, you are the only address I have.”

“I see. Well, get me one as soon as you have one. There are oth

ers with that same problem, a problem unnecessarily made worse by Rhoda Wainwright. There are others who should be represented at the reading of the will. She should have notified theni, did not, and now they have left Pajaro Sands. Do you know where I can find Anna Johansen? Or Sylvia Havenisle?”

“I know a woman named Anna who was at the Sands. She was the classified documents clerk. The other name I don’t recognize.”

“She must be the right Anna; I have her listed as `confidential clerk.’ Havenisle is a trained nurse.”

“Oh! Both of them are just beyond a door I’m looking at. Sleeping. Up all night. Dr. Baldwin’s death.”

“My lucky day. Please tell themÄwhen they wake upÄthat they should be represented at the reading of the will. But don’t wake them; I can fix it afterwards. We aren’t all that fussy here.”

“Could you represent them?”

“On your say-so, yes. But have them call me. I’ll need new mailing addresses for them, too. Where are you now?”

I told her, we said good-bye and switched off. Then I held very still and let my head catch up with events. But Gloria Tomosawa had made it easy. I suspect that there are just two sorts of lawyers:

those who spend their efforts making life easy for other peopleÄand parasites.

A little jingle and a red light caused me to go to the terminal again. It was Burton McNye. I told him to come on up but be mousequiet. I kissed him without stopping to think about it, then remembered that he was not a kissing friend. Or was he? I did not know whether he had helped rescue me from “the Major” or notÄ must ask.

“No trouble,” he told me. “Bank of America accepted it for deposit subject to collection but advanced me a few hundred bruins for overnight money. They tell me that a gold draft can be cleared through Luna City in about twentyfour hours. That, combined with our late employer’s sound financial reputation, got me out of the bind. So you don’t have to let me sleep here tonight.”

“I’m supposed to cheer? Burt, now that you are solvent again, you can take me out to dinner. Out. Because my roommates are zombies. Dead, maybe. The poor dears were up all night.”

“It’s too early for dinner.”

It wasn’t too early for what we did next. I hadn’t planned on it but Burt claimed that he had, in the APV; and I didn’t believe him. I asked him about that night on the farm and, sure enough, he was part of the combat team. He claimed that he had been held in reserve and thus was merely along for the ride, but nobody yet has admitted doing anything dangerous that nightÄbut I recall Boss telling me that anybody at all was taken because bodies were so scarceÄeven Terence, who doesn’t really have to shave yet.

He didn’t protest when I started taking his clothes off.

Burt was just what I needed. Too much had happened and I felt emotionally battered. Sex is a better tranquilizer than any of those drugs and much better for your metabolism. I don’t see why human people make such a heavy trip out of sex. It isn’t anything complex; it is simply the best thing in life, even better than food.

The bath in that suite could be reached without going through the bedroom, laid out that way, probably, because the living room could double as a second bedroom. So we each tidied up a bit and I put on that Superskin jump suit with the wet look that had been the bait with which I had hooked Ian last springÄand learned that I had put it on through thinking sentimentally about Ian but that I was no longer worried about Ian and JanÄand Georges. I would find them, I was now serenely sure. Even if they never went home, I would at worst track them down through Betty and Freddie.

Burt made appropriate animal noises over how I looked in the Superskin job, and I let him look and wiggled some and told him that was exactly why I had bought it, because I was a slitch who wasn’t even mildly ashamed of being female, and I wanted to thank him for what he had done for me; my nerves had been twanging like a harp and now they were so relaxed they dragged on the ground and I had decided to pay for dinner to show my appreciation.

He offered to wrestle me for it. I didn’t tell him that I had to be very careful in moments of passion not to break male bones; I just giggled. I guess giggling looks silly on a woman my age but there it isÄwhen I’m happy, I giggle.

I was careful to leave a note for my chums.

When we got back, latish, they were gone, so Burt and I went to

bed, this time stopping to open out that folding double bed. I woke up when Anna and Goldie tiptoed through, returning from supper. But I pretended not to wake, figuring that morning was soon enough.

Sometime the next morning I became aware that Anna was standing over us and not looking happyÄand, truthfully, that was the very first time that it occurred to me that Anna might be displeased at finding me in bed with a man. Certainly I had realized which way she leaned a long time ago; certainly I knew that she leaned in my direction. But she herself had cooled it and I had stopped thinking of her as unfinished business I would have to cope with someday; she and Goldie were simply my chums, hair-down friends who trusted each other.

Burt said plaintively, “Don’t scowl at me, lady; I just came in to get out of the rain.”

“I wasn’t scowling,” she answered too soberly. “I was simply trying to figure out how to get around the end of the bed to the terminal without waking you two. I want to order breakfast.”

“Order for all of us?” I asked.

“Certainly. What do you want?”

“Some of everything and fried potatoes on the side. Anna hon, you know meÄif it’s not dead, I’ll kill it and eat it raw, bones and all.

“And the same for me,” agreed Burt.

“Noisy neighbors.” Goldie was standing in the doorway, yawning. “Chatterboxes. Go back to bed.” I looked at her and realized two things: I had never really looked at her before, even at the beach. And, second, if Anna was annoyed with me for sleeping with Burt, she didn’t have any excuse for such feelings; Goldie looked almost indecently satiated.

“It means `harbor island,’ ” Goldie was saying, “and it really ought to have a hyphen in it because nobody can ever spell it or pronounce it. So I just go as GoldieÄeasy to do in the Master’s outfit where last names were always discouraged. But it’s not as hard a name as Mrs. Tomosawa’sÄafter I mispronounced hers about the fourth time, she asked me to call her Gloria.”

We were finishing off a big breakfast and both of my chums had

talked to Gloria and the will had been read and both of them (and Burt, too, to my surprise and his) were now a bit richer and we were all getting ready to leave for Las Vegas, three of us to shop for jobs, Anna simply to stay with us and visit until we shipped out, or whatever.

Anna was then going to Alabama. “Maybe I’ll get tired of loafing. But I promised my daughter that I would retire and this is the right time. I’ll get reacquainted with my grandchildren before they get too big.”

Anna a grandmother? Does anyone ever know anyone else?

xxv

Las Vegas is a three-ring circus with a hangover.

I enjoy the place for a while. But after I’ve seen all the shows I reach a point where the lights and the music and the noise and the frenetic activity are too much. Four days is a-plenty.

We reached Vegas about ten, after a late start because each of us had business to doÄeverybody but me with arrangements to make for the collection of moneys from Boss’s will and me to deposit my closing draft with MasterCard. That is, I started to. I stopped abruptly when Mr. Chambers said, “Do you want to execute an order to us to pay your income tax on this?”

Income tax? What a filthy suggestion! I could not believe my ears. “What was that, Mr. Chambers?”

“Your Confederacy income tax. If you ask us to handle itÄhere’s the formÄour experts prepare it and we pay it and deduct it from your account and you aren’t bothered. We charge only a nominal fee. Otherwise you have to calculate it yourself and make out all the forms and then stand in line to pay it.”

“You didn’t say anything about any such tax when I made the deposit the day I opened this account.”

“But that was a national lottery prize! That’s yours, utterly freeÄ that’s the Democratic Way! Besides, the government gets its cut off the top in running the lottery.”

“I see. How much cut does the government take?”

“Really, Miss Baldwin, that question should be addressed to the

government, not to me. If you’ll just sign at the bottom, I’ll fill in the rest.”

“In a moment. How much is this `nominal fee’? And how much is the tax?”

I left without depositing my draft and again poor Mr. Chambers was vexed with me. Even though bruins are so inflated that you have to line up quite a few of them to buy a Big Mac, I do not consider a thousand bruins “nominal”Äit’s more than a gram of gold, $37 BritCan. With their 8 percent surcharge on top, MasterCard would be getting a fat fee for acting as stooge for the Confederacy’s Eternal Revenue Service.

I wasn’t sure that I owed income tax even under California’s weird lawsÄmost of that money had not been earned in California and I couldn’t see what claim California had on my salary anyway. I wanted to consult a good shyster.

I went back to Cabana Hyatt. Goldie and Anna were still out but Burt was there. I told him about it, knowing that he had been in logistics and accounting.

“It’s a moot point,” he said. “Personal-service contracts with the Chairman were all written `free of tax’ and in the Imperium the bribe was negotiated each year. Here an umbrella bribe should have been paid through Mr. EspositoÄthat is to say, through Ms. Wainwright. You can ask her.”

“In a pig’s eye!”

“Precisely. She should have notified Eternal Revenue and paid any taxes dueÄafter negotiation, if you understand me. But she may be skimming; I don’t know. HoweverÄ You do have a spare passport, do you not?”

“Oh, certainly! Always.”

“Then use it. That’s what I’ll be doing. Then I’ll transfer my money after I know where I’ll be. Meanwhile I’ll leave it safe on the Moon.”

“Uh, Burt, I’m pretty sure Wainwright has every spare passport listed. You seem to be saying that they’ll be checking us at exit?”

“What if Wainwright has listed them? She won’t turn over the list to the Confederates without arranging her cut, and I doubt that she’s had time to dicker it. So pay only the regular squeeze and stick your nose in the air and walk on through the barrier.”

This I understood. I had been so indignant at that filthy notion that for a moment I had ceased to think like a courier.

We crossed the border into Vegas Free State at Dry Lake; the capsule stopped just long enough for Confederacy exit stamps. Each of us used an alternate passport with the standard squeeze folded insideÄno trouble. And no entrance stamp as the Free State doesn’t bother with CHI; they welcome any solvent visitor.

Ten minutes later we checked into the Dunes, with much the same accommodations we had had in San Jose save that this was described as an “orgy suite.” I could not see why. A mirror on the ceiling and aspirin and Alka-Seltzer in the bath are not enough to justify that designation; my doxyology instructor would have laughed in scorn. However I suppose that most of the marks would not have had the advantages of advanced instructionÄI’ve been told that most people don’t have any formal training. I’ve often wondered who teaches them. Their parents? Is that rigid incest taboo among human persons actually a taboo against talking about it but not against doing it?

Someday I hope to find out such things but I’ve never known anybody I could ask. Maybe Janet will tell me. Someday .

We arranged to meet for dinner, then Burt and Anna went to the lounge and/or casino while Goldie and I went out to the Industrial Park. Burt intended to jobhunt but expressed an intention of raising a little hell before settling down. Anna said nothing but I think she wanted to savor the fleshpots before taking up the life of a grandmother-in-residence. Only Goldie was dead-serious about jobhunting that day. I intended to find a job, yesÄbut I had some thinking to do first.

I was probablyÄalmost certainlyÄgoing to out-migrate. Boss thought I should and that was reason enough. But besides that, the study he had started me on concerning the symptoms of decay in cultures had focused my mind on things I had long known but never analyzed. I’ve never been critical of the cultures I’ve lived in or traveled throughÄplease understand that an artificial person is a permanent stranger wherever she is, no matter how long she stays. No country could ever be mine so why think about it?

But when I did study it, I saw that this old planet is in sorry shape. New Zealand is a pretty good place and so is British Canada, but

a)On a mission I had spent whatever it took.even those two countries showed major signs of decay. Yet those two are the best of the lot.

But let’s not rush things. Changing planets is something a person doesn’t do twiceÄunless she is fabulously wealthy, and I was not. I was subsidized for one out-migration … so I had better by a durn sight pick the right planet because no mistakes were going to be corrected after I left the window.

BesidesÄ Well, where was Janet?

Boss had had a contact address or a call code. Not me!

Boss had had an ear in the Winnipeg police HQ. Not me!

Boss had had his own Pinkerton net over the whole planet. Not me!

I could try to phone them from time to time. I would. I could check with ANZAC and the University of Manitoba. I would. I could check that Auckland code and also the biodep of the University of Sydney. I would.

If none of those worked, what more could I do? I could go to Sydney and try to sweet-talk somebody out of Professor Farnese’s home address or sabbatical address or whatever. But that would not be cheap and I had suddenly been forced to realize that travel I had taken for granted in the past would now be difficult and perhaps impossible. A trip to New South Wales before semiballistics started to run again would be very expensive. It could be doneÄby tube and by float and by going threefourths the way around the world .

but it would be neither easy nor cheap.

Perhaps I could sign on as a ship’s doxy out of San Francisco for Down Under. That would be cheap and easy… but time-consuming even if I shipped in a Shipstone-powered tanker out of Watsonville. A sail-powered freighter? Well, no.

Maybe I had better hire a Pinkerton in Sydney. What did they charge? Could I afford it?

It took less than thirty-six hours from Boss’s death for me to bump my nose into the fact that I had never learned the true value of a gram.

Consider this: Up to then my life had had just three modes of economy:

b) At Christchurch I spent some but not muchÄmainly presents for the family.

c) At the farm, at the next HQ, then still later at Pajaro Sands, I didn’t spend any money, hardly. Room and board were in my contract. I did not drink or gamble. If Anita had not been bleeding me, I would have accumulated a tidy sum.

I had led a sheltered life and had never really learned about money.

But I can do simple arithmetic without using a terminal. I had paid in cash my share at Cabana Hyatt. I used my credit card for my fare to the Free State but jotted down the cost. I noted the daily rate at the Dunes and kept track of other costs, whether card or cash or on the hotel bill.

I could see at once that room and board in first-class hotels would very shortly use up every gram I owned even if I spent zero, nit, swabo, nothing, on travel, clothes, luxuries, friends, emergencies. Q.E.D. I must either get a job or ship out on a one-way colonizing trip.

I acquired a horrid suspicion that Boss had been paying me a lot more than I was worth. Oh, I’m a good courier, none betterÄbut what’s the going rate on couriers?

I could sign up as a private, then (I was fairly sure) make sergeant

in a hurry. That did not really appeal to me but it might be where I

would wind up. Vanity isn’t one of my faults; for most civilian jobs I

am unskilled laborÄI know it.

Something else was pulling me, something else was pushing me. I didn’t want to go alone to a strange planet. It scared me. I had lost my Ennzedd family (if indeed I ever had them), Boss had died, and I felt like Chicken Little when the sky was falling, my true friends among my colleagues had gone to the four windsÄexcept these three and they were leaving quicklyÄand I had managed to lose Georges and Janet and Ian.

Even with Las Vegas giddy around me I felt as alone as Robinson Crusoe.

I wanted Janet and Ian and Georges to out-migrate with me. Then I would not be afraid. Then I could smile all the way.

BesidesÄ The Black Death. Plague was coming.

Yes, yes, I had told Boss that my midnight prediction was nonsense. But he had told me that his analytical section had predicted the same thing, in four years instead of three. (Small comfort!)

I was forced to take my own prediction seriously. I must warn Ian and Janet and Georges.

I did not expect to frighten them with itÄI don’t think you can scare those three. But I did want to say, “If you won’t migrate, at least take my warning seriously to the extent of staying out of big cities. If inoculation becomes available, get it. But heed this warning.”

The Industrial Park is on the road to Hoover Dam; the Labor Mart is there. Vegas does not permit APVs inside the city but there are slidewalks everywhere and one runs out to Industrial Park. To go beyond there, to the dam or to Boulder City, there is an APV commuter line. I planned to use it as Shipstone Death Valley leases a stretch of desert between East Las Vegas and Boulder City for a charging station and I wanted to see it to supplement my study.

Could the Shipstone complex be the corporation state behind Red Thursday? I could see no reason for it. But it had to be a power rich enough to blanket the globe and reach all the way out to Ceres in a single night. There were not many such. Could it be a superrich man or group of men? Again, not many possibilities. With Boss dead I probably never would know. I used to slang himÄbut he was the one I turned to when I didn’t understand something. I had not known how much I leaned on him until his support was taken away.

The Labor Mart is a large covered mall, with everything from fancy offices of the Wall Street Journal to scouts who have their offices in their hats and never sit down and seldom stop talking. There are signs everywhere and people everywhere and it reminds me of Vicksburg river town but it smells better.

The military and quasimilitary free companies cluster together at the east end. Goldie went from one to the other and I went with her. She left her name and a copy of her brag sheet with each one. We had stopped in town to get her brag sheet printed and she had arranged a mail drop with a public secretary, and she had induced

r

me to pay for a mail and telephonic accommodation address, too. “Friday, if we are here more than a day or two, I’m moving out of the Dunes. You noticed the room tariff, did you not? It’s a nice place but they sell you the bed all over again each day. I can’t afford it. Maybe you can butÄ”

“I can’t.”

So I established an address of sorts, and sent my brain a memo to tell Gloria Tomosawa. I paid a year’s fee in advanceÄand discovered that it gave me an odd feeling of security. It was not even a little grass shack … but it was a base, an address, that would not wash away.

Goldie did not sign up that afternoon but did not seem disappointed. She said to me, “No war going on now, that’s all. But peace never lasts more than a month or two. Then they’ll start hiring again and my name will be on file. Meanwhile I’ll list with the city registry and work substitute jobs. One thing about the bedpan business, Friday; a nurse never starves. The current emergency shortage of nurses has been going on for more than a century and won’t let up soon.”

The second recruiter she called onÄrepresentative of Royer’s Rectifiers, Caesar’s Column, and the Grim Reapers, all crack outfits, worldwide reputations-turned to me after Goldie had made her statement. “How about you? Are you an RN, too?”

“No,” I said, “I’m a combat courier.”

“Not much call for that. Today most outfits use express mail if a terminal won’t serve.”

I found myself somewhat piquedÄBoss has warned me against that. “I’m elite,” I replied. “I go anywhere… and what I carry gets there when the mail is shut down. Such as the late Emergency.”

“That’s true,” said Goldie. “She’s not exaggerating.”

“There still isn’t much call for your talents. Can you do anything else?”

(I should not boast!) “What’s your best weapon? I’ll duel you with it, either contest rules, or blood. Phone your widow and we’ll do it.”

“My, you’re a sparky little slitch! You remind me of a fox terrier I once had. Look, dear, I can’t play games with you; I have to keep this office open. Now tell me the truth and I’ll put your name on file.”

“Sorry, chief. I shouldn’t have sounded off. All right, I’m an elite courier. If I carry it, it gets there and my fees are high. Or my salary if I’m hired as a specialist staff officer. As for the rest, of course I have to be the best, barehanded or with weapons, because what I carry must go through. You can list me as a DI if you wishÄbarehanded or any weapon. But I’m not interested in combat unless the pay is high. I prefer courier duty.”

He made notes. “All right. Don’t get your hopes up. The hairy characters I work for aren’t likely to use couriers other than battlefield couriersÄ”

“I’m that, too. What I carry gets through.”

“Or you get killed.” He grinned. “They’re more likely to use a superdog. Look, sweetheart, a corporate has more need for your sort of messenger than does a military. Why don’t you leave your name with each of the multinationals? All the big ones are represented here. And they’ve got more money. Lots more money.”

I thanked him and we left. At Goldie’s urging I stopped in at the local branch post office and made printouts of my own brag sheet. I was going to ease off on the required salary, being sure that Boss had favored meÄbut Goldie wouldn’t let me. “Raise it! This is your best chance. Outfits that need you will either pay without a quiver.

or will at least call you and try to dicker. But cut your price? Look, dear, nobody buys at a fire sale if they can afford the best.”

I dropped one at each multinational. I didn’t really expect any nibbles but if anyone wanted the world’s best courier, they could study my qualifications.

When the offices started to close, we slid back to the hotel to keep our dinner date, and found both Anna and Burt just a leetle tipsy. Not drunk, just happy and a touch too deliberate in their movements.

Burt struck a pose and declaimed, “Ladies! Look at me and admire! I am a great manÄ”

“You’re swacked.”

“That, too, Friday, m’love. But you see before you wup! the man who banked the broke at Monte Carlo. I’m a genius, a blinkin’, true-blue, authentic, f’nanchal genius. You may touch me.”

I had been planning to touch him, later that night. Now I wondered. “Anna, did Burt break the bank?”

“No, but he certainly bent it.” She stopped to belch carefully, covering up. “Scuse me. We dropped a little here, then went over to the Flamingo to change our luck. Got there just before post time for the third at Santa Anita and Burt put a superbuck on the nose of a little mare with his mother’s nameÄa long shot and she romped home. So here is a wheel right outside the track room and Burt put his winnings on double zeroÄ”

“He was drunk,” Goldie stated.

“I am genius!”

“Both. Double zero hit, and Burt put this enormous stack on black and hit, and left it there and hit, and moved it to red and hitÄ and the croupier sent for the pit boss. Burt wanted to go for broke but the pit boss limited him to five kilobucks.”

“Peasants. Gestapo. Hired menials. Not a gentleman sportsman in their entire casino. I took my patronage elsewhere.”

“And lost it all,” said Goldie.

“Goldie m’old frien’, you do not show proper respec’.”

“He might have lost it all,” agreed Annie, “but I saw to it that he followed the pit boss’s advice. With six of the casino’s sheriffs around us we went straight to their casino’s office of the Lucky Strike State Bank and deposited it. Otherwise I would not have let him leave. Imagine carrying a half a megabuck from the Flamingo to the Dunes in cash. He wouldn’t have lived to cross the street.”

“Preposterous! Vegas has less violent crime `nany other city North Amer’ca. Anna, m’true love, you are a bossy, notional woman. A henpecker. I shall not marry you even when you fall on your knees at Fremont `n’ Main `n’ beg me to. Instead I shall take your shoes away from you and beat you and feed you on crusts.”

“Yes, dear. You can put your own shoes on now because you are going to feed all three of us. On crusts of caviar and truffles.”

“And champagne. But not because you are henpeckering me. Ladies. Friday, Goldie, my true lovesÄwill you help me celebrate my f’nanchal genius? With libations and pheasant under glass and gorgeous show girls in fancy hats?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Yes before you change your mind. Anna, did you say `half a megabuck’?”

“Burt. Show them.”

Burt produced a new bankbook, let us look at it while he buffed his nails on his stomach and looked smug. Bk 504,000. Over half a million in the only hard currency in North America. Uh, slightly over thirtyone kilos of fine gold. No, I wouldn’t want to carry that much across the street, eitherÄnot in bullion. Not without a wheelbarrow. It would mass almost half as much as I do. A bankbook is more convenient.

Yes, I would drink Burt’s champagne.

Which we did, in the theater at the Stardust. Burt knew how much cumshaw to give the captain of waiters to get us ringsides (or paid too much, I don’t know which) and we sopped up champagne and had a lovely dinner centered around Cornish game hen but billed as squab and the show girls were young and pretty and cheerful and healthy and smelled freshly bathed. And they had show boys with stuffed codpieces for us women to look at, only I didn’t, not much, because they didn’t smell right and I got the feeling that they were more interested in each other than they were in women. Their business, of course, but on the whole I preferred the show girls.

And they had a swell magician who plucked live pigeons out of the air the way most magicians pluck coins. I love magicians and never understand how they do it and I watch them with my mouth hanging open.

This one did something that had to involve a pact with the Devil. At one point he had one of the show girls replace his pretty assistant. His assistant was not overdressed but the show girl was wearing shoes at one end and a hat at the other and just a smile in between.

The magician started taking pigeons from her.

I don’t believe what I saw. There isn’t that much room and it would tickle. So it didn’t happen.

But I’m planning on going back to watch it from a different angle. It simply can’t be true.

When we got back to the Dunes, Goldie wanted to catch the lounge show but Anna wanted to go to bed. So I agreed to sit with Goldie. Burt said to save him a seat as he would be right back after he took Anna up.

Only he didn’t. When we went up I was unsurprised to find the door to the other room closed; before dinner my nose had warned

me that it was unlikely that Burt would soothe my nerves two nights in a row. Their business and I had no kick coming. Burt had done nobly by me when I really needed it.

I thought perhaps Goldie would have her nose out of joint but she didn’t seem to. We simply went to bed, giggled over the impossibility of where he got those pigeons, and went to sleep. Goldie was snoring gently as I dropped off.

Again I was awakened by Anna but this morning she was not looking sober; she was radiant. “Good morning, darlings! Pee and brush your teeth; breakfast will be up in two jounces. Burt is just getting out of the bath, so don’t dally.”

Along toward the second cup of coffee Burt said, “Well, dear?”

Anna said, “Shall I?”

“Go ahead, hon.”

“All right. Goldie, FridayÄ We hope you can spare us some time this morning because we both love you both and want you to be with us. We’re getting married this morning.”

Goldie and I put on fine exhibitions of utter astonishment and great pleasure, along with jumping up and kissing each of them. In my case the pleasure was sincere; the surprise was faked. With Goldie I thought that it might have been reversed. I kept my suspicions to myself.

Goldie and I went out to buy flowers with arrangements to meet at the Gretna Green Wedding Chapel laterÄand I was relieved and pleased to find that Goldie seemed to be just as happy about it out of their presence as in it. She said to me, “They’re going to be very good for each other. I never did think well of Anna’s plans to become a professional grandmother; that’s a form of suicide.” She added, “I hope you didn’t get your nose out of joint.”

I answered, “Huh? Me? Why in the world would I?”

“He slept with you night before last; he slept with her last night. Today he’s marrying her. Some women would be quite upset.”

“Fer Gossake, why? I’m not in love with Burt. Oh, I do love him because he was one of you who saved my life one busy night. So night before last I tried to thank himÄand he was awfully sweet to me, too. When I needed it. But that’s no reason for me to expect Burt to devote himself to me every night or even a second night.”

“You’re right, Friday, but not many women your age can think that straight.”

“Oh, I don’t know; I think it’s obvious. You didn’t get your feelings hurt. Same deal.”

“Eh? What do you mean?”

“Exactly the same deal. Night before last she slept with you; last night she slept with him. Doesn’t seem to fret you.”

“Why should it?”

“It should not. But the cases are parallel.” (Goldie, please don’t take me for a fool, dear. I not only saw your face but I smelled you.) “Matter of fact, you surprised me a little. I didn’t know you leaned that way. Of course I knew that Anna didÄshe surprised me a bit in taking Burt to bed. I wasn’t aware that she did. Men, I mean. Hadn’t known that she had ever been married.”

“Oh. Yes, I suppose it could look that way. But it’s much what you said about Burt: Anna and I love each other, have for yearsÄ and sometimes we express it in bed. But we’re not `in love.’ Each of us leans heavily toward men … no matter what impression you gained the other night. When Anna practically stole Burt out of your arms, I cheeredÄdespite fretting a bit about you. But not fretting too much because you always have a pack of men sniffing around after you whereas with Anna it had become a seldom thing. So I cheered. Hadn’t expected it to lead to marriage but it’s grand that it has. Here’s the Golden OrchidÄwhat shall we buy?”

“Wait a moment.” I stopped her outside the florist shop. “Goldie

ů . . at great risk to her life somebody went charging up to the bedroom of the farmhouse, carrying a basket stretcher. For me.”

Goldie looked annoyed. “Somebody talks too much.”

“I should have talked sooner. I love you. More than I love Burt for I’ve loved you longer. Don’t need to marry him, can’t marry you. Just love you. All right?”