"I'm the answer to your prayers," he replied. "You want to come upstairs and see my etchings?"

"No," I said.

"It's because I'm a monkey, isn't it?" he snapped, thrusting his face forward in a challenging kind of way.

"Yeah," I said.

"Well, at least you're honest about being a bigot," he said, subsiding.

"Excuse me!" I slammed my magazine down in my lap. "Anyway, you aren't a monkey. Are you?

You're a member of the extinct hominid species Australopithecus Afarensis. "

"I love it when you people talk like computers," he mused. "Sexy, in a perverse kind of way. Yes, Afarensis, all right, one of Lucy's kindred. Possibly explaining my powerful attraction to ditzy redheads."

"That's an awful lot of big words to keep in such a teeny little skull," I said, rolling up my magazine menacingly. "So you think cyborgs are sexy, huh? Did you ever see Alien?"

"And you're a hot-blooded cyborg," he said, smiling. "Barely suppressed rage is sexy, too, at least I find it so. Yes, I know a lot of big words. I've been augmented. I'd have thought a superintelligent machine-human hybrid like yourself would have figured that out by now." I was almost startled out of my anger. "A mortal being augmented? I've never heard of that being done!"

"I was an experiment," he explained. "A prototype for an operative that could be used in deep Prehistory. No budget for the project, unfortunately, so I'm unique. Michael Robert Hanuman, by the way." He extended his hand. It had long curved fingers and a short thumb, like an ape's hand. I took it gingerly.

"Botanist Grade Six Mendoza," I said, shaking his hand.

"A cyborg name," he observed. "What was your human name, when you had one?"

"I don't remember," I told him. "Look, I haven't been calling you a monkey during this conversation. How about you stop throwing around the word cyborg, okay?"

"No c-word, got it," he agreed. "You're sensitive about what you are, then?"

"Aren't you?"

"No, oddly enough," said Hanuman. He sat down in the chair next to mine. "I've long since come to terms with my situation."

"Well, three cheers for you," I said. "What are you doing in rehab, anyway?"

"I live here, at Cabo Rehabo," he said. "I'm retired now and the Company gave me my choice of residences. It's warm and I like the sea air. Also—" He fished an asthma inhaler from an inner pocket and waved it at me. "No fluorocarbons in the air during this time period. One of the great advantages to living in the past. What are you doing here, if you don't mind my asking?"

"There was an accident," I said.

"Really! You malfunctioned?"

"No, there was an error in the Temporal Concordance," I explained. "Some idiot input a date wrong and I was somewhere I shouldn't have been when a hotel blew up. Just one of those things that happen in the field."

"So you're—say! Would you be the one they brought in from Big Sur? I heard about you." He regarded my legs with renewed interest.

"That was me," I said, wishing he'd go away.

"Well, well." His gaze traveled over the rest of me. "I'd always heard you people never had accidents. You're programmed to dodge bullets and anything else that comes flying your way."

"You try dodging a building," I muttered.

"Is that why you're so angry?" he inquired, just as a repair tech stuck his head around the doorway.

"Botanist Mendoza? Please report to Room D for a lower left quadrant diagnostic."

"It's been fun," I told Michael Robert Hanuman, and made my exit gratefully. He watched me go, his small head tilted on one side.

But I saw him the next day, waiting outside the lounge. He wrinkled his nose at my flannel pajama ensemble, then looked up and said, "We meet again! Can I buy you a drink?"

"Thanks, but I don't feel like going down to the bar dressed like this," I told him.

"There's a snack bar in the Rec Room," he said. "They serve cocktails." I had just been informed I faced a minimum of two more months of tests, and the idea of dating a superannuated hominid seemed slightly less degrading than the rest of what I had to look forward to.

"Why not?" I sighed.

The Rec Room had two pool tables and a hologame, as well as an entire wall of bound back issues of Immortal Lifestyles Monthly. There were tasteful Mexican-themed murals on the walls. There was a big picture window through which you could look out at the happy, well-rested operatives sunning themselves on the beach instead of having intrusive repair diagnostics done. Cocktails were available, at least, and Hanuman brought a pair of mai tais to our card table and set them down with a flourish.

"Yours has no alcohol in it," I said suspiciously, scanning.

"Can't handle the stuff," he informed me, and rapped his skull with his knuckles. "This tiny little monkey brain, you know. You don't want me hooting and swinging from the light fixtures, do you? Or something even less polite?"

"No, thank you," 1 said, shuddering.

"Not that I swing from anything much, at my age," he added, and had a sip of his drink. He set it down, pushed back in his chair and considered me. "So," he said, "What's it like being immortal?"

"I don't care for it," I replied.

"No?"

"No."

"Why not? Is it the Makropolous syndrome? You know, an overpowering sense of meaninglessness with the passage of enough time? Or does it have to do with being a cyb—sorry, with feeling a certain distance from humanity due to your unique abilities?"

"Mostly it's having to be around monkeys," I said, glaring at him. "Mortal Homo sapiens, I mean."

"Touche," he said, raising his drink to me. "I can't say I'm crazy about them, either."

"I'm happy when I'm alone," I continued, and tasted my drink. "I like my work. I don't like being distracted from my work."

"Human relationships are irrelevant, eh?" Hanuman said. "How lucky you've met me, then."

"You're human," I said, studying him.

"Barely," he said. "Oh, I know my place. If the Leakeys had had their way I wouldn't even get to play in the family tree! I'm just a little animal with a lot of wit and some surgical modification."

"Suit yourself," I said, and shrugged.

"So it isn't being immortal that bothers you, it's the company you have to keep?" he inquired.

"Immortality itself is good?"

"I guess so," I said. "I certainly wouldn't want to have a body that decayed while I was wearing it. And I've got way too much work for one human lifespan."

"What do you do? Wait, you're a botanist. You were doing something botanical in Big Sur?"

"I was doing a genetic survey on Abies bracteata," I told him. "The Santa Lucia fir. It's endangered. The Company wants it."

"Ah. It has some terribly valuable commercial use?" He scratched his chin-whiskers.

"Why does the Company ever want anything?" I replied. "But if it was all that valuable, you'd think they'd let me out of here to get back to the job."

"They probably sent another botanist up there in your place," Hanuman pointed out. "And, after all, you haven't recovered yet. Have you? How are your new hands working? And the feet?"

"They're not new hands," I said irritably, wondering how he knew so much. "Just the skin. And some other stuff underneath. What do you care, anyway?"

"I'm wondering how well you'd be able to hold a billiards cue," he said. "Feel like a game?"

"Are you kidding?" I felt like laughing for the first time since I'd been there. "I'm a cyborg, remember?

You're only a mortal, even if you have been augmented. I'd cream you."

"That's true," he said imperturbably, draining his glass. "In that case, what would you say to playing with a handicap? So a poor little monkey like me has a chance?"

Like an idiot, I agreed, and that was how I found out that augmented lower hominids have all the reflexes that go with the full immortality process.

"Boy, I'm glad we're not playing for money," I said, watching gloomily as he completed a ten-point bank shot and neatly sank three balls, clunk clunk clunk.

"How could we?" Hanuman inquired, hopping down from thefootstool. "I've always heard the Company doesn't pay you people anything. That's one of the reasons they made you, so they'd have an inexpensive work force."

"For your information, we cost a lot," I snapped. "And I suppose youget paid a salary?"

"I did, before I retired," he told me smugly, chalking his cue. "Now I've got a nice pension."

"What'd you get paid for?" I asked. "You told me you were a prototype that never got used."

"I said the program budget got cut," he corrected me, climbing up for his next shot. "You ought to know the Company finds a use for everything they create. I gave them thirty years of service."

"Doing what?"

He took his time answering, frowning at the table, clambering down, kicking the stool around to a better spot and climbing up to survey the angles again. "Mostly impersonating a monkey, if you must know," hesaid at last.

I grinned. "Dancing while an organ grinder played? Collecting change in a tin cup to augment somebody's departmental budget?"

He grimaced, but it didn't throw his shot off. Click, clunk, and another ball dropped into a corner pocket.

"No, as a matter of fact," he said. "I worked on some delicate missions. Collected sensitive information. Secrets. You wouldn't believe the things people will say in front of you when they think you're nothuman."

"Oh, wouldn't I?" I paced around the table, trying to distract him while he took aim again. It didn't work; another flawless bank shot, and it was clear I was never going to get a turn. He straightened up on the stool, now at eye level with me.

"My memoirs would make interesting reading, I can tell you. What about yours?" I shivered. "Boring. Unless you'd be spellbound by my attempts to produce a maize cultivar with high lysine content."

"I'd be interested in hearing how you happened to be in a hotel when it blew up," he said, surveying the table for his next shot. "Especially in the wilds of Big Sur."

"I was looking for a glass of iced tea," I said.

"Really." Smack, clunk, another ball down.

"With lemon," I said, taken by the stupidity of it in retrospect. "I was miles from the nearest humans, working my way along a ridge four thousand feet above a sheer drop into the Pacific... and suddenly I had this vision of a glass of iced tea, with lemon." For a moment I saw itagain, with all the intensity of hallucination. "The glass all beaded in frost, and the ice cubes floating, and the lemon slice, with its white cold rind and stinging aromatic zest, and the tart pulp in the glass lending a certain juicy piquancy to the astringent tea... God, I was thirsty.

"I went back to my base camp, but I guess I'd been away a while. Lichen was growing on my processing credenza. My bivvy tent was collapsed and full of leaves. Raccoons had been into my field rations and strewn little packets of stuff everywhere."

"No tea, eh?" Hanuman jumped down, circled the table and leaned up on tiptoe for a shot. .

"Nope," I said, watching him sink another ball. "And then I got to thinking about other things I hadn't done in a while. Like... sitting at a table and eating with a fork and knife. Sleeping in a room. Having clean fingernails. All the things you take for granted when you don't live out of a base camp."

"And this was enough to make you go into a hazard zone, and endure the company of the mortal monkeys you so despise—" Hanuman set up for another shot,"—the refinements of civilization?" Whack!

Clunk. "\

"It sounds so dumb," I said wonderingly, "but that's how it wasxSo I broke camp, cached my stuff, picked the moss out of my hair and took a transverse ridge down to Garrapatta Landing."

"The town that exploded?" Hanuman cleared the table and jumped down. "I win, by the way."

"The town didn't explode; it burned to the ground after the hotel exploded," I explained. "Garrapatta Landing was only about three shacks anyway. Nasty little boom town."

"And how," chuckled Hanuman. "Care for another game?"

"No, thank you." I glared at the expanse of green felt, empty but for the cue ball.

"We could play for articles of clothing."

"Not a chance in hell." I set my cue back in its rack.

"Okay." Hanuman set his cue beside mine and waved for another round of cocktails. "I'm still curious. How did the hotel explode? I thought you Preserver drones were programmed to avoid hazardous structures."

"It wasn't hazardous when I got there," I said. "And I don't like the word drone either, all right? I knew the place was doomed, but because the Concordance had the date wrong on when it was set to blow, I thought I'd be safe going there when I did. What happened was, some miners going into the south range came into town late with a wagon-load of blasting powder. Damned mortal morons parked it right undermy window. I don't know how the explosion happened. I was asleep at the time. But it happened, and the whole hotel sort of leaned over sideways and became a mass of flaming wreckage."

"With you in it? Ouch," commented Hanuman.

"Yes. Ouch," I said, sitting down again. "Look, I'm tired of explaining this. Why don't we talk about you, instead? What did the Company do with an operative disguised as a monkey?"

"Lots of things," he said, sitting down too. "But I've never been debriefed, so I can't tell you about them."

"Okay; but can you tell me why the Company decided it needed to resurrect an Afarensis, rather than just taking a chimpanzee for augmentation?" I persisted. "If they needed a talking monkey? And how'd they do it, anyway?"

Hanuman looked thoughtful. It was amazing how quickly I'd adjusted to seeing human expressions in his wizened face, human intelligence in his eyes. They fixed on me now, as he nodded.

"I can tell you that," he said. The waiter brought our drinks, and Hanuman leaned back in his chair and said:

"You know the Company has a lot of wealthy clients in the twenty-fourth century. Dr. Zeus takes certain special orders from them, fetching certain special items out of the dead past. Makes a nice profit off the trade, too. You Preservers think all the stuff you collect goes for science, or to museums; not by a long shot, honey. Most of it goes into private collections."

"I'd heard that," I said. Not often, but it was one of the rumors continually circulating among operatives. "So what?"

"So somebody placed an order once for Primeval Man," Hanuman went on. "And the Company needed to know what, exactly, was meant by primeval. Was he talking cavemen? Little skinny monkey-faced fellows scavenging hyena kills? Bigfoot? What? But the plutocrat placing the order had trouble being specific. He wanted something that walked upright, but he wanted... an animal. An animal perhaps a little smarter than a performing dog."

"This is so illegal," I said.

"Isn't it? But the client could afford to make it profitable for Dr. Zeus. The only trouble was nailing down the definition of the merchandise. Finally the Company sent him an image of a reconstructed Afarensis. Was that primeval enough? Yes! That was what he'd had in mind. Fifteen breeding pairs, if you please."

"This is SO illegal," I said. He smiled at me, not the gum-baring grin of a chimpanzee but tight-lipped, pained. "Big money," was all he said.

"I guess so! What was he going to do with them once he had them?"

"Play God, one assumes." Hanuman shrugged. "Or perhaps Tarzan. In any case, I suppose you've heard that the Company has a genetic bank on ice somewhere, with reproductive tissue and DNA from every race the planet's ever produced? Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, Crewkerne, the whole works?"

"That's what I've heard. They have Afarensis in there too?" Hanuman nodded. He did it differently from a Homo sapiens sapiens, I guess because of the way his skull was positioned on his vertebrae. It's difficult to describe, an odd abrupt bobbing motion of his head.

"The Company took what they had and filled the order. Produced fifteen female embryos, sixteen males. I was number sixteen."

"Why'd they make one extra?" I inquired.

"Because they could," said Hanuman, a little wearily. "The client was throwing ridiculous amounts of money at them, after all; why not skim a bit for R&D on a new project? The idea persons involved thought it would be great to find out whether sentience could be enhanced inu lower hominid.

"So the client got his thirty assorted Afarensis babies and I went off to a private lab for augmentation and years of training."

"But not the immortality process," I said.

"Prototypes aren't made immortal," said Hanuman. "I can see the reasoning: why risk setting a mistake in stone? If the project proposal had been approved they'd have cranked out any number of immortal monkeys, I don't doubt, but as it was... the Company decided it didn't need a specialized operative for Prehistory. Apparently they were already having problems integrating their Neanderthal operatives and such into human society, and the last thing they wanted was another set of funny-looking immortals. So...

"

"So there was just you," I said.

"Just me," he agreed. "Can you wonder I'm sex-starved?"

"I'd rather not wonder, okay?" I said. "But that's pretty awful, I have to admit. Were you raised in a cage?"

"Good lord, no!" Hanuman looked indignant. "Were you?"

"No, I was raised at a Company base school," I said.

"Then I had a more human upbringing than you had," he told me. "I had adoptive parents. Dr. Fabry, the head of the project, took me home to his wife. She was a primate liaison and delighted to get me. They were a very loving couple. I had quite a pleasant childhood."

"You're kidding. How'd they get away with it? Isn't it illegal to keep pets up at that end of time?"

"I wasn't a pet," he said stiffly. "I was raised as their child. They told everyone I was microcephalic."

"And the mortals believed that?"

"Oh, yes. By the twenty-fourth century, there hadn't been a micro-cephalic born in generations, and people were a little hazy about what the word meant. Everyone I met was kind and sympathetic as a consequence."

"The mortals were?" I couldn't believe this.

"The twenty-fourth century has its faults," Hanuman told me, "but people from that time can't bear to be perceived as intolerant."

"But they are," 1 protested. "I've met some, and they are."

"Ah, but you're a—excuse me—a cyborg, you see?" Hanuman reached over and patted my hand.

"Better than mortals, so of course they're not going to waste their sympathy on you! But I had every advantage. Why, I myself thought I was a challenged human being until I hit puberty, when I was five."

"You didn't know you were an Afarensis?"

"I thought all the cranial operations were to compensate for my condition," he said. "And my parents were too kind-hearted to tell the truth until I became interested in sex, at which time they sat me down and explained that it wasn't really an option for me."

"That's kind-hearted, all right," I said.

"Mm. I was crushed, of course. Went through denial. Mumums and Daddums were so dreadfully sorry because they really did love me, you see, and so they hastened to provide me with all sorts of self-image-improving material. I was told I could be anything I set out to be! Except, of course, a human being, but that didn't mean I couldn't enjoy a full life. Et cetera."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Raged. Rebelled. Gave poor kind Dr. and Mrs. Fabry no end of grief. Decided at last to embrace my hominid heritage and turn my back on Homo sapiens." Hanuman picked the fruit spear out of his mai tai and considered it critically. "Demanded to meet my biological parents." He bit off a chunk of pineapple.

"But you came out of a DNA bank," I said. "Yes, they pointed that out too. The best that could be managed was an interview with the host mother who had given birth to me." Hanuman leaned forward, still munching pineapple, and waggled his eyebrows. "And, talk about illegal! It turned out that the lady in question lived at Goodall Free Township."

I did a fast access and was shocked. "You mean the chimpanzee commune? That place set aside for the Signers after the split happens inthe Beast Liberation Party? But I thought that'll be off-limits to humans."

Hanuman lifted his cocktail and drained it, gracefully extending one long pinky as he drank. "Of course it is," he said, setting the glass down. "Tell me, how long have you worked for the Company now? And you still think laws matter to Dr. Zeus?"

I was speechless.

"The Company had sent in a fast-talking—or should I say fast-signing?—person to negotiate with the females at Goodall," Hanuman said. "One of you people, 1 believe. A Facilitator, isn't that what the political ones are called? He offered a contract for surrogate maternity to thirty-one chimpanzees. They were implanted with the embryos, they carried them to term and delivered as per contract. Handsomely paid off, too, though presumably not in bananas alone."

Something beeped and Hanuman started slightly. "Oops! Excuse me a moment." He fished a pillbox out of his vest pocket and shook a few capsules into his palm. When he looked around for something to take them with, I pushed my glass forward.

"No, thank you," he said delicately, getting up and filling a dispos-... ... able cup at the water cooler. I narrowed my eyes. Certain mortals from the twenty-fourth century are reluctant to touch utensils or other personal items a cyborg has used. Probably he just didn't want to take a sip of something with rum in it, but I was hair-trigger sensitive to anti-cyborg bigotry.

"You know what? I've just remembered I have an appointment," I said, getting to my feet and stalking out of the room. "Great story, but we'll have to do this some other time, okay? Bye now."

"Aw," he said sadly, looking after me as I stormed away.

I didn't get the rest of the story until a week later.

The people responsible for my new lungs cautiously admitted that sea air might be good for them, so I was permitted to go outside if I wore a long coat, wide-brimmed hat and a face mask that made me look like Trona the Robot Woman. I reclined in a deck chair on the beach and gazed out at the sea for hours on end, telling myself I didn't give a damn that other immortals were staring at me. The dark lenses of the mask made the sea a deep violet blue, gave everything an eerie cast like an old day-for-night shot, and I could watch the waves rolling in and pretend I was anywhere but here, anyone but me. One morning I heard a clatter as another deck chair was set up beside mine.

"There you are," said someone cheerfully, and turning my head Isaw Hanuman settling into the chair. He was nicely dressed as usual, in a white linen suit today, with a Panama hat that must have been specially made for his little coconut head. He drew a pair of sunglasses from an inner pocket and slipped them on. "Bright, isn't it?"

I just turned my robot face back to regard the sea, hoping its expressionlessness would intimidate him into silence.

"Strange mask," he observed. "Not the most attractive design they could have chosen. Much more angular than, say, the police in THX 1138. Nowhere near as human as Robot Maria in Metropolis. Even the Tin Man in—"

"I think they were going for Art Deco," I said. "Buck Rogers Revival"

"Yes!" He leaned forward to study the mask again. "Or Flesh Gordon. "

"Flash Gordon."

He chuckled wickedly. "I meant what 1 said. Did you ever see it? Surprisingly good for a porn film. Great special effects."

I was silent again, wishing I really was a robot, one perhaps with the ability to extend an arm and fire missiles at unwelcome companions.

"I was telling you the story of my life," he said.

"So you were."

"Still interested?"

"Go right ahead."

He folded his hands on his stomach and began again.

"Goodall Free Township is a grand name, but the reality's sort of squalid. After the Signer scandal, the Beast Liberation Party gave the signing chimpanzees a thousand acres of tropical woodland for their very own, hoping they'd just disappear into the forest and return to whatever the Beast equivalent of Eden is. I had decided to go there to live, and celebrate my true Afarensis nature.

"All the way there in the car, Mrs. Fabry told me about the wonderful paradise I was going to be privileged to see, where beasts lived in dignity and self-sufficiency, and how this was only one of the modern examples of mankind atoning for its crimes against the natural world.

"So I was expecting rainbows and unicorns and waterfalls, you see, quite illogically, but I was, and when we pulled up to the big electrified fence with barbed wire at the top it was jarring, to say the least. Beyond the fence was a thicket of cane solid as a wall, nothing visible behind it, growing to left and right along the fence as far as the eye could see.

"Even Mrs. Fabry looked stunned. A ranger emerged from a little shack by the locked gate and saluted snappily, but she demanded toknow why the barbed wire was there. He told her it was to keep poachers out, which she accepted at once. Personally I think—well, you decide, once you've heard.

"The ranger stared at me, but didn't question. He just stepped inside and got a jotpad, which he handed to Mrs. Fabry with the explanation that she needed to state for the record that she was going in of her own free will, and released the Goodall Free Township Committee from any responsibility in the event of unpleasantness. As she was listening to the plaquette and recording her statement, I began to remove my clothes.

"At this, the ranger looked concerned and signed to me, What are you doing?

" 'What's it look like I'm doing?' I said indignantly. 'Besides talking, which I can do, thank you very much.' And I explained that I was going to meet my brothers and sisters in nature and wanted no effete Homo sapiens garments to set me apart. He just shook his head and told me I might want to reconsider.

"Mrs. Fabry, who knew more about chimpanzees than I did, kept her clothing on. Even so, the ranger advised her she'd dp well to take a gift for the inhabitants. She asked him if he had any fruit and he went inside his shack, to emerge a moment later with a bottle of Biodyne.

'"Take this,' he said. 'They got all the fruit they need.'

"Mrs. Fabry took it reluctantly. Giving renaturalized primates any kind of medical assistance was strictly forbidden, as I was later to find out, but then so were visitors to this particular paradise. Anyway, the ranger dropped the perimeter security and let us in, pointing out a tiny gap between the cane stalks where we might squeeze through; then he locked up after us and I heard the faint hummzap of the fences going back on.

"As we picked our way through the jungle (where I very much regretted I hadn't worn my shoes), Mrs. Fabry said, 'Now, Michael dear, when we meet the chimpanzees, it might be a good idea if you got down in a crouch. They'll be more comfortable.'

" 'Won't they understand what I am?' I demanded. 'The whole point of this is that I'm returning to my true state.'

" 'Well—' she said, and then we were through the jungle and out in a clearing, and there they were.

"I have to admit it was sort of breathtaking, mostly because of the scenery. Forested mountains rose straight into clouds, below which four chimpanzees were doing something in a meadow. Other than the noise my fellow primates were making, there was a dull sleepy silence over everything. The chimpanzees turned to look at us, and Mrs. Fabrydropped at once into a crouch, I didn't, which was why I got a glimpse of what they'd been doing before they noticed we were there. They'd been beating a scrap of sheet metal into a curve around the tip of a stick, taking turns hammering it with river cobbles. It looked rather like aspear,

"The minute they spotted us, however, they closed rank and one of them tossed the stick behind the big rock they'd been using for an anvil. They advanced on us cautiously and I saw they were all males. They'd been focusing on Mrs. Fabry, 1 suppose because she was bigger than 1 was, only glancing at me, but one by one they did double takes andstopped, staring.

"The biggest male, who had a lot of silver on his muzzle, signed,

What that thing? to Mrs. Fabry, indicating me with a flick of his hand.

"She winced for me, and signed back, My baby sort of chimpanzee.

"The big male gave me an incredulous look. The younger malesbegan to—I think it's called displaying, where they get erections andstart behaving badly? Acting in a vaguely threatening manner. Rushingat me and pulling up short, then retreating. I did a bit of retreatingmyself, not quite cowering behind Mrs. Fabry, and seeing their baredfangs 1 wished very much I'd kept my pants on at least.

"The old male ignored them, staring earnestly into Mrs. Fabry's face. Not chimpanzee, he signed. Lie He. Wrongjeet. What that thing?

"She signed, Friend, and offered the bottle of Biodyne hopefully. He regarded it a moment, sighed, and put out his long hand and took it from her. He loped off to the big rock, dropped it, picked up something else and loped back.

"Holding the object up before her eyes a moment—it was a six-centimeter Phillips-head screw—he signed, You come again bring this. Many this. Need this. Yes?

"Mrs. Fabry hesitated, and I yelped, 'Tell him yes, Mom!' because one of the other youths had made another rush and snapped his fangs perilously close to my ass. The old male started up and snarled at the others, baring his own fangs. Sit stupid dirt, he signed. / talk! Whereupon the juveniles snorted but turned away, and went to groom each other beside the big rock, but they watched me balefully.

"That not chimpanzee, the old male continued, indicating me. Sound like you. Lie. Pink pink pink. Why here?

"Mrs. Fabry signed, Come visit chimpanzee Gamma 18. Which, I discovered, was my host-mother's name."

"I thought they all had names like Lucy and Washoe," I said. "Not after Beast Liberation. It was decided human names would be insulting and patronizing," Hanuman explained. "So they went withletter-number combinations instead. As soon as the old male saw my mother's name, an expression of sudden comprehension crossed his face. Very human looking. In some excitement he signed, Doctor babies! Old time. Babies take away. Baby big now? This thing?

"I was getting a little tired of this, so I signed, / not thing. I good ape.

"He just laughed at me—oh, yes, they laugh—and signed, You good thing. He looked back at Mrs. Fabry and signed, Come visit Gamma 18.

"By this time I was ready to turn around and go home, but Mrs. Fabry wasn't going to waste this chance to socialize with her favorite study subjects. She grabbed my hand and we set off after our host. He led us away, detouring just long enough to grab the Biodyne from the juveniles, who had opened it and were applying it to their cuts and sores. They sulked after us, making rude noises, until the old male (Tau 47, as he introduced himself) turned back and barked at them.

"We followed a trail over a shoulder of mountain and, what a surprise! They'd built themselves a township all right: eleven huts made of corrugated tin and aluminum panels from aircraft wreckage. The huts were arranged in a rough circle, with a fire pit in the center. Yes indeed, they even had fire. Mrs. Fabry caught her breath and Tau 47 glanced up at her warily. In a defensive kind of way he signed, Fire good. Chimpanzee careful careful.

" 'I thought this was supposed to be pristine primeval wilderness,' I said under my breath.

" 'They must have found a crash site the Goodall Free Township Committee was unaware of,' replied Mrs. Fabry.

"There were several chimpanzees sitting in the center clearing, mostly females with young. They all looked up and stared as we came down the hillside. Some of the smaller juveniles screamed and ran, or threw things, but most of them watched us intently.

"One or two females signed, Look look. Tau 47 led us right up to a female with an infant at her breast and signed, Remember doctor babies gone. Big baby now. Visit. He turned and indicated us. Mrs. Fabry crouched at once and I hastily followed suit. I couldn't take my eyes off the female. This Gamma 18, he signed to us.

"Remarkable how different their faces are, one from another, when you see them all in a group. My host-mother had a more pronounced muzzle, and the hair on her head seemed longer than elsewhere, like a woman's. Taken all in all the effect was a little like that famous parody of the Mona Lisa. But, you understand, by this time she no longer seemed like an animal to me. She looked like the Madonna of the Forest.

"I signed, Mother, and reached out to her, but she drew back, glancing at me sidelong. Her baby ignored us, snuffling at her long flat breast. After a moment she reached out a tentative hand and knuckled my foot.

"Funny foot, she signed. Remember. Doctor pull out, take gone. See funny foot. You my baby old now?

"1 signed back, I your baby, good ape now. Mrs. Fabry had tears in her eyes.

"Gamma 18 signed, Good good, in an uncertain way. Then she turned to Mrs. Fabry and signed, Comb?

"We thought she was asking Mrs. Fabry to groom her, and Mrs. Fabry was breathless at the honor and acceptance that implied, but when she hitched herself closer Gamma 18 backed off and repeated Comb? And she carefully and unmistakably mimed running a comb through her hair, as opposed to a flea-picking gesture.

"Mrs. Fabry said out loud, 'Oh, you mean you want one!'

"She happened to be wearing one of those hikers' pouches at her waist, and she unzipped it and dug around for her comb. She handed it over to Gamma 18, and was instantly surrounded by other females who all wanted things too, and I must say asked for them very politely.

"Mrs. Fabry, looking radiantly happy, passed out tissues and breath mints and offered little squirts of cologne from a vial she had in there. Gamma 18 moved in closer, and soon they were all sitting around, Mrs. Fabry included, signing to one another and blowing their noses, or taking turns passing the comb through their hair.

"I sat to one side, dumfounded. Tau 47, who had been watching me, caught my eye and signed, You thing come. He paced away a little distance, looking over his shoulder at me. I got up and followed, feeling sullen and miserable. I had to stand to follow him, because I've never been able to walk on my knuckles very well, and of course my rising to my full height set off another round of screams and abuse from the juveniles in the group. One very little male galloped close, pulled up and signed, Ugly ugly pink pink.

"Angrily I signed back, Dirty stupid. Tau 47 stood up and snarled at the little male, who drew back at once. But he sat there watching us, and to my annoyance began to sign slyly: Pretty pretty pink pink. The other juveniles took it up too, laughing to themselves. I was nearly in tears.

"Tau 47 huffed and signed, Stupid babies. You smart thing?

"Not thing, I insisted. Good ape. Tau 47 rolled his eyes as if to say 'Whatever' and then signed, You see how lock work?

"I signed confusion at this. He grunted, sat down and with great care signed slowly: You go in gate. Here. You see how gate lock work? How open?

"I signed back, Not know. Sony. You want leave here?

"I leave leave, he signed. I go back people houses.

"I was astonished. Why? I signed. This good here. I come here live. It was his turn to look astonished.

"Come here live, he repeated, as though he couldn't believe what he'd seen. Why why why? Cold here. Wet here. Badfood. Bugs. Fight bad chimpanzees.

"I didn't know what he meant by this, because the Goodall Free Township Committee had selected wilderness that was not only virgin, it was empty of any other chimpanzees. So I signed, Who bad chimpanzees?

"Tau 47 looked threateningly up at the mountain and signed, Bad bad Iota 34. Bad chimpanzee, friends. Fight. Eat babies. Steal. By which he meant, I suppose, that some family group had split off from the original settlement and taken up residence in a distant corner of the preserve, and now there were territorial conflicts. It didn't surprise me; chimpanzees in the wild had used to do that, and it might be lamentable but it was, after all, natural. So I signed, Iota 34 steal food?

"He considered me a moment and then signed, Come hide quiet. So signing, he knuckle-loped away a few paces and looked back over his shoulder at me. I followed uneasily, and he led me through bushes and along a jungle trail, taking us deeper into the hills.

"Within a couple of minutes we were out of sight of the village and I began to hear warning calls from the brush around us, and glimpse here and there a chimpanzee peering down from high branches. Finally a big male dropped into the path before us, followed by two other males and a big female without young. They bared their teeth at me. Tau 47 signed, Good chimpanzee-thing no bite. He put an arm around me and made a cursory grooming motion.

"They blinked and looked away, then vanished back into the leaf cover as suddenly as they had appeared. Chimpanzees watch, explained Tau 47. I wondered what they were watching, but he led me forward and as we came out on the edge of a ravine it became clear why they guarded that patch of forest.

"There, filling the ravine and spilling down it in a river of squalor, was a trash landfill. It was overgrown with creepers, overhung with trees, which was perhaps why the Goodall Free Township Committee hadn't known it was there. Two chimpanzees worked the heap immediately below us, poking through it with sticks and now and then pulling out a useful scrap of salvage, old wiring or broken furniture." "I guess it wasn't quite virgin wilderness," I said. "I guess so. Something the survey parties for the Goodall Free Township Committee missed, evidently, or were bribed to overlook. I just stood there gaping at it. The two chimpanzees below looked up at me and froze; after watching Tau 47 and me a moment they seemed to accept my presence and got back to their work. Tau 47 signed to me, This secret. Good things here. Make house. Make knife. Live good. He looked up once again at the mountain and bared his teeth. Iota 34 want secret. Dirty bad bad.

"Iota 34 make house too? I signed.

"No no, signed Tau 47. Iota 34 make, and he paused and made a motion of gripping a shaft of something with both hands, stabbing with it. Then he signed, Stick knife hunt hurt.

"I saw the whole problem in a flash: it was much more than a Tree of Knowledge in Eden. It was like the twentieth-century dilemma over atomic power. Here these poor creatures had this unexpected gift, from which they could derive all sorts of comforts for their wretched existence; but it had to be prevented from falling into the enemy's hands at all costs, or it could be used against them."

"Though they were obviously using it to make weapons themselves," I said.

"Naturally." Hanuman tilted his hat forward to shade his face. "They were chimpanzees. It was in their nature. They're decent enough people but they're not peace-loving, you know, any more than Homo sapiens is. What a Cold War scenario, eh? Being signers, they had the ability to communicate ideas; they had seen enough of what Homo sapiens has in the way of enriched environments to want to make one for themselves, and now they had the potential to do so.

"But as long as most of their tribe's resources had to be expended on guarding this trash pile, how much time could they afford to do anything else?"

"It's always something," I muttered.

"So there I was, standing on this height, and suddenly it flashed before my eyes: what if I became one of these people? What if I led them, used my augmented intelligence to give them the edge in their arms race? I might become a lower-hominid Napoleon! We'd take on the dastardly Iota 34 and force his tribe to become peaceful citizens of a new primate civilization! Made of recycled trash, admittedly, but unlike anything that had ever existed.

"Or perhaps—dare I even think it—force the Homo sapiens world to face the monstrous injustice of what had been done to these poor creatures by letting them get an earful of the Black Monolith, so to speak, and then removing any way for them to fulfill their hitherto unguessed-at potential by insisting they live like primitives?

"Good heavens, I thought to myself, it might even be a plot to keepus from moving into Man's neighborhood! Having transmitted the divine spark of reason to us, what if Man had now regretted and sought to keep us mere animals? How dare he deny our humanity? Why, I might lead a crusade to bring apes everywhere to a higher level of being. Shades of Roddy McDowall in a monkey mask!"

"But you saw the futility of such an exercise in ego?" I inquired.

"Actually, it was the cold realization that I'd probably be remembered as Pretty Pink General," said Hanuman. "Plus the fact that just then I felt something bite me, and looked down at myself and realized I was covered in fleas.

"Good secret, I signed to Tau 47. 1 quiet quiet.

"He looked out over it all, sighed and signed, You go. No stay here. Go houses.

"I signed, You miss houses?

"Miss houses, he signed back. Want good food. Good blanket good. Miss pictures. Miss music. Miss game. Good good all. I sad. Cry like baby.

"Sony, I signed. He just huffed and looked out over the landfill. "We went back to the village.

"The ladies were all sitting around grooming one another, Mrs. Fabry included. She looked up as we approached and said, 'Michael, dear, I've been trying to explain that you want to stay with them, but—' i

"I told her it was all right, that I'd changed my mind. Before she could explain this, though, Gamma 18

broke away from the group and approached me. Looking at me seriously, she signed, You no stay here.

"No stay, I agreed bitterly.

"She came closer on all fours—her baby was still hanging under her— and put her hand on my shoulder, quite gently. Then she signed, You no chimpanzee. You no man. You other thing. Sad thing here. You go houses, be happy thing.

"By which motherly advice I guess she meant that the bananas grow at the top of the tree, not at the roots, and since I didn't belong at either end (evolutionarily speaking) I might as well climb up and eat rather than slide back down and starve. You get what life deals you, and you'd better make the best of it.

"I went back home with Mrs. Fabry. The dear woman didn't mind all the flea bites she'd incurred on my behalf in the least; I do believe she got more out of the whole ape-bonding experience than I had. I settled down to try to be a good adoptive son to her and Dr. Fabry. Tried not to think of my chimp-mother's plight, though I lived by her wise words." "And that was it? You came all that way, and that was all she had to tell you?" I demanded.

"Well, she was a chimpanzee, after all, not a vocational guidancecounselor." Hanuman looked at me over his sunglasses. "And if youthink about it, it's good advice. Certainly I've let it guide me through along and occasionally trying life. You might consider doing the same."

"I fail to see how our problems are in any way similar," I snapped.

"Aren't they?" Hanuman regarded me. "When I discovered I wasneither an ape nor a man, I tried to be an ape. It was a waste of my time.

All the advantage is on the human side.

"You—during a similar adolescent crisis, I'd bet bananas to coconuts—discovered you are neither a machine nor a woman. So you've tried to be a machine."

"Go to hell, you little hominid bastard!"

"No, no, hear me out: your work habits, your preference for physical and emotional isolation, are part of your attempts to ignore your human heritage. But your heart is human so you can't do it, any more than I could, and the stress of the conflict drove you to seek out human companionship.

"Or possibly, by sleeping in a place you knew to be hazardous, you were indulging in a covert suicide attempt. Was it really tea you were thirsty for, Mendoza?"

"I can't believe this!" I leaped out of my chair and tore off my mask, glaring at him. "You're one of the Company's psychiatrists! Aren't you?" "Let's just say I'm not completely retired. You must have suspected all along," he added calmly, "clever cyborg that you are."

"How many times do I have to tell you people, it was an accident?" I shouted, and all up and down the beach, heads turned and other operatives stared at us.

"But you're programmed not to have accidents," he said. "And the Company would like to know how it happened, and whether it's likely to happen again. Is it just your neurosis that leads you to take unnecessary risks, or is it a design flaw they need to know about? They have a lot of money invested in you cyborgs, you know. Who were you hoping to find in the fire, Mendoza?"

"Oh, now we get to the truth," I said, sitting down again. "Now we drop the crap about how I'm really human, I'm an expensive machine and the Company's doing a diagnostic to see whether I'm still malfunctioning?"

Hanuman shrugged, holding my gaze with his own. "You look at me and all you see is a monkey, no matter how cleverly I speak. They look at you and all they see is a machine they can't seem to repair. It's insulting. Unfair. Yet the hard truth is, neither one of us belong in the natural world. I know it hurts-, who'd know better than I? But it won't change. I've accepted that. Can you?" I put my mask back on and, without another word to him, strode away up the beach. I managed to avoid speaking to him the rest of the time I was there, and he didn't try to speak to me, though he watched me somberly from a distance and tipped his hat once or twice when our paths crossed. Maybe he'd found out all the Company wanted him to find out, or maybe he knew there was no way on earth I was ever going to let him any further into my head than he'd gotten already. The Company discharged me for active service at last; they had to. They'd repaired me good as new, right? So I took off for the coastal mountains and made a new base camp up in the big trees, and got right back to work happily collecting genetic variants of Abies bracteata. I had all I wanted in the wilderness.

Stupid chimpanzees, wanting to go back to the cities of humanity! Maybe they needed an enriched environment, but not me. I'd stripped away such irrelevant nonsense from my life, hadn't I?

I had the looming mountains to myself, and the vast empty sea and the immensity of cold white stars at night and, thank God, the silence of my own heart. It never makes a sound of complaint. It's a perfectly functioning machine.

So I was sitting on this beach near Big Sur, a fairly crowded beach as the place goes—there were maybe a dozen people sunbathing, surfing, trying to prevent small children from eating sand—and a scuba diver in full kit came down the stairs, made his difficult way over the rocks.fiip-flopped across the sand and waded into the sea. He swam out past the white line of breakers and the surfers riding the swell, and for a while I could glimpse his snorkel moving to and fro. Eventually I couldn't see it anymore.

It wasn't until hours later, climbing the stairs to go back to my campsite, that I realized I had never seen him come out of the water.

Studio Dick Drowns Near Malibu

It was time to die again. Some of us don't like faking our deaths; you have a lot of fuss and worry over making it believable, and then you have to go off someplace else and start over again. I enjoy it, though. In all the centuries I've been running around after things the Company wanted, shipping the loot of history up to their offices in the Future, I must have staged a dozen memorable demises. It's the closest a cyborg like me is ever going to get to the real thing, right? So why not make it stupendous, spectacular, colossal?

I've died even when I didn't strictly have to. In the old days you didn't need to die to assume a new identity, when the Company transferred you. Riding over the horizon was as good as riding off the edge of the world, and if you never came back most mortals assumed you'd died. You could become somebody else, somewhere else, and the chances were astronomical you'd ever meet a mortal who'd known you in your previous incarnation. Even back then, though, your cover could be blown: look at that Martin Guerre guy. That was why I always liked to play it safe and get myself a nice indisputable grave before I moved on to my next posting.

And when the twentieth century rolled around, with photos and Social Security numbers and drivers'

licenses, and worse yet to come, it became more important than ever to die convincingly. No loose ends!

Still, I kind of hated leaving MGM, then of all times; it was 1938, for crying out loud. The best-ever year for movies was just around the corner: Gone with the Wind was already in pre-production, ditto Ninotchka and The Wizard of Oz, to name but a few. It was going to beswell, which in fact was why the Company was edging me out. They wanted to plant a Facilitator higher up in the studio, to be in a position to do things like grab lost footage from the cutting room floor. You wouldn't believe what mortals will pay for The Wizard ofOz stuff by the twenty-fourth century. And I'd been there too long, anyway. Joseph Denham, Studio Detective, had done a lot of favors and knew where a lot of bodies were buried. Too many people knew my name. Time to move on. So I set up a death that would make the headlines. Well, Variety's headlines, at least. Scuba diving hadn't arrived yet, back then before the war, but diving enthusiasts were already beginning to fool around with homemade apparatus and snorkels. I let all my mortal friends know I had a keen new hobby, and bored them with descriptions of the amateur dive equipment I was buying. Moved from my furnished room in Hollywood to a furnished room in Santa Monica so I could be closer to the sea. Let slip that I wasn't really all that good a swimmer. There were a few people at the studio already, Garbo among them, who'd have liked nothing better than to see me drown.

I met my fellow cyborg Lewis at Musso & Frank's for one last round of drinks while we went over what he'd tell the cops; that was Friday night. Saturday morning I was off to Santa Monica, where I parked my nice new Ford near the pier, bid it a regretful farewell, and carried my outsized duffel and striped umbrella to the nearest changing rooms.

Ten minutes later I was making my awkward way to the sea through all the other striped umbrellas, and, brother, was I a sight to behold. That was the idea, of course.

I had on a kind of tight union suit of black wool, with a hood over which I'd fitted a pair of goggles with the breathing tube and its little float clipped to the side. It would have been smarter to have waited to put on the rubber flippers until I was right at the water's edge, but more people noticed me floundering across the sand with them on. Picking a likely spot, I flop-flopped up to it and set down my things alongside.

The couple in beach chairs—old mortals, always pick old mortals for your witnesses because they watch everything and they love to testify to cops—stared at me in amazement as I opened my duffel and spread out a little beach mat. Humming to myself, I laid out a rolled-up towel and opened my striped umbrella and stuck it in the sand at a jaunty angle. Finally the old guy said, as I'd been waiting for him to say:

"Christ Almighty, what're you supposed to be? A frog?" .

"What?" I looked over at him in apparent surprise. "Who, me?"

"He's some kind of diver, Harry," said the old lady.

"Well, you look like a frog to me," said the old man.

"That's right, ma'am, I'm a diver," I said, smiling at the old lady. "Not deep-sea, of course, I just sort of swim around the surface and look at stuff. It's a great hobby. You see a lot of fish."

"Is that so?" said the old lady. "Do you ever see any shipwrecks?"

"Oh, sometimes," I said, fitting my goggles over my eyes, "but you have to be really experienced to explore a wreck, and I've only been doing this for a few weeks. I'm not very good at it yet."

"Those things on your feet make you look like a frog," said the old guy"Yeah," I said, shading my eyes to look out at the ocean. "Say, look at those whitecaps! The water's pretty rough today, isn't it? I guess I won't stay out too long. Would you folks mind keeping an eye on my things here, until I come back?" I leaned close to add, in a loud whisper, "My wallet's in my bag with my driver's license and everything, you know."

"Sure we will, mister," said the old lady. "You be careful, now."

"Gee, thanks," I said, and, squaring my shoulders, flop-flopped on down to the water. Adults stared, children pointed, somebody's toddler shrieked with terror as I passed. I waded in and turned, once, to wave cheerfully at the old couple. Joseph Denham, confidant to the stars, makes his unforgettable exit!

I paddled around out there for a while, splashing like a clumsy mortal swimming, and I made sure they could see the yellow float bobbing like a lemon on the waves. Farther out, and farther out, just like a mortal getting careless in his enthusiasm. At last I surfaced for a little while, pulling in breath, oxygenating my tissues; then I dove, way deep down, and yanked off the float and let it rise by itself up to the glassy bright roof of the world. Turning, I swam away into the green darkness.

I headed north, past Malibu. By the time I was passing Point Mugu, I was pretty sure the old couple would have alerted the lifeguard that I'd failed to come back. The yellow float would have washed ashore, the only trace of me, because of course no body would ever be recovered. There'd be a brief homicide investigation, but I'd made it pretty darned obvious it was a case of accidental death. My will was in a shoebox in my dresser, along with the other papers that had affirmed Joseph Denham's existence. Lewis would inherit my car and the small change in my bank account, along with the job of notifying the studio. A paragraph in Variety, a short service at Hollywood Memorial, and somebody else would take over my customary spot at the bar at Musso & Frank's Grill. The hole that Joseph Denham had left at MGM would disappear in a few days.

Neat, huh? It certainly beat the last time I died of old age, when I had to lie in my coffin for hours sweating under appliance makeup and listening to the funeral mass drone on and on and on... And I had no regrets. I'd died in Hollywood before and I knew I'd eat lunch in that town again some day, when my former cronies there were all tucked away under white marble at Hollywood Memorial or being wheeled around the grounds of the Motion Picture Home. The Company always needs a few of its smooth operators in the movie industry, just as it needs us in the mortals' churches and governments: unobtrusive little guys like me to weight the dice of history now and then, or slip an extra ace into the deck. Nothing too obvious, you understand: somebody helpful standing at his Holiness's elbow to supply that mot juste when he's writing a papal encyclical, somebody to remind the senator where he left his pants, somebody to put a particular script where Mr. Hitchcock or Mr. Lucas will just happen to glance at it.

Yes, it's an important job, all right. Most of the time it makes up for having no life of my own. Anyway I cruised on like an eel, ditching the snorkel tube and mask somewhere past Santa Barbara; I didn't really need them and they dragged in the water. The big heavy flippers I kicked off around Point Conception. Streamlined as a seal, I went my merry immortal way, coming to the surface once in a while to breathe. Night fell and day followed it, and I was still heading north. There's a place above Cape San Martin called Jade Beach. You really can find jade there, if you're foolhardy enough to climb down the precarious wooden stairs from the clifftop to the sand far below. If the most recent winter storm hasn't washed out the stairs anyway, it's worth the uneasy descent. The place is all serpentine. The cliffs are green, the sand is green, the sea is green as emerald in that little cove. But there's hardly ever anybody there.

I've only been there myself because I knew a girl who loved the place, a long time ago before the stairs were built. That's another story.

The point is it's usually deserted, which was why I'd come up here in my Ford two months earlier, hauling a Company-issue cachebox with me. In it were all the things I'd need to get started with my new identity: paperwork, clothes, keys, money. I'd buried it at the base of the cliff, deep under the gritty cobbles. It had been a lot of work, but all I needed to do now was dig it up. As soon as I did I'd be Leslie Joseph, with papers to prove it, on his way to a hot meal in Monterey and an apartment and a job in San Francisco.

It was late afternoon when I turned right and made my way through the kelp forests into the cove. I was dead tired and cold; I figured acouple hours' snooze on the beach were in order before Leslie Joseph made his entrance. About a mile out I began my ascent to the surface, scanning to be certain there were no mortals around.

And, wouldn't you know it... there was one right on top of me.

Literally, I mean. There was a mortal female struggling in the water less than a fathom above my head. As I stared up at her, open-mouthed, she began to sink.

Well, I had to do something. My official designation is Preserver, isn't it? Maybe that was why, without even thinking, I shot upward like a cork and grabbed her, and a second later we broke the surface. All the same, it was a dumb thing to do.

We gulped in breath and she gave a feeble scream, staring at me with enormous black eyes. She struggled frantically for a few seconds and then hung limp, so I was able to get us ashore without wasting my breath on argument.

Dumb, dumb, dumb. She had to be a suicide; she was fully dressed, and anyway I've seen them often enough to know the look mortals get in their eyes when they're determined to check out. She wouldn't thank me and I hadn't done myself any favors, either, by saving her life. What the hell was I going to do with her now?

I dragged her up on the sand and dropped her, and she lay there at my feet gasping, with her eyes shut tight.

"Please," she said. "I changed my mind at the end. I really did. I, was trying to swim back. You must have seen that." j

I peered down at her. Her hair trailed across her face like seaweed. She was young, maybe twenty, and from her clothes she wasn't rich, wasn't a farm girl either. Somebody's stenographer, maybe? I saw the purse and the battered shoes on the last step of the cliff stair. She'd walked a long way in shoes that were meant to sit side by side under a typing stand.

"You shouldn't have done it," I said, which was pretty obvious but what else was I going to say?

"I'm sorry!" she wept. "Oh, you can't take me to Hell! Haven't I been there already, the last two days?" She got up on her knees to clutch at me, and I saw myself reflected in her desperate eyes: black-clad thing with a white face, like Death in The Seventh Seal, and looking none too good after two days in the water either, eyes still sunk back in my head and protective lenses still raised. Okay, she thought I was something supernatural. Maybe I could work with that. I've had to impersonate gods in my time, working with mortals, and she seemed half-crazed with fear already.

"This is nothing to the fires of Hell," I said sternly.

But the girl was taking in the mundane details of my appearance.-the buttons on my suit, the sagging wool, the stubble on my unshaven face. Her eyes were still frightened, but her lip curled in rage. She looked around. She spotted her worn-out shoes, saw the dead fish stranded a few feet away, saw the broken pop bottles under the stairs.

"But this is—everything's the same!" she shouted. "Everything's dirty and squalid and it isn't supposed to be this way still, not when you've died! Look atjouf What kind of Angel of Death needs a shave?"

"For your information, I'm the Angel of Death by Drowning," I improvised, summoning all the dignity I could. "I work on a limited budget, okay? And you aren't exactly dead yet, which is why you still see the world with mortal eyes."

She said something nice young stenographers didn't often say in 1938, not where they could be heard anyway, and sagged backward and hid her face in her hands.

I had three options here. I could let her swim out again and finish the job she'd started, which was what Company policy recommended in a situation like this: we're not supposed to interfere in their mortal lives. That way I could recover my cache without a witness.

I could kill her myself. This would also solve my witness problem, but such action is against official Company policy, yet still happens anyway sometimes, more often than they'll admit is necessary. I hate killing mortals, though. I almost never do it. Besides, the girl reminded me of somebody I used to know. It made me uncomfortable.

I wasn't sure what my third option was. It probably involved some fast talking. So I cleared my throat and said:

"I wouldn't use that kind of language, if I were you. You might very well be going before the Eternal Throne in a minute or two, and you're in enough trouble already. What can have been so terrible you'd risk eternal damnation rather than live?"

The girl lowered her hands and blinked at me.

"Don't you already know?" she demanded, looking scornful.

"Do I look like they give me all the details up there?" I countered, wringing out a fold of my saggy suit. Her look of scorn deepened. I decided to try a cold reading.

"I was told something about an office," I said, and from her face and her pulse and respiration I knew I was right. "There was some trouble there—?"

"You can say that again, brother!" the girl said, laughing bitterly. "Ten thousand dollars' worth of trouble."

"That's right," I said. I noticed the grief below the laughter. "And love." Right again. The laughter died away and her face grew terribly quiet.

"That was my own fault," she said, in a voice a mortal couldn't have heard below the boom of the surf.

"And he deserted you," I guessed. She flinched. Right again. I usually enjoy batting a thousand, but today it made me feel lousy. Scanning her, I saw that at least she wasn't pregnant. I sat down on the sand beside her. Love, betrayal—and money. And an office. How did they all fit together? Theft?

Embezzlement? I decided to try another angle.

"Why aren't you mad at him?"

She didn't answer right away, but from the way she avoided my gaze, staring out to sea, I could tell I was still on the track. At last she shrugged.

"It was my idea, wasn't it?" she said. "Maybe he'd have come up with the money some other way. He was in so much trouble and it wasn't his fault he didn't know how to live on a salary, you see. His people had always had money! Not like mine. He was raised with higher expectations. So then... once I'd told him about the Friday afternoon deposits, when I saw the way his face lit up... well, I knew we had to do it."

"You still love him," I said. I wasn't guessing on that one; I knew, and so would anybody else, mortal or immortal, who saw her face as she watched the green water rolling in.

"I think he must have gotten scared," she said. "I'm sure he didn't plan it. I guess he got to worrying, with me asleep there and unable to reassure him. I guess he thought it would be just me the police would be looking for. Maybe he was afraid of what his family would think, if we were caught and it got into the papers."

Rich boy down on his luck meets poor girl who works at office, I thought to myself. He needs cash. She figures out a way to abscond with office's money. What happens next? They grab the loot, go on the run and then, while she's asleep in a room somewhere, the boyfriend ditches the girl. But not without—

"He took the money, and you still love him," I said.

She sighed. "I can't help that," she said.

"So when you woke up and found him gone, leaving you broke with the law after you, you came here," I said grimly. She looked at me.

"I didn't mean to," she said. "I walked out to the highway and I hitchhiked. I slept in the woods. I got a ride with a truck driver, but he kept asking me questions and I didn't know what to tell him. So the next time a farm came in sight I said that was where I lived and he let me out there. I just walked on. I came here and saw the stairs going down. That was when I decided. It seemed like a good idea at the time." Her voice was listless.

"It all seems so stupid. I didn't think I was stupid. I guess I deserve whatever happens now." I didn't say anything for a minute. Some mortals deserve to die. The boyfriend deserved to die, wherever he was, but there wasn't anything I could do about him.

"What you did, you did for love," I told the girl. "But you were betrayed. Honey, that's one of the oldest tricks in the book, what he pulled on you! He used you to get the money and then dropped you like a rock. It's not your fault."

I wasn't making her feel better. I made an effort to control my temper. She shivered and looked out at the water again. The sun had gone down by this time and the temperature was dropping fast.

"Is my body still out there, on the bottom of the bay?" she asked.

"No," I said. "You're still in your body. You're only conditionally dead. That's why you're still feeling the cold and wet. We have to talk about this some more, but I'm going to make a fire first."

"The Angel of Death by Drowning builds campfires?" she said wearily.

"Yeah," I told her. I got up and looked around. Up the beach, left high and dry by last winter's tides, was a chunk of redwood log maybe three feet in diameter. I climbed up to it, lifted it as though it weighed nothing, and brought it back to where the girl sat. She stared up at me, wide-eyed, and any doubts she might have had about my supernatural nature were gone.

"Here we go," I said, and setting it down above the tideline I went into hyperfunction and busted the whole thing into a huge mound of punky splintered kindling.

"See, we've still got some things to work out," I said. "Think of this as a hearing to determine whether or not you're going to stand trial." I looked around for a sharp stick and did the twirling thing to make a fire, that almost never works at ordinary mortal speed but works in hyperfunction just fine. A little bright flame jetted up silently, slid along the splintered wood and began to eat into it. She had watched all this in shock, staring. Yes! I had her attention now, all right, that was terror and awe in her black eyes, and it didn't matter anymore that my union suit sagged or my chin was unshaven. I loomed against a background of dancing flame and held out my arms like Leopold Stokowski giving a command to the string section.

"Do you truly repent your sin?" I asked her. She nodded mutely.

"Do you see the man who betrayed you for the cheap liar he is?" I demanded. "Not loving you, not worthy of your love?"

Her face twisted and she drew a ragged breath and said, "Yes."

"What would you do with your life, if it were given back to you?" Was that hope leaping up in her eyes, or just the reflection of the fire? "I—I'd start over. Somehow!

I'd never be such a fool again. I'd try and earn enough to send the money back to Mr. Jensen."

"Are you telling me the truth?"

"Yes!" she cried. "I don't know how I'd do it, but I swear that's what I'd do!"

"Then come to me, mortal child," I intoned, holding out my hand, "And I will give you your life back." She rose and took my hand and I pulled her close, so she could get warm and dry by the fire, but her arms went around me and her mouth fastened desperately on mine.

Look, I didn't think that was going to happen. We're immortals but we're not all-knowing. I'd have thought it was the last thing that poor kid wanted. She did want it, though, she'd come there in the first place hoping something would ravage her; the least I could do was keep the experience sort of spiritual. So I played Azrael, or some kind of angel anyway, there by the fire on that dark beach between life and death.

She slept like a baby, curled up in the firelight. Her face was so peaceful. I sat a few paces away with my head in my hands, feeling like thirty cents.

After a while of gloomy meditation on stuff that would only depress you if I described it, I got up and found her purse. Sitting down, I went through its contents.

There were some keys on a ring. A coin purse containing three pennies and a dime. A pencil. A dime-store fountain pen. A comb. A compact and a tube of lipstick. A bottle of nail polish and an emery board. A leather case containing a Social Security card issued to Cora Luciano. Two letters and a photograph.

I read the letters. They were from the guy. He was so smooth, so polished, he might have copied every word out of a romance novel. How could she have believed him for a minute? But she didn't understand professional deceivers. I do, being in that line of work myself. I looked at the photograph too. It had been taken at an amusement park, I guess, not long ago. They were standing against a rail in front of a carousel. His arm was around her. He was tall, handsome, had a well-dressed Ivy League WASP kind of look to him. Bastard. Beside him she looked small and shabby and dark, poor little office clerk. Radiantly happy, of course.

Bastard.

Old, old story, nothing new to me. I still wanted to find the guy and kill him. I knew, in the back of my mind, why this was making me so sore. It had to do with this green place and another girl who'd come here once, whose life had been wrecked by a smooth-talking mortal man. That girl hadn't died here. She can't die, much as she'd like to.

I couldn't help her. I never can.

After a while I got up and looked at Cora, studying her critically. I took the letters, the photograph and the Social Security card and fed them to the fire.

I walked away down the beach to where I'd buried my cachebox and dug it up. Retrieving some of the stuff inside, I went back to the fire and sat down to work.

The Company had a neat little document alteration device back then, issued to most field personnel. It looked like a fountain pen. Actually when you unscrewed the cap the business end was a fountain pen,'

and if you were a cyborg or even just a really good forger, you could imitate typed letters with it that nobody could tell hadn't been formed on a machine. When you reversed the device, though, when you took off the smaller cap on the other end, there was an itty-bitty laser that was delicate enough to remove the ink on paper fibers without removing the fibers underneath.

I did the birth certificate first. All I had to change on that was the gender and year of birth; 1913

became 1918.1 deleted my signature on the Social Security card. She'd have to sign it herself, when she became Miss Leslie Joseph. I thanked God we were still in the paper age; doing something like this in, say, 1998 would be a nightmare.

I'd have to make myself up a new birth certificate and Social Security card, of course, and I'd have to change the name on my new driver's license—I thought of calling myself Angelo Morte, but the Company frowns on obvious stuff like that. They prefer names that don't draw attention. I settled on William Joseph. Boring, but with luck I'd only have to use it for a few decades. Bill Joseph. Yeah. I could be a Bill Joseph.

I had everything stashed away again by the time I woke her. The sky was just beginning to get light.

"Cora."

"Hm?" She opened her eyes and then sat up abruptly, staring at me. "Oh, my God. I thought you—"

"You thought I was a dream? Almost. Listen to me, Cora, I'm going back now and I don't have a lot of time." I hunkered down beside her. "You've been given a new life. Cora Luciano died out there in the water, and so did all her mistakes. You're Leslie Joseph now, understand?"

"Leslie Joseph," she repeated, and she didn't understand but she was trying to.

"That's right," I said, and held up her birth certificate. "See? Here's your proof. You're twenty years old and you'll be twenty-one next March. Here's your Social Security card. Sign your name, Leslie." I held it out to her with the pen from her purse. Wonderingly, she signed Leslie Joseph.

"Great," I said, and taking the card I slipped it into the leather case that had held her old one. Next I held up a thick wad of cash. "Thousand dollars, mostly in tens and twenties. You know better than to flash it, though, right, Leslie? You're a smart girl. Stick it down in the bottom of your purse, peel off a ten and keep it at the top." I put the money in her hands.

"You're going to put on your shoes and go up the stairs over there and walk north along the highway. Hitchhike, only if you can find another woman to give you a ride. When you get to Monterey, buy yourself all new clothes. New shoes. New handbag. New makeup, too, in different shades. Ditch all of Cora's things. Buy a bus ticket to San Francisco and once you get there, buy a train ticket to New York. Get on that train and never look back."

I got to my feet and backed away from her, into the waves.

"You'll be fine in New York, Leslie. It's a big place, lots of opportunities, and nobody knows anybody back there. You'll find an apartment. You'll find an office job. Maybe you'll even find a nice guy. But nobody, and I mean nobody, is ever again going to talk you into doing something you know is bad for you. Okay? You got all that, Leslie?"

She nodded as if mesmerized, watching me as I retreated. The water was up to my chest now, the swell was breaking over my shoulders.

"You're one lucky mortal, Leslie," I called to her. "You just got handed the break of your life. It's up to you what happens now."

I sank into the dark water and swam away under the surface. I didn't come up again until I was far enough out that she couldn't see me.

I could see her, though. She had put on her shoes and was climbing the stairs in a determined kind of way. I watched as she got up to the road, took a firm grip on her purse and marched away into the morning.

She didn't look back.

The cachebox was already breaking up—they're not meant to be reused after the seal is broken—so my Bill Joseph clothes were full of sand, but at least they were dry, and I was able to warm myself up some over the smoking embers of the fire. I stuffed my new wallet in my pocket, slung on my knapsack, climbed the stairs and walked south as far as Gorda, where I ate enough breakfast for three guys. Then I talked a mortal into giving me a ride as far as San Luis Obispo. He was a nice mortal. I told him all about Bill Joseph, how I was a twenty-five-year-old guy from Santa Rosa, how I lived on Nineteenth Avenue in San Francisco, how I was hiking down here on vacation from my job, which was in a car dealership at Market and Van Ness, how I thought Hitler was a bum and there was probably going to be a war soon and how my favorite song was Harbor Lights, how my mother was dead and my father'd raised me... on and on, and I got the mortal to believe it all. By the time I got on the train at San Luis, I almost believed it myself.

Bill Joseph enlisted when the war broke out, got himself a nice post as a general s aide, and was right there when the Supreme Allied Command broke into places like Berchtesgaden and Merkers, where the Nazis had stored all kinds of treasure they'd looted from museums and private collections. Bill Joseph knew what happened to a lot of stuff that was never accounted for. He died under mysterious circumstances, though, before anybody could ask him about it. Drowned in the Danube, poor guy. No body was ever found.

Leslie Joseph didn't drown. She went to New York just like I told her to, like the good kid she really was. I found her after the war, though I didn't let her spot me following her around. We're not supposed to do stuff like that, but, well, we do, and anyway I was so happy when 1 saw she'd gotten over that bastard who'd screwed her up.

She met an ordinary guy. He ran a store. She married him. They ran the store together then and had three kids. They were as blissful as mortals who have three kids can be. They were celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary around the time I went to work for Mr. Spielberg at Universal. Great happy ending, huh?

I wish to God it was that easy for us.

Why pirates?

In the 1950s, an Australian television studio did a weekly series titled The Adventures of Long John Silver starring the late Robert Newton. I never missed it. Practically put my little nose through the screen longing after those vistas of clouds over the South Seas, those towering white sails and pitching decks, those cozy dark taverns, those parrots, those big interesting bad guys who were really good guys at heart. Growing up, I can't have been the first Wendy to discover that real life with Peter Pan is miserable; but a girl can really go places with a decent pirate. So here's to growing up, and here's to boys who aren't afraid to become men, and here's to tropic seas and tall ships too.

The Likely Lad

"Alec's growing up into such a nice boy," said Mrs. Lewin fondly, pouring out a cup of herbal tea. "So thoughtful. Do you know, he's doing all his own laundry now? I never have to' remind him at all." Lewin grunted acknowledgement, absorbed in his cricket match. It was only a holo of a game played a century earlier—competitive sports had been illegal for decades now—but it was one he had never seen.

"Though the water rate's a bit high," Mrs. Lewin added, setting the pot back in place and covering it with a tea cozy. "Not that his lordship can't afford it, goodness knows, but the Borough Council gets so nasty if they suspect you're wasting anything! I said perhaps Alec ought to save it all up for once a week, but he wouldn't hear of it. Changes his sheets every day. Won't let me do it for him at all. Well, I can understand that, I said, fresh bed linens are a treat, and aren't you the dear to save me coming all the way upstairs and rummaging in that old hamper for your socks... "

Lewin dragged his attention away from the lost green paradise of Lord's and played back what she had been saying.

"Changes his sheets every day?" he repeated.

"Yes. Isn't that responsible of our Alec? It seems like only yesterday he was toddling about and screaming every time I tried to take the face flannel to him, and now... "

"Now he's fourteen," said Lewin. "Hmm."

"How time flies," observed Mrs. Lewin.

"Hmm." Lewin paused the holo and stood. "Yeah. Think I'll go have a word with the boy about the water rate, all the same."

He plodded up the kitchen stairs.

Mr. and Mrs. Lewin were Alec's butler and cook. He lived with them in a mansion in London. Alec's father, the sixth earl of Finsbury, lived on a yacht somewhere in the Caribbean, and his mother, the Right Honourable Cecilia Ashcroft, was somewhere else, and Alec hadn't seen either of them in ten years. As a result, Lewin had been obliged to shepherd Alec through most of his childhood. Lewin was not the only one providing Alec with fatherly advice, though he was unaware of this. If he had been aware, he might have spared himself the long climb up to the fourth floor of the house, which was Alec's domain. Wheezing slightly, Lewin paused on the third-floor landing. He could hear the hideous dissonance of Darwin's Shoes vibrating above, loud enough to rattle the pictures of Alec's parents in their frames. Lewin didn't mind that Alec was listening to crap music much too loud—he was always secretly relieved when Alec did something normal for a boy his age, for reasons that will shortly become apparent—but if the music was loud enough the neighbors would call the Public Health Monitors, and that was to be avoided at all costs, in this city of London in this dismal future time.

So Lewin gritted his teeth and took the last flight at his best speed. Having arrived on the fourth floor without coronary arrest, he hammered on Alec's door, which was spektered all over with little moving shots of Darwin's Shoes, Folded Space and other bands Alec happened to think were cool that week. Lewin felt a certain satisfaction at knocking right through the irritating young faces. Almost immediately, the door opened a bit and one eye peered out at him, a very pale blue eye a long way up. Alec, at fourteen, was already six feet tall.

"Would you mind granting me an interview?" shouted Lewin,

glaring up at the eye.

"Sorry!" Alec opened the door wide with one hand, hastily stuffing something into his pocket with the other. He waved and, mercifully, the decibel level dropped.

Lewin stepped over the threshold and looked around. Nothing suspicious in sight, at least on the order of bottles or smoking apparatus, and no telltale fume in the air. Light paintings of ships drifted across the walls, and phantom clouds moved across the ceiling. It was an effect that invariably gave Lewin vertigo, so he focused his attention on the boy in front of him.

"Didn't I explain what would happen if you played that stuff loud enough to annoy the neighbors?" Lewin demanded,

"Oh, they can't hear it," Alec assured him. "I've got a baffle fieldprojected off the walls of the house. Sound waves just fall into it, see? I could set off a bomb in here and nobody'd know."

"Please don't," said Lewin, sighing. He had no idea what a baffle field was, but not the slightest doubt that Alec could create one. He shifted from foot to foot and Alec, eyeing him nervously, pulled out a chair.

"Would you like to sit down?"

"Yeah, thanks." Lewin sagged into the chair. Alec stood before him a moment, trying not to put his hands in his pockets, and finally retreated to his bed and sat down on its edge, which would nearly put him at Lewin's eye level standing.

In addition to being extremely tall, Alec Checkerfield had a rather unusual face, at least in that day and age: small deep-set eyes, remarkably broad and high cheekbones, a long nose and immense teeth. He looked like a terribly noble horse.

"What you been doing up here?" Lewin inquired.

"Nothing," said Alec. "I mean, er—you know. Studying."

"Mmm." Lewin glanced over at the communications console. "Well. You remember when we had that talk about you hitting puberty?"

Alec flushed and looked away, but his voice was light and careless as he said, "Sure."

"You remember how we talked about using shields?"

"Er... yeah."

"You need me to get you any? Happihealthies, or that lot?"

Alec looked at his shoes. "No, thanks. Sir."

"Right. And you do know, don't you, that even if a girl says yes, if she says it before she's eighteen it doesn't count?"

Alec nodded, not raising his eyes.

"And you can get in no end of trouble? Worse than just being carted off by the Public Health Monitors?"

"Yup," said Alec.

"Right," said Lewin, getting to his feet. "Just so you know." He paused by the door and cleared his throat. "And... it uses up a lot of water, doing laundry every day. People will talk. Can't you try and, and—not do that?"

"Yes," said Alec.

"Right," said Lewin. "I'm off downstairs, then."

"Okay."

Lewin edged out and pulled the door shut after him. He shook his head and once again, as he descended the long stairs, cursed Roger Checkerfield for never coming home. The moment Lewin had turned the corner on the landing, a voice in Alec's room said:

"There now, didn't I tell you they'd notice?"

As the hoarse baritone spoke, a column of light flashed in midair and the speaker appeared. He was an immense man in early eighteenth-century clothing, his beard was wild and black, and his face was wicked. There were two pistols and a cutlass thrust through his wide belt.

"Oh, piss off," muttered Alec. "1 can't help it."

"What about I order you a few dozen of them recyclable cloth tissues, eh, matey?" the apparition offered. "On the quiet, like?"

"Can't I have any privacy anymore?" Alec cried.

"Aw, son, don't take on so. It ain't like I was a person, is it now? Who're you to care if a old machine like me knows yer little secrets?" said the apparition.

"You're a lot more than a machine," said Alec ruefully.

"Well, thank'ee, lad, but I knows my place," replied the apparition. Yet Alec was correct, for Captain Morgan (as the apparition was named) was a great deal more than a mere machine; in fact he was a great deal more than the fairly powerful Pembroke Playfriend Artificial Intelligence he had been when Lewin had purchased him for Alec nine years earlier. Had Lewin known that little Alec had managed to reprogram the Playfriend, and moreover remove its Ethical Governor so that its drive to fulfill its primary objective—to protect and nurture Alec—was completely unhindered by scruples of any kind, he'd have been horrified. All in all it was a good thing Lewin didn't know. He was worried enough by all the other unusual things young Alec could do. The Captain now considered the disconsolate boy before him. "Bloody hell, this'd be a lot easier if I was an organic. You and me'd just take the bus over to Egypt at weekend and I'd find my boy a nice couple of whores. Haar! That'd take a reef in yer mainsail, by thunder." Alec groaned and put his head in his hands. Having an imaginary childhood friend who persisted into his adolescence was embarrassing enough. The idea that the Captain was taking an interest in his (even more imaginary) sex life was intolerable.

"Look, I really don't feel like talking about this right now, okay?" he snapped.

"Not with that force-ten testosterone storm a-raging, I reckon you don't," the Captain agreed. He put his hands behind his back and paced, and the Maldecena projector in the ceiling turned in its pivot mounting to allow him to move across the room. He gave the appearance of drawing a deep breath.

"Look, son, I got programming says I got to keep you clear of wrecks, see? You mind old Lewin! I don't care how bouncy that there Beatrice Louise Jagger was yesterday after Social Interaction 101, thelass is only fourteen! Like you. And neither one of you's got any idea what's going on. You takes her up on any invitations short of a tea party and you'll both wind up in Hospital on hormone treatments, likely for the rest of yer little lives."

"It's not fair," said Alec. "And how'd you know about me and Beatrice?"

"I got me ways, lad," said the Captain smoothly. Thanks to some of the modifications Alec had made for him, he had long since been able to tap into the surveillance cameras mounted everywhere in London and so monitor his charge's progress in the world outside. "Now, it's almost the end of term. Yer going to have a lovely holiday in Bournemouth. We don't want to spoil it, do we?

"No."

"So let me see if I can't turn yer attention to something a bit less dangerous than the Right Honourable Ms. Jagger's knickers, eh? It's time we was taking a prize, matey. We need more loot."

"But we've already got tons of loot," said Alec in surprise.

"I ain't talking about data plunder, son. I mean money. I plan to build up a private fortune for you. One I can hide so nobody knows it's there to tax, see? That way, even if you and Jolly Roger should have a difference of opinion some day, it won't matter if he cuts you off without a penny," x

"How could we ever argue about anything?" Alec demanded. "Roger never talks to me at all. Birthdays and Solstice I get presents, if he remembers, but not even an audiomemo in ten shracking years!"

"Well, now, son, even if you does get yer inheritance without a hitch, there ain't no telling when that'll be, and you want to be free and independent in the meantime, don't you?"

"I guess so. Yeah."

"So here's what we does, matey." The Captain grinned, showing a lot of very white teeth in his dark face. "You'll peer about their encryptions a bit, like the smart lad you be, and get me into the databases of the Eurobank and Wells Fargo and some of them other fine big old houses. I goes to work and does a little old-fashioned transference theft, like nobody ain't done in decades on account of it ain't supposed to be possible nowadays. Just a yen here and a dollar there and all of it stowed safe in a nice Swiss account under a fictitious name, eh? Just enough to get you a nice nest egg of, oh, a million pounds or so, what I can start with."

Alec had been listening intently, and now he frowned.

"Wait a minute. Did you say theft? You mean you want us to steal money out of a bank?"

"No, no, matey, not one bank. Somebody'd notice that! We'd lootbanks all over the world," the Captain explained. But Alec was shaking his head.

"That'd be stealing, Captain. That's wrong. Breaking in and copying data's one thing, but we'd be actually hurting people if we took their money," said Alec.

The Captain growled and rolled his eyes. "Son, I'm talking about the teensiest little amounts. Nothing anybody'd miss. A flea couldn't light on what we'd be taking. You could put it up a canary's arse and still have room for—"

"Nope. I'm not going to do it," said Alec, with a stubborn downturn of mouth that the Captain knew all too well. He pulled at his beard in exasperation, and then mustered all his tact.

"Alec, laddie. All these years I been a pirate, just like you wanted me to be when you first set me free from that damned Playfriend module. Ain't I been a hard-working old AI? Ain't I gone along with the earring and cocked hat and cutlass and all the rest of the program? Ain't I schemed to keep you safe and happy all this time? And don't you think, being a criminal like I am, that once in a while I might get a chance to actually STEAL something?"

"Steal all the data you like, but we're not going after banks," Alec replied. Red lights flashed on the console and static buzzed from the speakers; the Captain was doing the electronic equivalent of gnashing his teeth. His eyes, that were changeable as the sea, darkened to an ominous slaty color. Then, as an alternative suggested itself to him, they brightened to a mild Atlantic blue.

"Aye, aye," he said. "No robbing banks, then. What kind of a score's that for a sailor, anyhow? Belike we won't steal nothing from nobody after all. Belike there's a better way."

"I'll bet you can come up with lots better plans," agreed Alec hurriedly, for he was experiencing the qualms of guilt any other boy would feel on telling a beloved parent he was dropping out of school. The Captain eyed him slyly and paced up and down a moment in silence.

"We got to get money, matey, no arguing over that. But... we might earn it."

"Yeah," said Alec at once, and then a certain reluctance came into his voice. "Er... how?"

"Oh, you could use up yer holiday in Bournemouth getting some lousy summer job," said the Captain.

"Wearing a little white hat and peddling fruit ices, eh? Grilling soy patties in a back kitchen or waiting tables for tips? Mind you, it'd take you all yer summer holidays clearthrough to university to earn a tenth of what we need. That's if you could find somebody to hire you once they found out you was peerage and trying to take employment away from less fortunate boys!

"Or... we might do a bit of smuggling."

"Smuggling?" Alec's face cleared.

"Aye! Ain't smuggling just supply and demand? Long as we didn't smuggle nothing that'd hurt nobody, which we wouldn't. But all them bloody stupid Euromarket laws makes for no end of opportunities for a likely lad with a fast craft. You was planning on chartering another little sailboat for the summer, weren't you?"

"That's right," said Alec, his eyes widening as he began to see the possibilities.

"Well then! We'll put her to good use. You let me scan the horizon, son; I reckon I'll find us some honest folk what could use a little help in the export trade," said the Captain, watching Alec's reaction.

"Yeah!" Alec's face shone with enthusiasm. "Wow, Captain, this wouldn't even be a game, would it?

This'd be real! With real danger and everything!"

"Certain it would, matey," the Captain told him, privately resolving that there wouldn't be the least possibility of danger.

"What an adventure!"

"But we got to sign articles first, son. I got to have yer affidavy you'll keep yer hands off the little missies in yer Circle of Thirty," said the Captain.

"Sure!"

"I mean it, now! No more of that sweet talk about asking 'em to explore the amazing mysteries of life with you and all that," said the Captain, stern now he had leverage. Alec scowled and turned red again. "That wasn't exactly what I said."

"Aye, but it near bagged you a Right Honourable, and you without a box of Happihealthies. One week till the end of term, son. My boy can keep his hands to hisself until then, can't he?"

"Aye aye," sighed Alec.

"There's a good lad. I'll just get myself into the maintop, now, and see if I can't spy us out a few connections. Shall I?"

Alec nodded. The Captain winked out. Alec sat there for a moment, before rising to his feet and pulling out the graphics plaquette he had hidden in his pocket on hearing Lewin's knock. Holding it close to his face, he thumbed it on and peered at the screen. His pupils dilated as the tiny woman appeared onscreen and smiled at him invitingly. He glanced sidelong at the Captain's cameras. M. Despres had an office in Cherbourg, in Greater Armorica. He neither bought nor sold commodities, but he made arrangements for others who bought and sold them.

Cherbourg was the ideal location from which to do business. Armorica, being a member of the Celtic Federation but also technically part of France, had two complete sets of trade regulations from which to pick and choose. Businessmen like M. Despres could custom-tailor a hybrid of statutes and ordinances from both political entities to justify any particular action taken on any given day. As a result, M. Despres scarcely ever ran the risk of arrest. This was good, for he did not enjoy danger. He left the more dangerous side of his business to certain persons whom he did not officially know. There were several persons he did not know working for him, doing things he did not know about, with ships that did not exist in official registries. So complicated was this little dance of deniability that when M. Despres's shadow employees really actually stopped working for him, it sometimes took several months to determine that they had quit, and longer still to find replacements for them. In the meantime, nonexistent cargoes sat unshipped in nonexistent warehouses, and M. Despres lost real money.

In order to avoid the attentions of unpleasant men with Gaelic accents who liked to break arms and legs, he sent out a desperate inquiry on certain channels, and sat in his office in Cherbourg drumming his fingers on his communications console and hoping someone would reply soon. M. Despres was in luck on this Thursday evening. Someone did reply.

A yellow light flashed on the console, signifying that a holo transmission was coming through, and a moment later the console's projector activated and a man materialized before M. Despres's eyes.

"You'd be Box 17, Greater Armorica Logistics?" he inquired in a heavy English accent. He was tall and broad, and impeccably dressed in a three-piece business suit. His black beard was neat, if unusually thick, his black hair bound back in a power queue.

"I don't believe I know you, sir," said M. Despres cautiously. "I don't know you either, dear sir, and that's for the best, isn't it?" The stranger grinned fiercely. "But we have friends in common, who inform me that you have a transportation difficulty."

"That is a possibility," admitted M. Despres. "References would be required."

"And are being downloaded now. I understand your usual transport personnel seems to have left without a forwarding commcodc."

M. Despres shrugged, hoping his holocam picked up the gesture.

"I understand," continued the stranger, "that there's Celtic gentlemen who would like some sugar for their tea, and are getting a little impatient that it hasn't been shipped to them."

"How unfortunate," said M. Despres.

"Very unfortunate indeed, for yourself," said the stranger. "I wouldn't want to be caught between those Celts and the Breton sugar beet growers. You can't afford to lose your business reputation, can you?"

"Who can?" M. Despres smiled noncommittally. He eyed the references; they appeared genuine, and gave M. Morgan the highest praise as a discreet and reliable operator. M. Despres attempted to verify them, and thanks to the elaborate double protocols Alec had built into the codes, everything appeared to check out.

"Of course, reputation can be a bad thing, too," said the stranger. "As when certain vessels become too well known to the coastal patrols."

"I suppose so." M. Despres's interest was piqued. Was this a new operator moving into the territory?

"I suppose in that case they might sail to Tahiti, which might create an opportunity for someone else."

"So it might," said the stranger. "But I've been remiss! I must introduce myself. M. Morgan, dear sir. 1

may be in a position to provide you with assistance in your present time of need." M. Despres, deciding the moment had come, said simply, "One run. Seventy-five billion Euros." The stranger looked thoughtful. "Seventy-five billion? That's, let me see, nine hundred and fifty thousand pounds? Not much cargo, I take it."

M. Despres gulped. "Six cases, twenty kilos each."

"A trifle," said the stranger, making a dismissive gesture.

"There is a slight difficulty."

"Ah, now, that would drive my price up."

"I said it was a slight difficulty. The cargo must be recovered from the place in which it was abandoned."

"What unprofessional people you must have known, dear sir! Say, twenty per cent above the previous figure?"

"Fifteen. Recovery should be a simple matter. It's off a Sealand outpost in the channel."

"I'll need my divers, then. Seventeen per cent. The destination?"

"Poole."

"Very good. Time is of the essence, I imagine?"

"Not at all," said M. Despres, lying through his teeth.

"In that case, then, I'll consider the matter and get back to you in, say, two days?"

"Tomorrow would be more convenient, to be frank," M. Despres said hurriedly. The stranger smiled at him.

"Why, then, tomorrow it is, sir. Au revoir. " And he vanished.

"He bought it!" whooped Alec, jumping up from his console.

"Of course he did," the Captain replied, preening. "If his bioelectric scans is any indication. We'll clinch it tomorrow."

"I've always wanted to do something like this," said Alec, pacing restlessly. "The open sea, a fast boat, secret business, yeah! This is the closest we'll ever get to being real pirates, I suppose."

"Well, laddie, one ought to move with the times," the Captain replied, pretending to shoot his cuffs and straighten his tie.

"That's true," said Alec, turning to regard him. He said casually, "Speaking of which, er... that's a good look for you, you know?"

"Like that better than the old cocked hat and eighteenth-century rig, do you? Less embarrassing for a sophisticated young lord about town?" jeered the Captain. "Damn, boy, I like the suit myself. Sort of a gentleman's gentleman but with some bloody presence. What do you say I appear like this from here on, eh?"

"Brilliant," Alec said. Clearing his throat, he added in a small voice, "But... we'll still be sea rovers, right?"

"More'n we ever was, matey," the Captain told him. "To the tune of nine hundred fifty thousand pounds!"

"Plus seventeen per cent."

"Plus seventeen per cent. Smart as paint, my boy!"

Alec's holidays had been spent at Bournemouth, in one rented villa or another, ever since he'd come to England, after his parents' divorce. When he'd been small, he built sand castles and told inquiring adults that the Lewins, watchful from their beach chairs, were his grandparents. When he'd outgrown sandcastles he'd gone surfing, or explored Westboume. Here he'd found a public garden planted on the site of a house where Robert Louis Stevenson had once lived. Stevenson was Alec's favorite author; though he had never read any of his books (only children who were going on to lower-clerical jobs were taught to read nowadays, after all). Alec had assiduously collected every version of Treasure Island ever filmed. Being an exceptionally bright boy, he had been able to spell out enough of the commemorative plaque in thegarden to tell him whose house had once stood there. He had run home in great excitement to tell the Lewins, who smiled and nodded and turned their attention back to their illegal bridge game with another elderly couple.

The last two summers, however, Alec had ventured through the pines and gone over to Lilliput, beyond Canford Cliffs. At Salterns Marina there was a place that rented sailboats, and for an extra fee would provide an instructor in the art of sailing. So quickly had Alec picked it up that in no time at all he'd been able to take his tiny craft out of the harbor and into Poole Bay by himself, working his way between Brownsea Island and Sandbanks like an old sailor.

Tacking back and forth, getting sunburnt and wet with the sea spray, catching the winds and racing sidelong over blue water, squinting against the glitter of high summer: Alec was happy. There was no one to apologize to out on the water, no one who wanted explanations. The global positioning satellites might be tracking his every move, but at least they were far up and unseen. He had at least the illusion of freedom, and really that was all anybody had, these days.

Sometimes he took his boat as far out on the bright horizon as he dared, and stretched out on the tiny deck and lay looking up at the sky, where the high sun swung behind the mast top like a pendulum. Sometimes he thought about never coming in at all.

Today Alec whistled shrilly through 'Jus teeth as he traveled along Haven Road on his RocketCycle. The idea that it rocketed anywhere was a pathetic joke; it had an antigravity drive and floated, barely able at its best speed to outpace a municipal bus. But the sun was hot on his back and felt good, and the pine woods were aromatic, and he was on his way to have his first-ever real adventure on the high seas!

Arriving at the marina, Alec stored the RocketCycle and strode down the ramp toward his mooring, carrying a small black case. He waved at the attendant as he passed. The attendant smiled and nodded kindly. He was under the impression Alec was the victim of some sort of bone disease that had made him abnormally tall and which would shortly prove fatal, so he was invariably courteous and helpful. It took immanent death to provoke decent customer service nowadays.

"Looks like a great day to be out there!" Alec called, boarding the little Sirene.

"Bright," agreed the attendant. "Think I'll stay out all day!"

"Okay," said the attendant. He watched from his chair as the boy powered up the fusion drive, checked all the instruments, cast off and moved out, running up the little sail. Then he settled back and turnedhis attention to his game unit, feeling pleased with himself for his tolerance and trying once more to recall which holo program it was that had shown a two-minute feature on genetic freaks... Alec, once he'd cleared Sandbanks, moved into the masking wake of the St. Malo ferry and glanced up involuntarily in the direction of the currently orbiting satellite. He opened his black case, which appeared to be a personal music system; slipped on earshells, found the lead and connected it to the Sirene's guidance and communications console. He gave it a brief and carefully coded command. From that moment onward the satellite received a false image; and somewhere in a dark room of a thousand lit screens, one screen was persuaded to show nothing but images of the Sirene tacking aimlessly and innocently back and forth all day.

The object in the black case—which was not a personal music system—shot out a small antenna. The antenna fanned into a silver flower at one end. From this a cone of light shot forth, faint and nearly transparent in the strong sunlight, and a moment later the Captain materialized.

"Haar!" He made a rude gesture at the sky. "Kiss my arse, GPS! They won't suspect a thing, now. Oh, son, what a lucky day it was for me when I shipped out with a bloody little genius like you."

"Not so little any more," Alec reminded him, taking the tiller and turning the Sirene a point into the wind.

"To be sure." The Captain turned to regard Alec fondly. "My boy's growing up. His first smuggling run! Faking out a whole satellite system all by himself. Ain't nobody else in the world but my Alec can do that." "I wonder why they can't?" Alec speculated, peering back at the rapidly dwindling mainland. "It seems really easy. Am I that different from them?"

"Different is as different does, matey," said the Captain smoothly, adjusting his lapels. He wasn't about to explain just how different Alec was, especially at this time of adolescent anxiety. To be truthful, the Captain himself wasn't sure of the extent of Alec's abilities, or even why he had them. He knew enough to hide Alec's genetic anomalies on routine medical scans. He'd done enough stealthy searching to discover that Alec's DNA type made it extremely unlikely that he was a member of the human race as it presently existed, let alone the son of either Lord Fins-bury or the Right Honourable Cecilia Ashcroft, as his birth certificate stated. But why upset the boy?

"I've been thinking," said Alec, "That as long as I can do stuff the rest of 'em can't, I ought to do some good for everybody. Don't you think? I'll bet a lot of people would like to have some privacy for achange. We could set up a consulting firm or something that would show people how easy it was to get around Big Brother up there."

"Aw, now, son, that's a right noble plan," the Captain agreed. "Only problem with it is, we don't want to lose our advantage, do we? As long as it's just you and me has the weather gauge of them satellites, why, there ain't no way they'll ever know we're getting around 'em. But if you was to let other folks in on the secret... well, sooner or later there'd be trouble, see?"

"I guess so." Alec frowned toward the Isle of Wight. "We'd draw attention to ourselves."

"And we got to avoid that like it was the Goodwin Sands, son, or it'd be Hospital for you and a diagnostic disassembly for me, and farewell to freedom! Plenty of time for do-gooding once we've got you stinking rich, says I; you can give millions to charity then, eh?" proposed the Captain. Alec, thinking uneasily of a life immured in a padded cell in Hospital, nodded. He squared his shoulders and said, "Aye aye, Captain sir. So, when do we rendezvous with the Long John?"

"Let's take her farther out into the channel first, boy. Two points south-southeast." Mr. Learn had an office in the Isle of Wight, but he was seldom there. His job kept him out at sea most days and many nights, for he was the Channel Patrol.

Up until a week earlier he had enjoyed the title exclusively, but the Trade Council had decreed that he train an assistant. Mr. Learn was secure enough in his self-esteem to take this as a compliment; he knew his job was vital to the well-being of the nation. He simply wished they'd hired him someone English.

"Not that I hold your ancestry against you in any way," he told Reilly, "Of course. But it's a tough job, you see. Requires deep personal commitment. Clear understanding of the dangers involved. Constant vigilance."

"I thought it was just cruising around trying to catch the Euros slipping us their national product and all and messing up our economy," said Reilly. "Where's the danger in that?" Mr. Learn grimaced, then assumed his most patient expression. "Coming, as you do, from a, hem, more permissive culture, you mightn't understand. As a member of the Channel Patrol, you have a sacred duty to prevent murder."

"Murder?" Reilly cried. "Nobody at the Council interview said anything about murder!"

"I'll try to put this in your terms. Your ethnic affiliation have a lot of,er, children. Now, suppose one day you were minding someone's baby, and saw a vicious criminal sneaking up on the innocent thing, offering it a shiny bottle of poison!" Mr. Learn hissed, pacing the wheelhouse of the Patrol cutter. He peered keenly out at the horizon, dotted with skimming sails, and went on:

"Well, Reilly, what would you do? Would you let the little creature drink the poison down? They have no sense, you see, they'll ingest any kind of toxic substance if it tastes nice. No; as a moral human being, you'd see it was your duty to snatch the nasty stuff away before harm was done."

"So... the Euros have a secret plot going to poison babies?" Reilly inquired cautiously, wondering if Mr. Learn were crazy as well as bigoted.

"In effect, yes, they do," said Mr. Learn. "Think about this for a moment. Consumers are like babies, aren't they? You can't trust them to know any better than to indulge themselves in what's bad for them. That's why we made moral, sensible prohibitions to protect them all! The strong-willed must protect the weak against the profiteers who would entice them with their impurities."

"Okay," said Reilly, "But how's a bottle of pouilly fuiss é that nobody but rich people can afford anyway going to do harm?"

Mr. Leam shook his head sadly.

"If it were only as simple as that," he said. "They deal in far worse than wine. Think of the hideous immorality involved in the mere production of cheese, man! The enslavement of animals. The forced extrusion of foul stinking moldy curds of stuff so full of grease and bacteria it runs on the plate and plays havoc with the intestines! What civilized country would allow something like that on the market?

"And coffee! Horrible little black beans like cockroaches, just full of toxins. You wouldn't enjoy being a caffeine addict, I can tell you. Fingers trembling, teeth stained and chattering, heart pounding, eyes popping, arteries worn right through from the strain, aneurysm striking any time and exploding your brain!" Mr. Leam smote the navigation console with his fist. "Bam! Like that. And tea just as bad, even more insidious because the fool Consumers get sentimental about it.

"And cocoa's bad enough, with all those exotic alkaloids to stimulate unnatural desires (can you imagine there was a time when people fed it to their children?)—but chocolate! Dreadful oily voluptuous insinuating filth just full of addictive chemicals, and loaded with refined sugar, eating away at your teeth with its acids until they're worn down to broken suppurating snags. Peanuts bloating you with calories and swelling you with toxic gases and salts, bleached flour to load yoursystem with invisible toxins, ghastly black messes of fish roe—think of the outrage done to the harmless sturgeon!"

"I never realized!" gasped Reilly, who had gone green as an organic pistachio. Mr. Leam wiped foam from the corner of his mouth and looked stern. "And this, man, is why we live. Only we can preserve the General Prohibition, for without our ceaseless care, the nation's borders will be overrun with peddlers of pollution."

"Yes, sir," said Reilly, and with new eyes peered fearfully across at the lowering darkness of Armorica.

"I'm picking up the Long John, matey," the Captain informed Alec. "Two kilometers west-southwest and closing fast."

"Cool!" Alec turned expectantly and watched the horizon, and presently saw the tiny foaming wake making straight for the Sirene, for all the world as though a torpedo had been launched at her. Within a few yards of her hull, it bobbed to the surface and halted, then came slowly forward with a distinct paddling motion.

"Who's my smart little Long John, then?" crooned Alec. Grinning, he bent over the gunwale and lifted from the water something that looked like a cross between a toy submarine and a mechanical dog. Alec had created it over the previous week, using odds and ends he had in his room and employing principles

that seemed fairly basic to him but which no human presently living could have grasped. He had launched it on the previous evening, dropping it quietly off the end of Bournemouth Municipal Pier. "Been out nosing around like I programmed you? What'd you find? Let's see, yeah?" The Long John drew in its paddles and sat motionless as Alec connected a lead from the console to a port in its nose.

The Captain crouched down and regarded it, scowling with concentration. "All systems still operational," he confirmed. "Data's coming in now. Looks like it done the job, by thunder! Here's them coordinates... " He lifted his head and looked out into the distance to the bleak hulk of the old Sealand platform. "The cargo's there, all right; smack on the sea bottom, thirty meters off the northwest pylon. I'm setting a course now. Bring her around, son!"

"Aye aye, Captain sir!"

In the early part of the twenty-first century there had been a brief fad for civil liberty that had taken the form of establishing tiny independent countries in international waters, built on floating platforms or abandoned oil rigs. This had given rise to a loosely organized federation collectively known as Sealand. Eventually, as the Second Age of Saildawned and people realized it was much more convenient simply to live aboard megaclippers, the cramped Sealand outposts themselves were abandoned. Rusting, hoary now with guano they stood, and sea birds nested in their blind windows and gaping doors. Dark birds of another kind entirely used the platforms as landmarks and places to rendezvous, which was why a hundred and twenty kilos of refined sugar—one of the most expensive of controlled substances, in this day and age—lay scattered in its vacuum-sealed crates on the seabed nearby.

"We're over 'em now, son," the Captain announced with satisfaction. "Let's see if the tiny bugger's up to his programming."

"Of course he is," said Alec, disconnecting the Long John and lifting it over the side. The moment it touched the surface, its little paddles deployed, and it trod water patiently while Alec attached a length of cable to its stern. When the cable was in place, the Long John dove down, vanishing swiftly in the green water, the cable unspooling behind until it popped off the reel and floated down out of sight. Alec smirked and gave the Captain two thumbs-up.

"Telemetry coming back now," growled the Captain, staring at the horizon in a preoccupied kind of way. "There's the loot. Initiating recovery mission."

"Brilliant," said Alec, and leaned back at the tiller. Far below the Sirene's keel, the Long John settled on the nearest of the sugar crates and extended a pair of manipulative members. It set about reeving one end of the cable through the crate's carry-handle, and when it had tied the cable off securely, the Long John rose and paddled off to the next crate, towing the cable after it.

"Yes, the old Sealand stations," said Mr. Learn, shaking his head. "You'd think they were something innocent, wouldn't you? Lovely spot for terns and whatnot to nest, oh yes. But they've still got the stink of civil disobedience about them."

"Nobody could live there anymore," said Reilly. He squinted through the scopex at the platform near which the Sirene was currently busy. "I can't even see a fusion generator. Ooh, ugh! There's a bird doing something nasty to another bird. I thought only people—"

"It's a nasty world, Reilly," said Mr. Leam. "Where criminals grab every chance to carry out their wicked trade. They've been using that very platform as one of their meeting places, you know. I've been watching it for some time now. Last month I nearly had them! The Lisiane out of Wexford, registered to the Federation Celtique as usual, always hanging about here. What's a sport vessel want with all thatcargo space, I ask you? Probably engaged in fishing too, the murdering bastards."

"What happened?" inquired Reilly, a little testy over the slur on the Celtic Federation.

"I caught them in the act," Mr. Leam gloated. "Taking something from the Tin tin out of St. Malo. Bore down on them both with my siren roaring and they dropped everything and fled over the horizon!

But the Lisiane will be back. Sooner or later they'll think I've forgotten them, sooner or later they'll think it's safe to sneak back and recover whatever it was they had to sink. I'll be here waiting when they do, and I'll have a little surprise for them."

"Er—there's somebody out there now, you know," said Reilly, tapping the scopex to closer focus.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Mr. Leam, not lifting his eyes from the console screen. "The satellite readout's perfectly clear. There are no vessels within a five-kilometer radius of the platform. It says so right here."

"I guess I'm seeing a mirage or something then," said Reilly, lowering the scopex. And there the matter might have rested; but Mr. Leam, with a sudden flash of the intuition that made him such a successful opponent of evildoers, recalled that his enemies were after all fiendishly clever. He grabbed the scopex from Reilly and trained it again on the distant station.

"There is a boat!" he yelled. "But it's not the Lisiane... what do they think they're playing at? Well, they won't fool ME!"

He dropped the scopex and hauled on the wheel, bringing his cutter about sharply and making for the platform under full power. Reilly yelped as cold spray hit him, and he grabbed at the rail.

"Are we going to scare them off?" he shouted.

"No," replied Mr. Leam. Grinning through clenched teeth, he reached over and squeezed in a command on the console. Reilly gaped as a panel opened in the forward deck and a laser cannon rose into bow-chaser position.

"Jesus!" Reilly screamed. "Those are illegal!"

"So is smuggling," replied Mr. Leam. "We'll board and search, and if we meet the least resistance we'll sink them. Such is justice on the high seas, Reilly."

The Long John had managed to tie up all six crates. Extending a hook, it caught the looped cable and rose through the water, towing the crates after it like a great unwieldy bunch of grapes. Reaching the limit of its strength, straining upward, the Long John activated a tiny antigravityfield and promptly shot up through the gloom like a cork released from a bottle, the crates zooming ponderously behind as it rose toward the Sirene's hull...

"Coastal Patrol cutter to port!" roared the Captain, pointing. "Bloody hell, that son of a whore's got ordinance!"

"You mean cannons?" Alec squeaked, "Oh, wow!"

Turning sharply, the Captain scanned Alec. His sensors picked up the boy's terror, but to his consternation, there was something more: excitement, anticipation, physical arousal. Alec watched the cutter speeding toward them and, without conscious intent, began to smack his right fist into his left palm, quite hard.

"Are we going to fight 'em, Captain sir?" he said eagerly. "Or, no, that's dumb. I guess we'll just have to give 'em a run for their money!"

"We ain't doing neither one, boy," the Captain snapped. "We're going to sit tight and lie through yer teeth, understand? I'll get below and manage the Long John. Just you calm down!"

"I am calm!" Alec protested, but the Captain had already vanished. Alec turned uncertainly to watch the cutter approach as, a fathom below, the Long John dove again and pulled its load into the obscurity of a kelp forest. There it waited, warily scanning the surface.

"HEAVE TO AND PREPARE TO BE BOARDED!" ordered Mr. Leam, his voice echoing across the water. "YOU ARE UNDER SUSPICION OF VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL

MARITIME ORDINANCE 56624-B, PARAGRAPH 30, CLAUSE 15!"

"ER—OKAY!" Alec bellowed, thrilled to his bones. He felt more alive at this moment than he could ever remember feeling, and wished with all his heart he had a sword or a pistol or even just the ability to launch himself across the space between the boats and start swinging with his bare fists. It took all his self-control to sit quietly at the tiller, an innocent expression on his face, and watch as the cutter pulled alongside and Mr. Leam jumped into the tiny Sirene.

Mr. Leam was furiously angry, because it was obvious he had made an error; the Sirene had no cabin, let alone a cargo hold. Nevertheless, balancing awkwardly on the Sirene's midship thwart, he demanded,

"Identify yourself! What is your business here?"

"I'm Alec Checkerfield," Alec replied. "Just here on holiday, sir, yeah? I was looking at all the seagulls up there."

"Well—" Mr. Leam swallowed back his rage and glanced over at the cutter for support. Reilly seemed to be hiding. He looked back at the immense young man. The youth smiled in a friendly way, but there seemed to be far too many teeth in the smile.

"Under the authority vested in me by the Trade Council, I hereby inform you I intend to search this vessel," persisted Mr. Leam.

Alec raised his eyebrows. "Sure," he said. His ears prickling with red heat, Mr. Leam bent over and looked under the thwarts. He looked under the seat cushions; checked all along the rail for towlines; ordered Alec to rise and checked among the sternsheets when Alec had politely complied. Having found nothing, he glared at Alec once more.

"Please present your identification disk," he ordered. Shrugging, Alec got it out and handed it over. Upon discovering that Alec's father was the earl of Finsbury, Mr. Leam glanced over at the laser cannon and felt a chill descend along his spine. Pinning all his hopes on the possibility that Alec, being an aristocrat, would also be an idiot, he decided to brazen it out and said:

"Very well; everything seems to be in order. I'd advise you to avoid these platforms in future, young man. They are clearly marked as breeding sanctuaries for the black-footed gull."

"Oh. Sorry," said Alec.

"You may proceed," said Mr. Leam, and scrambled awkwardly into his boat, stepping on Reilly, who had been crouching behind the fire extinguisher. Retracting his cannon at once, he put about without another word and sped away, leaving white wake and embarrassment behind him. He was back at the Isle of Wight before it occurred to him to wonder why the Sirene hadn't shown up on the satellite data.

When he was well out of earshot, Alec howled and pounded on the thwart in delight. "Captain sir, did you see that?" he shouted. "He couldn't pin a thing on us! That was so COOL!"

"I saw it well enough, aye," said the Captain irritably, materializing in the prow. "Now we know why the other bastards dumped the loot and took off for Tahiti, and I wish to hell we could do the same. Put her about! We're getting well away before that looney changes his mind and comes back for us."

"Aye aye, sir!" Alec leaned on the tiller, chuckling. The Captain did the electronic equivalent of wiping sweat from his brow and peered back at the retreating cutter until it vanished in the lee of the Isle of Wight. Below, the Long John rose from its hideaway and paddled faithfully after the Sirene, towing its clutch of sugar crates.

They kept to a course that took them due south for a while, well out to sea, before the Captain judged it safe to beat to the west and plot a long evasive course back to Poole. Alec lounged back in the sternsheets and congratulated himself on what he thought was the adventure of hislife, replaying Mr. Leam's search in his head several times, and each time Alec thought of more clever things he might have said, or imagined ways in which he might have turned the tables and captured the Coastal Patrol cutter. If only he'd had a laser cannon too!

He was distracted from such pleasant speculation by a sail to port. After watching it keenly a few minutes, he said, "Captain, they're in distress over there. She looks like she's adrift. Shouldn't we go see if we can do anything?"

"Hell no," said the Captain. "Just you keep to yer course and mind yer own business, laddie."

"But, Captain, there's somebody waving," Alec said. "Looks like a girl. I can't see anybody else. Maybe she's stuck out there all alone!"

"Then she's safe, ain't she? Son, we ain't got time for this."

"She might be sinking," said Alec stubbornly. "We have to at least see." So saying, he steered straight for the other vessel, as the Captain pulled his beard and growled words that would have scoured the barnacles and five layers of marine varnish off a yacht's hull. None of them dissuaded Alec from his fit of gallantry, however; so the Captain de-materialized and sent his primary consciousness into the Long John, where he concentrated on keeping pace with the Sirene.

"Ahoy!" Alec shouted. "Seasprqy Two? Are you having problems?"

"Something's gone wrong with my electronics," cried the mistress of the Seasprqy Two. "I can't make the steering wheel work and I don't know what to do with all these sails! Can you come have a look?"

"Okay," Alec replied, by this time close enough to throw a line to the other vessel and bring the Sirene alongside to tie up. "Permission to come aboard?" he cried jocularly, vaulting the rail of the Seasprqy and landing on her deck with a thump. He had always wanted to say that, and was quite pleased with himself now, and even more so as he gazed down into the eyes of the young lady before him.

"Wow, you're tall," she said in awe. She was pretty, with red hair and green eyes, and wore only a small cotton shirt and the bottom half of a bathing suit. She smelled like Paradise.

"Uh—yes, I am tall," said Alec foggily. "So... you said it was your console, right?"

"It says I've got a fatal error!" The girl looked up at him pleadingly. "First the boat stopped and then the sails sort of rolled themselves up and down and now they're stuck like that. Maybe you'd know what to do?"

"Well, I'm pretty good with systems," said Alec, feeling his heartbeat speed up. "I guess I'll just get my tools and have a look, okay?"

"Oh, goody," said the girl.

When Alec scrambled back into the Sirene, there was a message blinking on the console screen: