I HAVE ALWAYS COOPERATED

‘But this is different.’ And he dropped the subject then and there. For the remainder of the trip he did not try to communicate with Deg Dal Il; it was obviously the wrong thing to do. Deg Dal Il knew it and he knew it. The rest was up to someone else, not him.

When they reached Tijuana Eric rented a room at the Caesar Hotel on the main street of town; the desk clerk, a Mexican, stared at the reeg but asked no questions. This was Tijuana, Eric reflected as he and Deg ascended to their floor. Everyone minded his own business; it had always been like this here, and even now, in wartime, Tijuana remained unchanged. You could obtain anything, do anything, you wanted. As long as it was not done blatantly on the public street. And most especially if it was consummated at night. Because at night Tijuana became a transformed city in which everything, even unimaginable things, was possible. Once it had been abortions, narcotics, women, and gambling. Now it was concourse with the enemy.

In the hotel room he handed over a copy of the ownership papers to Deg Dal Il; in case trouble arose during his absence the papers would prove that the reeg had not escaped from a POW camp, nor was he a spy. In addition Eric provided him with money. And instructed him to contact TF&D if any difficulty – especially the appearance of ‘Star intelligence agents – supervened. The reeg was to remain in the hotel room at all times, eating his meals there, watching the TV if he wished, admitting no one if he could avoid it, and if somehow ‘Star agents got through to him, he was to reveal nothing. Even if this brought about his death.

‘I think it’s my place to tell you that,’ Eric said, ‘not because I lack respect for reeg life or because I believe Terrans ought to tell a reeg when to die and when not to but simply because I know the situation and you do not. You’ll just have to accept my word that it’s that important.’ He waited for the box to light up but it did not. ‘No comment?’ he asked, disappointed in a vague way. There had been so little real contact between him and the reeg; it seemed a bad omen, somehow.

At last the box, reluctantly, lit.

GOOD-BY ‘You have nothing else to say?’ Eric said, incredulous.

WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

‘It’s on the forms I gave you,’ Eric said, and left the hotel room, shutting the door loudly after him.

Outdoors on the sidewalk he hailed an old-fashioned surface cab and told its human driver to take him to TF&D.

Fifteen minutes later he once more entered the attractive apteryx-shaped, gray-lit building and made his way down the familiar corridor to his own office. Or what had until recently been his office.

Miss Perth, his secretary, blinked in amazement. ‘Why, Dr Sweetscent – I thought you were in Cheyenne!’

‘Is Jack Blair around?’ He glanced toward the parts bins but he did not see his departmental assistant. Bruce Himmel, however, lurked in the dim last row, an inventory chart and clipboard in one hand. ‘How’d you make out with the San Diego Public Library?’ Eric asked him.

Startled, Himmel rose to a standing position. ‘I’m appealing, doctor. I’ll never give up. How come you’re back here in

Tijuana?’

Til Perth said, ‘Jack is upstairs conferring with Mr Virgil Ackerman, doctor. You look tired. It’s a lot of work there in Cheyenne, isn’t it? Such a big responsibility.’ Her long-lashed blue eyes showed sympathy and her large breasts seemed to swell a trifle in a motherly, mobile, nourishing way. ‘Can I fix you a cup of coffee?’

‘Sure. Thanks.’ He seated himself at his desk and rested for a moment, thinking back over the day. Strange that all these things had happened in a sequence which had returned him to this spot, to his own chair at last. Was this in some sense the end? Had he played out his little – or not so little – part in a brawl involving three races of the galaxy? Four, if the rotten-pear-shaped creatures from Betelgeuse were included … and out of sentiment he did. Perhaps the load was off him. A vidcall to Cheyenne, to Molinari; that would do it and once more he would be Virgil Ackerman’s physician, replacing organ after organ as they gave out. But there was still Kathy. Was she here at TF&D’s infirmary? Or in a San Diego hospital? Perhaps she was trying to resume her life, despite the addiction, doing her job for Virgil. She was not a coward; she would keep pushing until the end.

‘Is Kathy here in the building?’ he asked Til Perth.

‘I’ll check for you, doctor.’ She jiggled the button of her desk-corn. There’s your coffee, beside your elbow.’

‘Thanks.’ He sipped the coffee with gratitude. It was almost like old times; his office had always been for him an oasis where things were rational, safe from the fury of his botched-up domestic life. Here he could pretend that people were nice to one another, that relationships between people could be merely friendly, merely casual. And yet – that was not enough. There had to be intimacy, too. Even with its threat of becoming a destroying force.

Taking paper and pen, he wrote out from memory the formula for the antidote to JJ-180.

‘She’s in the infirmary on the fourth floor,’ Miss Perth rinformed him. ‘I didn’t know she was sick; is it serious?’

Eric handed her the paper, folded. Take this to Jonas. He’ll know what it is and what to do with it.’ He wondered if he should go up to Kathy, tell her that the antidote would soon be • in existence. Beyond the shadow of a doubt he was obliged to, by the most fundamental structure of decency. ‘Okay,’ he said, rising. ‘I’ll go see her.’

‘Give her my best,’ Til Perth called after him as he plodded out of the office into the hall.

‘Sure,’ he murmured.

When he reached the fourth floor infirmary he found Kathy, wearing a white cotton gown, seated in a reclining chair, her legs crossed, feet bare. She was reading a magazine. She looked old and shrunken, and obviously under heavy sedation.

‘Best wishes,’ he said to her, ‘from Til.’

Slowly, with conspicuous difficulty, Kathy glanced up, focused her gaze on him. ‘Any – news for me?’

‘The antidote’s in town. Or soon will be. All Hazeltine Corp. has to do is whip up a batch and express it here. Another six hours.’ He made an attempt to smile encouragingly; it failed. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Fine now. Since you brought me the news.’ She was surprisingly matter-of-fact, even for her with her schizoid ways. The sedation no doubt accounted for it. ‘You did it, didn’t you? Found it for me.’ Then, at last remembering, she added, ‘Oh yes, and for yourself, too. But you could have kept it, not told me. Thanks, dear.’

‘“Dear.”’ It hurt to hear her use such a word to him.

‘I can see,’ Kathy said carefully, ‘that underneath you really are fond of me still, despite what I’ve done to you. Otherwise you wouldn’t—’

‘Sure I would; you think I’m a moral monster? The cure should be a matter of public record, available for anyone who’s on the damn stuff. Even ‘Starmen. As far as I’m concerned deliberately addictive toxic drugs are an abomination, a crime against life.’ He was silent then, thinking to himself, And someone who addicts another is a criminal and ought to be hanged or shot. ‘I’m leaving,’ he said. ‘Going back to Cheyenne. I’ll see you. Good luck on your therapy.’ He added, trying not to make it sound deliberately unkind, ‘You know, it won’t restore the physical damage already done; you understand that, Kathy.’

‘How old,’ she asked,‘do I look?’

‘You look what you are, about thirty-five.’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve seen in the mirror.’

Eric said, ‘See to it, will you, that everyone who took the drug that night with you, that first time, gets some of the antidote; I’ll trust you to do that. Okay?’

‘Of course. They’re my friends.’ She toyed with a corner of her magazine. ‘Eric, I can’t expect you to stay with me now, with the way I am physically. All withered and—’ She broke off and became silent.

Was this his chance? He said, ‘You want a divorce, Kathy? If you do I’ll give it to you. But personally—’ He hesitated. How far could hypocrisy go? What was really required of him now? His future self, his compatriot from 2056, had pleaded with him to break loose from her. Didn’t all aspects of reason dictate that he do so and if possible right now?

In a low voice Kathy said, ‘I still love you. I don’t want to separate. I’ll try to treat you better; honesty I will. I promise.’

‘Shall I be honest?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You should always be honest.’

‘Let me go.’

She looked up at him. Some of the old spirit, the venom that had etched away the fiber of their relationship, glowed in her eyes. But it was vitiated now. Her addiction, plus the sedation had weakened her; the power which she had formerly exerted over him, trapping him and hugging him to her, had gone. Shrugging, she murmured, ‘Well I asked you to be honest and I got just that. I guess I should be glad.’

‘Will you agree, then? You’ll commence litigation?’

Kathy said carefully, ‘On one condition. If there’s no other woman.’

‘There isn’t.’ He thought of Phyllis Ackerman; that surely didn’t count. Even in Kathy’s suspicion-haunted world.

‘If I find out there is,’ she stated, ‘I’ll fight a divorce; I won’t co-operate. You’ll never get free from me: that’s a promise, too.’

‘Then it’s agreed.’ He felt a great weight slide into the abyss of infinity, leaving him with a merely earthly load, one which I an ordinary human being could bear. Thanks,’ he said.

Kathy said. Thank you, Eric, for the antidote. So look what my drug addiction, my years of using drugs, has meant, finally. It’s made it possible for you to escape. It did accomplish some good after all.’

For the life of him he could not determine if she meant that sardonically. He decided to inquire about something else. ‘When you feel better are you going to resume your job here at TF&D?’

‘Eric, I may have something stirring for me. When I was under the drug’s influence, back in the past—’ she halted, then painfully continued; talking was difficult for her now. ‘I mailed an electronic part to Virgil. Back in the mid 1930s. With a note telling him what to do about it and also who I was. So he’d remember me later on. About now, in fact.’

Eric said, ‘But—’ He broke off.

‘Yes?’ She managed to fix her attention on him, what he was saying. ‘Did I do something wrong? Alter the past and disturb things?’

It was almost impossible, he discovered, to tell her. But she would find out anyhow, as soon as she made inquiries. Virgil would have received no part, because as soon as she left the past the part left, too; Virgil, as a child, had received an empty envelope or nothing at all. He found this mournfully sad.

‘What is it?’ she was asking laboriously. ‘I can tell by your expression – I know you so well – that I did something bad.’

Eric said, ‘I’m just surprised. By your ingenuity. Listen.’ He crouched down beside her, put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t count on it making much difference; your job here with Virgil can’t basically be improved on and anyhow Virgil is hardly the grateful type.’

‘But it was worth a try, don’t you think?’

‘Yes,’ he said, straightening up. He was glad at that point to let it drop.

He said good-by to her, patted her – futilely – once more, and then he made his way to the elevator and from it to Virgil Ackerman’s office.

Virgil, glancing up as he entered, cackled, ‘I heard you were back, Eric. Sit down and tell me how it is; Kathy looks bad, doesn’t she? Hazeltine wasn’t—’

‘Listen,’ Eric said, shutting the door. The two of them were alone. ‘Virgil, can you get Molinari here to TF&D?’

‘Why?’ Birdlike, Virgil regarded him alertly.

Eric told him.

When he had heard, Virgil said, ‘I’ll call Gino. I can hint and because we know each other he’ll understand on an intuitive level. He’ll come. Probably right away; when he acts he goes fast.’

‘I’ll stay here, then,’ Eric decided. ‘I won’t return to Cheyenne. In fact maybe I’d better go back to the Caesar Hotel and stay with Deg.’

‘And take a gun with you,’ Virgil said. He picked up the vidphone receiver and said, ‘Get me the White House in Cheyenne.’ To Eric he said, ‘If they’ve got this line tapped it won’t help them; they won’t be able to tell what we’re talking about.’ Into the receiver he said, ‘I want to talk to secretary Molinari; this is Virgil Ackerman calling personally.’

Eric sat back and listened. It was going well now, finally. He could take this moment to rest. Become simply a spectator.

From the vidphone a voice, that of the White House switchboard operator, squalled in frantic hysteria, ‘Mr Ackerman, is Dr Sweetscent there? We can’t locate him and Molinari, Mr Molinari, I mean, is dead, and can’t be revived.’

Virgil raised his eyes and confronted Eric.

‘I’m on my way,’ Eric said. He felt only numb. Nothing more.

‘Too late,’ Virgil said. ‘I’ll bet you.’

The operator shrilled, ‘Mr Ackerman, he’s been dead two hours how; Dr Teagarden can’t do anything with him, and—’

‘Ask what organ gave out,’ Eric said.

The operator heard him. ‘His heart. Is that you, Dr Sweetscent? Dr Teagarden said the aortic artery ruptured—’

‘I’ll take an artiforg heart with me,’ Eric said to Virgil. To the operator at the White House he said, Tell Teagarden to keep his body temp as low as he can; I’m sure he’s doing that anyhow.’

There’s one good high-speed ship on the roof field,’ Virgil said. ‘It’s the ship we flew to Wash-35 in; it’s undoubtedly the best anywhere near here.’

‘I’ll pick out the heart myself,’ Eric decided. ‘So I’ll go back to my office; why don’t you get the ship readied for me?’ He was calm at this point. It was either too late or it wasn’t. He got there in time or he didn’t. Haste, right now, had remote value.

Virgil, as he tapped the vidphone switch for TF&D’s switchboard, said, The 2056 you were in is not the one connected to our world.’

‘Evidently not,’ Eric agreed. And started on the run for the elevator.

THIRTEEN At the White House roof field Don Festenburg met him, pale and stammering with tension. ‘W-where were you, doctor? You didn’t notify anybody you were leaving Cheyenne; we thought you were somewhere nearby.’ He strode ahead of Eric, toward the field’s nearest in-track.

Carrying the boxed artiforg, Eric followed.

At the door of the Secretary’s bedroom Teagarden appeared, his face constricted with fatigue. ‘Just for the hell of it, where were you, doctor?’

I was trying to end the war, Eric thought. He said merely, ‘How cool is he?’

‘No appreciable metabolism; don’t you think I know how to conduct that aspect of restoration? I’ve got written instructions here which automatically become operative the moment he’s unconscious or dead and can’t be revived.’ He handed Eric the sheets.

At a glance Eric saw the vital paragraph. No artiforg. Under any circumstances. Even if it were the only chance for Molinari’s survival.

‘Is this binding?’ Eric asked.

‘We’ve consulted the Attorney General,’ Dr Teagarden said. ‘It is. You ought to know; any artiforg in anybody, can only be inserted with written permission in advance.’

‘Why does he want it this way?’ Eric asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Teagarden said. ‘Will you make an attempt to revive him without use of the artiforg heart which I see you brought? That’s all we’re left with.’ His tone dropped with bitterness and defeat. ‘With nothing. He complained about his heart before you left; he told you – I heard him – that he thought an artery had ruptured. And you walked out of here.’ He stared at Eric.

Eric said, ‘That’s the trouble with hypochondria. You never know.’

‘Well,’ Teagarden said with a ragged sigh, ‘okay – I didn’t realize it either.’

Turning to Don Festenburg, Eric said, ‘What about Freneksy? Does he know?’

With a faint, quivering smirk of nervousness Festenburg said, ‘Of course.’

‘Any reaction from him?’

‘Concern.’

‘You’re not letting any further ‘Star ships in here, I assume.’

Festenburg said, ‘Doctor, your job is to heal the patient, not to dictate policy.’

‘It would help me to heal the patient if I knew that—’

‘Cheyenne is sealed off,’ Festenburg conceded at last. ‘No ship except yours has been permitted to land since this occurred.’

Eric walked to the bed and gazed down at Gino Molinari lost in a tangle of machinery that maintained his temperature and measured a thousand conditions extant deep within his body. The plump, short figure could hardly be seen; the face was completely obscured by a new item, scarcely ever employed up to now, for catching extremely delicate alterations in the brain. It was the brain, at all costs, that had to be protected. Everything could go but the brain.

Everything could go – except that Molinari had forbidden the use of an artiforg heart. So that was that. Medically speaking the clock had been set back a century by this neurotic, self-destructive injunction.

Already, without examining the now-open chest of the man, Eric knew that he was helpless. Outside of the field of org-trans he was probably no more competent a surgeon than Teagarden. Everything in his own career had hung on the possibility of replacing the failing organ.

‘Let’s see that document again.’ He took the paper back from Teagarden, studied it more thoroughly. Surely as wily and resourceful a man as Molinari had imagined some viable alternative to org-trans. It couldn’t end here.

‘Prindle has been notified, of course,’ Festenburg said. ‘He’s standing by, ready to speak over TV when and if it’s certain we can’t revive Molinari.’ His voice was flat, unnaturally so; Eric glanced at him, wondering how he truly felt about this.

‘What about this paragraph?’ Eric said, showing the document to Dr Teagarden. ‘About the activation of the GRS Enterprises robant simulacrum, the one of Molinari used in the video tape. To be put on TV tonight.’

‘What about it?’ Teagarden said, rereading the paragraph. ‘The airing of the tape will be scratched, of course. As far as the robant itself goes I know nothing about it. Maybe Festenburg does.’ He turned questioningly to Don Festenburg.

That paragraph,’ Festenburg said, ‘is senseless. Literally. For instance, what’s a robant doing in cold-pak? We can’t make out Molinari’s reasoning and anyhow we’ve got our hands full. There’re forty-three paragraphs to this damn document; we can’t carry them all out simultaneously, can we?’

Eric said, ‘But you know where—’

‘Yes,’ Festenburg said. ‘I know where the simulacrum is.’

‘Get it out of the cold-pak,’ Eric said. ‘Activate it as per the instructions in this document. Which you already know to be legally binding.’

‘Activate it and then what?’

‘It’ll tell you itself,’ Eric said, ‘from then on.’ And for years to come, he said to himself. Because that’s the whole point of the document. There will be no public announcement that Gino Molinari has died because as soon as that so-called robant is activated it will not be so.

And, he thought, I think, you know it, Festenburg.

They looked at each other silently.

To a Service man Eric said, ‘I want four of you to accompany him while he does it. Just a suggestion, but I hope you take me up on it.’

The man nodded, beckoned to a group of his co-workers; they fell in behind Festenburg, who looked confused and frightened now and in no way self-possessed. He left on his reluctant errand, the group of Secret Service men close behind.

‘What about a further attempt to repair the ruptured aortic artery?’ Dr Teagarden demanded. ‘Aren’t you going to try? A plastic section can still be—’

The Molinari in this time sequence,’ Eric said, ‘has been battered enough. Don’t you agree? This is the moment to retire it; that’s what he wants.’ We’re going to have to face a fact, he realized, that none of us wants to face because it means we’re in for a kind of government – have had a kind of government already – hardly in accord with our theoretical ideas.

Molinari had founded a dynasty consisting of himself.

‘That simulacrum can’t rule in Gino’s place,’ Teagarden protested. ‘It’s a construct and the law forbids—’

‘That’s why Gino refused the use of an artificial organ. He can’t do what Virgil has done, replace each in turn, because by doing so he’d be open to legal challenge. But that’s not important.’ Not now, anyhow. He thought, Prindle isn’t the Mole’s heir and neither is Don Festenburg, however much he’d like to be. I doubt if the dynasty is endless but at least it’ll survive this blow. And that’s quite a lot.

After a pause Teagarden said, ‘That’s why it’s in cold-pak. I see.’

‘And it’ll stand up to any test you care to give it.’ You, Minister Freneksy, anyone including Don Festenburg who probably figured it out before I did, he realized, but couldn’t do anything about it. ‘That’s what distinguishes this solution; even if you know what’s going on you can’t stop it.’ This rather enlarged the concept of political maneuvering. Was he horrified by this? Or impressed? To be honest, as yet he did not know. It was too novel a solution, this collusion of Gino Molinari with himself, behind the scenes. His tinkering with the colossal entity of rebirth in his own inimitable, faster-than-the-eye way.

‘But,’ Teagarden protested, ‘that leaves another time continuum without a UN Secretary. So what’s gained if—’

‘The one which Don Festenburg has gone to activate,’ Eric said, ‘undoubtedly comes from a world in which the Mole was not elected.’ In which he went down to political defeat and someone else became UN Secretary. There no doubt were a number of such worlds, considering the closeness of the original vote in this world.

In that other world the absence of the Mole would have no meaning, because he was simply one more defeated political figure, perhaps even in retirement. And – in a position to be thoroughly rested up and fresh. Ready to tackle Minister Freneksy.

‘It’s admirable,’ Eric decided. ‘I think, anyhow.’ The Mole had known that sooner or later this battered body would die beyond the possibility of reconstruction except by artiforg means. And what good was a political strategist who couldn’t look ahead to his own death? Without that he would have been merely another Hitler, who didn’t want his country to survive him.

Once more Eric glanced over the document which Molinari had presented them. It indeed was airtight. Legally the next Molinari absolutely had to be activated.

And that one, in turn, would see to it that he provided himself with a replacement. Like any good tag-team of wrestlers it could theoretically go on for ever.

Could it?

All the Molinaris, in all the time-continua, were aging at the same rate. It could only go on for thirty or forty more years. At the most.

But that would carry Terra through and out of the war.

And that was all the Mole cared about.

He was not trying to be immortal, a god. He was simply interested in serving out his term of office. What had happened to Franklin D. Roosevelt in a previous major war was not going to happen to him. Molinari had learned from the mistakes of the past. And he acted accordingly, in typical Piedmontese style. He had found a bizarre and colorfully idiosyncratic solution to his political problem.

This explained why the UN Secretary’s uniform and homeopape shown to Eric a year hence by Don Festenburg were counterfeit.

Without this, they might conceivably have been real.

That alone justified what Molinari had done.

An hour later Gino Molinari summoned him to his private office.

Flushed, glowing with good humour, the Mole in a spanking new uniform leaned back in his chair and expansively, at leisure, surveyed Eric. ‘So the nurts weren’t going to start me up,’ he boomed out. Then abruptly he laughed. ‘I knew you’d put pressure on them, Sweetscent; I had it all worked out. Nothing by accident. You believe me? Or you think there was a loophole, they might have gotten away with it, especially that Festenburg – he’s plenty smart, you know. I admire the hell out of him.’ He belched. ‘Listen to me. Well, so much for Don.’

‘I think they almost got by,’ Eric said.

‘Yes, they did,’ Molinari agreed, somber now. ‘It was very close. But everything in politics is close; that’s what makes it worth the effort. Who wants a sure thing? Not me. By the way: those video tapes are going on the air as planned; I sent poor Prindle back to the vault or wherever it is he hangs out.’ Again Molinari laughed loudly.

‘Am I right,’ Eric said, ‘that in your world — ’

‘This is my world,’ Molinari interrupted; putting his hands behind his head he rocked back and forth, eyeing Eric brightly.

Eric said, ‘In the parallel world you came from — ’

‘Garbage!’

‘ — you were defeated in your attempt to become UN Secretary; is that right? I’m just curious. I don’t intend to discuss it with anyone.’

‘If you do,’ Molinari said, ‘I’ll have the Secret Service glunk you and sink you in the Atlantic. Or drop you in deep space.’ He was silent a moment. ‘I got elected, Sweetscent, but the drats knocked me right out of office in a no-confidence recall thing they cooked up. Having to do with the Pact of Peace. They were right, of course; I shouldn’t have gotten involved in it. But who wants to make a deal with four-armed shiny bugs who can’t even talk, who have to go around carrying a translation box like an indoor potty?’

‘You know now,’ Eric said guardedly, ‘that you have to. Reach an understanding with the reegs.’

‘Sure. But it’s easy to see that now.’ The Mole’s eyes were dark and intense, fighting this out with vast, native intelligence. ‘What do you have in mind, doctor? Let’s have a look. What did they used to say in the last century? Let’s kick it up on the roof and see if it – some damn thing.’

‘A contact is ready for you in Tijuana.’

‘Hell, I’m not going to Tijuana; that’s a dirty town – that’s where you go for a broad, age thirteen. Even younger than Mary.’

‘You know about Mary, then?’ Had she been his mistress in the alternate world?

‘He introduced us,’ Molinari said blandly. ‘My best friend; he fired me up. The one they’re burying or whatever it is they’re doing with the corpse. It couldn’t interest me less, just so they get rid of it. I’ve already got one, that bullet-riddled one in the casket. Which you saw. One is enough; they make me nervous.’

‘What are you going to do with the assassinated one?’

Molinari showed his teeth in a great grin. ‘You don’t get it, do you? That was the previous one. That came before the one that just died. I’m not the second; I’m the third.’ He cupped his ear, then. ‘Okay, let’s hear what you’ve got; I’m waiting.’

Eric said, ‘Urn, you’ll go to TF&D to visit Virgil Ackerman. That won’t arouse suspicion. It’s my job to get the contact into the factory so he can confer with you. I think I can do it. Unless—’

‘Unless Corning, the top ‘Star agent in Tijuana, gets to your reeg first. Listen, I give the Secret Service orders to round him up; that’ll keep the ‘Stars busy for a while, get them off our knabs. We can cite their activity regarding your wife, their getting her addicted; that’ll be the covering story. You agree? Yes? No?’

‘It’ll do.’ Once more he felt weary, even more so than before. It was a day, he decided, that would never terminate; the huge former burden had returned to weigh him into submission.

‘I don’t impress you very much,’ Molinari said.

‘On the contrary. I’m just exhausted.’ And he still had to go back to Tijuana to bring Deg Dal Il into the factory from his room at the Caesar Hotel; it was not over yet.

‘Someone else,’ Molinari said acutely, ‘can pick up your reeg and bring it to TF&D. Give me the location and I’ll see that it’s done right. You don’t have to do any more; go get drunk or find some fresh new girl. Or take some more JJ-180, visit another time period. Anyhow enjoy yourself. How’s your addiction coming? Broken it yet, like I told you to?’

‘Yes.’

Molinari raised his thick eyebrows. ‘I’ll be damned. Amazing; I didn’t think it could be done. Get it from your reeg contact?’

‘No. From the future.’

‘How’s the war come out? I don’t move ahead, like you do; I move sideways only, into the parallel presents.’

‘It’s going to be tough,’ Eric said.

‘Occupation?’

‘For most of Terra.’

‘How about me?’

‘Apparently you manage to get away to Wash-35. After holding out long enough for the reegs to come in with strength.’

‘I don’t care for it,’ Molinari decided. ‘But I guess I’ve got to do it. How’s your wife Katherine?’

‘The antidote—’

‘I mean your relationship.’

‘We’re separating. It’s decided.’

‘Okay.’ Molinari nodded briskly. ‘You write out the address you have for me and in exchange I’ll write out a name and address for you.’ He took pen and paper, wrote rapidly. ‘A relative of Mary’s. A cousin. Bit player in TV dramatic series, lives in Pasadena. Nineteen. Too young?’

‘Illegal.’

‘I’ll get you off.’ He tossed Eric the paper. Eric did not pick it up. ‘What’s the matter?’ Molinari shouted at him. ‘Has using that time-travel drug scrambled your wits, you don’t know you’ve got only one tiny life and that lies ahead of you, not sideways or back? Are you waiting for last year to come by again or something?’

Reaching out, Eric took the paper. That’s exactly right. I’ve been waiting a long time for last year. But I guess it’s just not coming again.’

‘Don’t forget to say I sent you,’ Molinari said, and beamed broadly as Eric put the paper in his wallet.

It was night and Eric walked the dark side street, hands in his pockets, wondering if he was going in the right direction. He had not been in Pasadena, California, for years.

Ahead a major conapt building rose squarely against the sky, more dense than the atmosphere behind it, windows lit like the eyes of some great block-shaped synthetic pumpkin. Eyes, Eric thought, are the window of the soul, but a conapt is a conapt. What lies inside there? A bossy – or perhaps not so bossy – black-haired girl whose ambition it is to appear in one-minute beer and cigarette commercials on TV or whatever it is Molinari said. Someone to goad you to your feet when you’re sick, travesty of the marital vows, of mutual help, protection.

He thought about Phyllis Ackerman, their conversation at Wash-35, not so long ago. If I really want to repeat the pattern stamped on the matrix of my life, he thought, I need only look her up; Phyllis is just enough like Kathy to attract me. As both of us understand. And enough different from her so that it would seem – I say seem – like something new in my life. But then all at once he thought, This girl here in Pasadena; I didn’t pick her out. Gino Molinari did. So perhaps the matrix breaks here. And can be discarded. And I can go on in something that does not merely seem new but is new.

Locating the front entrance of the conapt building, he got out the slip of paper, again memorized the name, then found the proper button among the host of identical rows in the big brass plate and gave it a vigorous, Gino Molinari inspired push.

A ghostly voice presently issued from the speaker and a microscopic image formed on the monitoring screen set in the wall above the buttons. ‘Yes? Who is it?’ In such absurd miniature the girl’s image could not be deciphered; he could not tell a thing about her. The voice, however, sounded rich and throaty and although nervous with the typical caution of the unattached girl living alone it had its warmth.

‘Gino Molinari asked me to look you up,’ Eric said, supporting his burden on the rock they all depended on in this, their collective journey.

‘Oh!’ she sounded flustered. ‘To look me up? Are you sure you have the right person? I only met him once and that was casually.’

Eric said, ‘May I come in for a minute, Miss Garabaldi?’

‘Garabaldi is my old name,’ the girl said. ‘My name, the name I work under when I do TV shows, is Garry. Patricia Carry.’

‘Just let me come in,’ Eric said, and waited. ‘Please.’

The door buzzed; he pushed it open and entered the foyer. A moment later by elevator he had ascended to the fifteenth floor and was at her door, ready to knock but finding it ajar in expectation of him.

Wearing a flowered apron, her long dark hair hanging in twin braids down her back, Patricia Garry met him, smiling; she had a sharp face, tapered to a flawless chin, and lips so dark as to appear black. Every feature had been cut cleanly and with such delicate precision as to suggest a new order of perfection in human symmetry and balance. He could see why she had gone into TV; features like that, when ignited even by the ersatz enthusiasm of a mock-up beer-bust on a Californian ocean beach, could impale any viewer. She was not just pretty; she was strikingly, lavishly unique and he had a precognition as he looked at her of a long and vital career ahead, if the war did not catch her up in tragedy.

‘Hi,’ she said gaily. ‘Who are you?’

‘Eric Sweetscent. I’m on the Secretary’s medical staff.’ Or, was, he thought. Up to a little earlier today. ‘Could I have a cup of coffee with you and talk? It would mean a lot to me.’

‘What a strange come-on,’ Patricia Garry said. ‘But why not?’ She whirled about, her long Mexican skirt spinning out, and bobbed her way down the hall of her conapt, with him following, to the kitchen. ‘I have a pot on, in fact. Why did Mr Molinari tell you to look me up? For any special reason?’

Could a girl look like this and not be conscious of what an overriding special reason she constituted? ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I live out here in California, in San Diego.’ And he thought, I guess I work in Tijuana. Again. ‘I’m an org-trans surgeon, Miss Garry. Or Pat. Okay to call you Pat?’ He found a seat at the bench table, clasped his hands before him, resting his elbows against the hard, irregular redwood.

‘If you’re an org-trans surgeon,’ Patricia Garry said as she got the cups from the cupboard over the sink, ‘why aren’t you at the military satellites or at the front hospitals?’

He felt his world sink from beneath him. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

There is a war on, you realize.’ Her back to him, she said. The boy I was going with, he was mangled when a reeg bomb got his cruiser. He’s still in a base hospital.’

‘What can I say,’ he said, ‘except that maybe you’ve put your finger on the great central weak link of my life. Why it hasn’t got the meaning it should have.’

‘Well, who do you blame for that? Everyone else?’

‘It seemed to me,’ he said, ‘at the time anyhow, that keeping Gino Molinari alive somehow contributed to the war effort.’ But, after all, he had only done that for a short time and had gotten into it not by his own efforts but by Virgil Ackerman’s.

‘I’m just curious,’ Patricia said. ‘I just would have thought that a good org-trans surgeon would want to be at the front where the real work is.’ She poured coffee into two plastic cups.

‘Yes, you’d think so,’ he said, and felt futile. She was nineteen years old, roughly half his age, and already she had a better grasp on what was right, what one ought to do. With such directness of vision she had certainly patterned her own career out to the last stitch. ‘Do you want me to leave?’ he asked her. ‘Just say if you do.’

‘You just got here; of course I don’t want you to go. Mr Molinari wouldn’t have sent you here if there hadn’t been a good reason.’ She eyed him critically as she seated herself across from him. ‘I’m Mary Reineke’s cousin, did you know that?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded. And she’s quite tough, too, he thought. ‘Pat,’ he said, ‘take my word for it that I have accomplished something today that affects us all, even if it isn’t connected with my medical tasks. Can you accept that? If so then we can go on from there.’

‘Whatever you say,’ she said with nineteen-year-old nonchalance.

‘Have you been watching Molinari’s TV cast tonight?’

‘I had it on a little while earlier. It was interesting; he looked so much bigger.’

‘“Bigger.”’ Yes, he thought; that described it.

‘It’s good to see him back in his old form. But I have to admit – all that political spouting, you know how he does, sort of lectures in that feverish way, with his eyes flashing; it’s too long-winded for me. I put on the record player instead.’ She rested her chin in her open palm. ‘You know what? It bores the hell out of me.’

The vidphone in the living room rang.

‘Excuse me.’ Pat Carry rose and skipped from the kitchen. He sat silently, no particular thoughts in his mind, only a little of the old weariness weighing on him, and then suddenly she was back. ‘For you. Dr Sweetscent; that’s you, isn’t it?’

‘Who is it?’ He labored to get up, his heart strangely leaden.

‘The White House in Cheyenne.’

He made his way to the vidphone. ‘Hello. This is Sweetscent.’

‘Just a moment, please.’ The screen blanked out. The next image which formed was that of Gino Molinari.

‘Well, doctor,’ Molinari said, ‘they got your reeg.’

‘Jesus,’ he said.

‘When we got there all we found was a banged-up big dead bug. Somebody, one of them, must have seen you go in. Too bad you didn’t take it directly to TF&D. Instead of that hotel.’

‘I see that now.’

‘Listen,’ Molinari said briskly. ‘I called to tell you because I knew you would want to know. But don’t knock yourself; those ‘Starmen are professionals. It could have happened to anyone.’ He leaned closer to the screen, speaking with emphasis. ‘It’s not that important; there’re other ways to contact the reegs, three or four – we’re looking into how best to exploit it right now.’

‘Should this be said on the vidphone?’

Molinari said, ‘Freneksy and his party just now took off for Lilistar, shot out of here as fast as they could. Take my word for it, Sweetscent, they know. So our problem is that we have to work fast. We expect to raise a reeg government station within two hours; if necessary we’ll do our negotiating on an open broadcast with Lilistar listening in.’ He glanced at his wrist watch. ‘I have to ring off; I’ll keep you posted.’ The screen, then, became dark. Busy, in hectic haste, Molinari had gone on to the next task. He could not sit gossiping. And then, all at once, the screen relit; again Molinari faced him. ‘Remember, doctor, you did your job; you forced them to honor that will I left, that ten-page document they were passing back and forth when you arrived. I wouldn’t be here now except for you; I already told you that and I don’t want you to forget it – I haven’t got time to keep repeating again and again.’ He grinned briefly and then once more the image faded. This time the screen stayed dark.

But to fail is to fail, Eric said to himself. He walked back into Pat Garry’s kitchen and reseated himself at his cup of coffee. Neither of them spoke. Because I messed it up, he realized, the ‘Starmen will have just that much more time to close in on us, come rushing here to Terra with everything they have. Millions of human lives, perhaps years of occupation – that’s the price we’ll collectively pay. Because it seemed, earlier today, a good idea to put Deg Dal Il in a room at the Caesar Hotel instead of bringing him directly to TF&D. But then he thought, They have at least one agent at TF&D too; they might even have gotten him there.

Now what? he asked himself.

‘Maybe you’re right, Pat,’ he said. ‘Maybe I ought to become a military surgeon and go to a base hospital near the front.’

‘Yes, why not?’ she said.

‘But in a little while,’ he said. ‘and you don’t know this, the front will be on Terra.’

She blanched, tried to smile. ‘Why is that?’

‘Politics. The tides of war. Unreliability of alliances. The ally of today is the enemy of tomorrow. And the other way around.’ He finished his coffee and rose. ‘Good luck, Pat, in your television career and in every other aspect of your glowing, just beginning life. I hope the war doesn’t touch you too deeply.’ The war I helped bring here, he said to himself. ‘So long.’

At the kitchen table she remained seated, drinking her coffee and saying nothing, as he walked down the hall to the door, opened it, and then shut it behind him. She did not even nod good-by; she was too frightened, too stunned by what he had told her.

Thanks anyhow, Gino, he said to himself as he descended to the ground floor. It was a good idea; not your fault nothing came of it. Nothing but a greater awareness on my part of how little I’ve done and how much harm – by commission or omission – I’m responsible for in my time.

He walked the dark Pasadena street until he located a cab; he hailed and boarded it, then wondered where he was supposed to go.

‘You mean you don’t know where you live, sir?’ the cab asked.

‘Take me to Tijuana,’ he told it suddenly. ‘Yes sir,’ the cab said and turned south at great speed.

FOURTEEN Nighttime in Tijuana.

He walked aimlessly, scuffing the pavement, passing one after another the neon signs of the narrow boothlike shops, listening to the clamor of the Mexican hucksters and enjoying as he always did the steady motion and ceaseless, nervous honking of wheels and autonomic cabs and old-time turbine surface cars made in the USA, which somehow, in their last decrepitude, had been brought across the border.

‘Girl, mister?’ A boy no older than eleven seized Eric by the sleeve and hung on, dragging him to a stop. ‘My sister, only seven, and never lay with a man in her life; I guarantee before God, you be assuredly first.’

‘How much?’ Eric asked.

‘Ten dollars plus the cost of the room; there must be in name of God a room. The sidewalk makes love into something sordid; you cannot do it here and respect yourself after.’

‘There’s wisdom in that,’ Eric agreed. But he continued on anyhow.

At night the robant peddlars and their enormous, useless, machine-made rugs and baskets, their carts of tamales, customarily vanished; the daytime people of Tijuana disappeared along with the middle-aged American tourists to make way for the night people. Men, hurrying, pushed past him; a girl wearing a crushingly tight skirt and sweater squeezed past him, pressing momentarily against him … as if, he thought, we had some durable relationship penetrating our two lives and this sudden heat exchange through body contact expressed the deepest possible understanding between the two of us. The girl went on, disappeared. Small tough Mexicans, youths wearing open-throated fur shirts, strode directly at him, their mouths agape as if they were strangling. He carefully stepped from their path.

In a town where everything is legal, he thought, and nothing achieves worth, you are wrenched back into childhood. Placed among your blocks and toys, with all your universe within grasp. The price for license is high: it consists of a forfeit of adulthood. And yet he loved it here. The noise and stirrings represented authentic life. Some people found all this evil; he did not. People who thought that were wrong. The restless, roving banks of males who sought God knew what — they themselves didn’t know: their striving was the genuine primal under-urge of protoplasmic material itself. This irritable ceaseless motion had once carried life right out of the sea and onto land; creatures of the land now, they still roamed on, up one street and down another. And he went along with them.

Ahead, a tattoo parlor, modern and efficient, lit by a wall of glowing energy, the proprietor inside with his electric needle that did not touch the skin, only brushed near it as it wove a cat’s cradle of design. How about that? Eric asked himself. What could I have etched on me, what motto or picture which would give me comfort in these unusual times of duress? In times when we wait for the ‘Starmen to appear and take over. Helpless and frightened, all of us become essentially unmanly.

Entering the tattoo parlor, he seated himself and said, ‘Can you write on my chest something like—’ He pondered. The proprietor continued with his previous customer, a beefy UN soldier who stared sightlessly ahead. ‘I want a picture,’ Eric decided.

‘Look through the book.’ Huge sample-caselike ledger passed to him; he opened at random. Woman with four breasts; each spoke a complete sentence. Not quite it; he turned the page. Rocketship with puffs belching from its tail. No. Reminded him of his 2056 self whom he had failed. I am for the reegs, he decided. Tattoo that on me so the ‘Star MPs can find it. And I won’t have to make further decisions.

Self-pity, he thought. Or is there such a thing as self-compassion? Not much mentioned, anyhow.

‘Made up your mind, buddy?’ the proprietor asked him, now finished.

Eric said, ‘I want you to write on my chest, “Kathy is dead.” Okay? How much will that cost?’

‘“Kathy is dead,”’ the proprietor said. ‘Dead of what?’

‘Korsakow’s syndrome.’

‘You want me to put that too? Kathy is dead from – how you spell it?’ The proprietor got pen and paper. ‘I want it to be right.’

‘Where around here,’ Eric said, ‘can I find drugs? You know, real drugs?’

‘Across the street at the pharmacy. Their specialty, creaker.’

He left the tattoo parlor, crossed against the seething, massive organism of traffic. The pharmacy looked old-fashioned, with displays of foot-ailment models and hernia belts and bottles of cologne. Eric opened the door, manually operated, and walked to the counter in the back.

‘Yes sir.’ A gray-haired respectable professional-looking man in a white smock, waiting on him.

‘JJ-180,’ Eric said. He laid a fifty-dollar US bill on the counter. ‘Three or four caps.’

‘One hundred US.’ This was business. With no sentiment.

He added two twenties and two fives. The pharmacist disappeared. When he returned he had a glass vial which he placed close to Eric; he took the bills and rang them up on his antique register. Thanks,’ Eric said. Carrying the vial, he left the pharmacy.

He walked until more or less by chance he located the Caesar Hotel. Entering, he approached the desk clerk. It appeared to be the same man who had taken care of him and Deg Dal II earlier in the day. A day, Eric thought, made out of years.

‘You remember the reeg I came here with?’ he asked the clerk.

The clerk eyed him silently.

‘Is he still here?’ Eric said. ‘Was he really cut to bits by Corning, the ‘Star hatchet man in this area? Show me the room. I want the same room.’

‘Pay in advance, sir.’

He paid, received the key, took the elevator to the proper floor; he walked down the dark carpeted empty hall to the door of the room, unlocked it, and stepped in, feeling for the light switch.

The room lit up and he saw that there was no sign of anything; the room was simply empty. As if the reeg had gone. Stepped out, perhaps. He was right, Eric decided, when he asked me to take him back to the POW camp; he was on the right track all the time. Knew how it would end.

Standing there, he realized that the room horrified him.

He opened the glass vial, got out one capsule of JJ-180, laid it on the vanity table, and with a dime cut the capsule into three parts. There was water in a pitcher nearby; he swallowed one third of the capsule and then walked to the window to look out and wait.

Night became day. He was still in the room at the Caesar Hotel but it was later; he could not tell how much. Months? Years? The room looked the same but probably it always would; it was eternal and static. He left the room, descended to the lobby, asked for a homeopape at the newsstand next to the reservations desk. The vendor, a plump old Mexican woman, handed him a Los Angeles daily; he examined it and saw that he had gone ahead ten years. The date was June 15, 2065.

So he had been correct as to the amount of JJ-180 needed.

Seating himself in a pay vidphone booth, he inserted a coin and dialed Tijuana Fur & Dye. The time appeared to be about noon.

‘Let me speak to Mr Virgil Ackerman.’

‘Who is calling, please?’

‘Dr Eric Sweetscent.’

‘Yes of course, Dr Sweetscent. Just a moment.’ The screen became fused over and then Virgil’s face, as dry and weathered as ever, basically unchanged, appeared.

‘Well I’ll be darned! Eric Sweetscent! How the hell are you, kid? Gosh, it’s been – what has it been? Three years? Four? How is it at—’

Tell me about Kathy,’ he said.

‘Pardon?’

Eric said, ‘I want to know about my wife. What’s her medical condition by now? Where is she?’

‘Your ex-wife.’

‘All right,’ he said reasonably. ‘My ex-wife.’

‘How would I know, Eric? I haven’t seen her since she quit her job here and that was at least – well, you remember – six years ago. Right after we rebuilt. Right after the war.’

Tell me anything that would help me find out about her.’

Virgil pondered. ‘Well Christ, Eric; you remember how sick she became. Those psychopathic rages.’

‘I don’t remember.’

Raising his eyebrows, Virgil said, ‘You were the one who signed the commitment papers.’

‘You think she’s institutionalized now? Still?’

‘As you explained it to me it’s irreversible brain damage. From those toxic drugs she was taking. So I presume she is. Possibly in San Diego. I think Simon Ild told me that one day, not long ago; you want me to check with him? He said he met somebody who had a friend in a psychiatric hospital north of San Diego and—’

‘Check with him.’ He waited while the screen showed nothing, while Virgil conferred on the interdepartmental circuit with Simon.

At last the elongated, doleful face of his former inventory control clerk appeared. ‘You want to know about Kathy,’ Simon said. ‘I’ll tell you what this fellow told me. He met her in Edmund G. Brown Neuropsychiatric Hospital; he had a nervous breakdown, as you call it.’

‘I don’t call anything that,’ Eric said, ‘but go ahead.’

Simon said, ‘She couldn’t control herself, her rages, those destructive binges where she’d break everything, they were coming every day, sometimes four times a day. They kept her on phenothiazine and it had helped – she told him that herself – but finally no matter how much phenothiazine they gave her it didn’t help. Damage to the frontal lobe, I guess. And she had difficulty remembering things properly. And ideas of reference; she thought everyone was against her, trying to hurt her… not grandiose paranoia, of course, but just the never-ending irritability, accusing people as if they were cheating her, holding out on her – she blamed everyone.’ He added, ‘She still talked about you.’

‘Saying what?’

‘Blaming you and that psychiatrist – what was his name? – for making her go into the hospital and then not letting her out.’

‘Does she have any idea why we did it?’ Why we had to do it, he thought.

‘She said she loved you, but you wanted to get rid of her so you could marry someone else. And you had sworn, at the time of the divorce, that there wasn’t anyone else.’

‘Okay,’ Eric said. Thanks, Simon.’ He cut the connection and then called Edmund G. Brown Neuropsychiatric Hospital in San Diego.

‘Edmund G. Brown Neuropsychiatric Hospital.’ A rapid, overworked middle-aged female at the hospital switchboard.

‘I wish to ask about Mrs Katherine Sweetscent’s condition,’ Eric said.

‘Just a moment, sir.’ The woman consulted her records, then switched his call to one of the wards; he found himself facing a younger woman, not in white uniform but in an ordinary flowered cotton dress.

‘This is Dr Eric Sweetscent. What can you tell me about Katherine Sweetscent’s condition? Is she making any progress?’

‘There hasn’t been any change since you called last, doctor, two weeks ago. I’ll get her file, however.’ The woman disappeared from the screen.

Good Lord, Eric thought. I’m still watching over her ten years from now; am I caught in this one way or another the rest of my life?

The ward technician returned. ‘You know that Dr Bramel-man is trying the new Gloser-Little unit with Mrs Sweetscent. In order to induce the brain tissue to start repair of itself. But so far—’ She leafed through the pages. ‘Results have been meager. I would suggest you contact us again in another month or possibly two. There won’t be any change before that.’

‘But it could work,’ he said. This new unit you spoke about.’ He had never heard of it; obviously it was a construct of the future. ‘I mean, there’s still hope.’

‘Oh yes, doctor. There’s definitely hope.’ She said it in such a way as to convey to him that this was merely a philosophical answer; there was hope in every case, as far as she was concerned. So it meant nothing.

‘Thank you.’ And then he said, ‘Check your files, please, and see what it says as to my place of business. I’ve changed jobs recently so it may be wrong.’

After a pause the ward technician said, ‘You’re listed as Chief Org-trans Surgeon at Kaiser Foundation in Oakland.’

‘That’s correct,’ Eric said. And rang off.

He obtained the number from information and dialed Kaiser Foundation in Oakland.

‘Let me talk to Dr Sweetscent.’

‘Who is calling, please?’

That stopped him momentarily. Tell him it’s his younger brother.’

‘Yes sir. Just a moment, please.’

His face, his older, grayer face, appeared on the screen. ‘Hi.’

‘Hello,’ Eric said. He was not sure what to say. ‘Am I bothering you when you’re busy?’ He did not look bad, ten years from now. Dignified.

‘No, go ahead. I’ve been expecting the call; I remember the approximate date. You just called Edmund G. Brown Neuropsychiatric Hospital and learned about the Gloser-Little unit. I’ll tell you something the ward technician didn’t. The Gloser-Little unit constitutes the only brain artiforg they’ve managed to come up with. It replaces portions of the frontal lobe; once it’s installed it stays as long as the person lives, If it helps. To be truthful with you, it should have worked right away.’

‘So you don’t think it’s going to.’

‘No,’ the older Eric Sweetscent said.

‘Do you think if we hadn’t divorced her—’

‘It would have made no difference. Tests we give now – believe me.’

Then even that wouldn’t help, Eric realized. Staying with her, even for the rest of my life. ‘I appreciate your help,’ he said. ‘And I find it interesting – I guess that’s the word – that you’re still keeping tabs on her.’

‘Conscience is conscience. In some respects the divorce put more of a responsibility on us to see about her welfare. Because she got so much worse immediately after.’

‘Is there any way out?’ Eric asked.

The older Eric Sweetscent, of the year 2065, shook his head.

‘Okay,’ Eric said. Thanks for being honest with me.’

‘Like you yourself say, you should always be honest with yourself.’ He added, ‘Good luck on the commitment proceedings; they’re going to be rough. But that won’t come for a while.’

‘How about the rest of the war, in particular the takeover of Terra by the ‘Starmen?’

The older Eric Sweetscent grinned. ‘Hell, you’re too bogged down in your own personal trouble to notice. War? What war?’

‘So long,’ Eric said, and rang off.

He left the vidphone booth. He’s got a point, he admitted to himself. If I were rational – but I’m not. The ‘Starmen are probably assembling an emergency plan right now, getting ready for the jump-off; I know this and yet I don’t feel it, I feel-The need for death, he thought.

Why not? Gino Molinari made his death into an instrument of political strategy; he outwitted his opponents through it and he’ll probably do so again. Of course, he realized, that’s not what I had in mind. I’m outwitting nobody. Many people will die in this invasion; why not one more? Who loses by it? Who am I close to? He thought, Those future Sweetscents are going to be sore as hell about it but that’s just too bad. I don’t particularly give a damn about them anyhow. And, except that their existences depend on mine, they feel the same about me. Perhaps, he decided, that’s the problem. Not my relationship with Kathy but my relationship with myself.

Passing through the lobby of the Caesar Hotel, he emerged on the daytime, busy Tijuana street of ten years hence.

Sunlight blinded him; he stood blinking and adjusting. The surface vehicles, even here, had changed. Sleeker, more attractive. The street, now, was adequately paved. There came the tamale vendors and the rug vendors except that now they were not robants; they were, he saw with a start, reegs. Evidently they had entered Terran society at the bottom rung, would have to work their way to the equality he had witnessed a century from his own time, ninety years from now. It did not seem fair to him, but there it was.

Hands in his pockets, he walked with the surging crowd that inhabited the sidewalks of Tijuana throughout all the ages, until he arrived at the pharmacy at which he had bought the capsules of JJ-180. As always it was open for business. It, too, had not altered in a decade, except that now the hernia belt display had gone. In its place he saw a contrivance unfamiliar to him. Halting, he examined the Spanish sign propped behind it. The thing evidently increased one’s sexual potency, he decided. Permitted – as he translated the Spanish – an infinitude of orgasms, one immediately following the other. Amused, he continued on inside the pharmacy, to the counter in the rear.

A different pharmacist, this one a black-haired elderly female, greeted him. ‘Sí?’ She leered, showing cheap chromium teeth.

Eric said, ‘You have a West German product, g-Totex blau?’

‘I look. You wait, okay?’ The woman trudged off and disappeared among the pharmaceuticals. Eric wandered around the displays sightlessly. ‘G-Totex blau a terrible poison,’ the old woman called to him. ‘You have to sign the book for it; sí?’

‘Sí,’ Eric said.

The product, in its black carton, was laid on the counter before him. Two dollars fifty US,’ the old woman said. She lugged the control book out, put it where he could reach it with the chained pen. As he signed she wrapped the black carton. ‘You going to kill yourself, seńor?’ she asked acutely. ‘Yes, I can tell. This will not hurt with this product; I have seen it. No pain, just no heart all of a sudden.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘It’s a good product.’

‘From A. G. Chemie. Reliable.’ She beamed in what seemed approval.

He paid the money – his ten-year-old bills were accepted without comment – and left the pharmacy with his package. Weird, he thought, in Tijuana it’s still as it was. Always will be. Nobody even cares if you destroy yourself; it’s a wonder they don’t have booths at night where it’s done for you, at ten pesos. Perhaps there is by now.

It shook him a little, the woman’s evident approval – and she did not know anything about him, even who he was. The war did it, he said to himself. I don’t know why I let it surprise me.

When he returned to the Caesar Hotel and started upstairsJo his room, the desk clerk – unfamiliar to him – halted him. ‘Sir, you are not a resident here.’ The clerk had moved swiftly from behind the counter to bar his way. ‘Did you want a room?’

‘I have one,’ Eric said, and then remembered it had been ten years in the past; his occupancy had lapsed long ago.

‘Nine U S dollars each night in advance,’ the desk clerk said. ‘Since you do not have luggage.’

Eric got out his wallet, passed over a ten-dollar bill. The clerk, however, inspected the bill with professional disavowal and mounting suspicion.

‘These were called in,’ the clerk informed him. ‘Hard to exchange now because no more legal.’ He raised his head and scrutinized Eric with defiance. Twenty. Two tens. And maybe even then I not accept them.’ He waited, devoid of enthusiasm; he clearly resented being paid in currency of this kind. It probably reminded him of the old days, the bad times of the war.

He had only one more bill in his wallet and that was a five. And, incredibly, through some freakish foul-up, perhaps because he had traded his watch for them, the useless currency from ninety years in the future; he spread them on the counter, their intricate, multi-colored scroll-work shimmering. So perhaps, he thought, Kathy’s electronic part had reached Virgil Ackerman back in the mid thirties after all; at least it had a chance. That cheered him.

The clerk picked up one of the 2155 bills. ‘What is this?’ He held it to the light. ‘I never see before. You make it yourself?’

‘No,’ Eric said.

‘I can’t use,’ the clerk decided. ‘Go before I call the police; you make it yourself, I know.’ He tossed the bill back with the others in a gesture of repugnance. ‘Funny money. Go away.’

Leaving the 2155 bills on the counter but retrieving the five, Eric turned and walked out the door of the hotel, his package of g-Totex blau under his arm.

There were many malformed little alleys in Tijuana, even now after the war; he found a narrow, dark passage between brick buildings, littered with debris and the overflow from two immense ashcans that had once been oil drums. In the alley he seated himself on the wooden step by a boarded-up entrance, lit a cigarette, sat smoking and pondering. He could not be seen from the street; the people rushing by on the sidewalk paid no attention to him and he focused his attention by watching them, in particular the girls. This, too, was as he knew it in the previous decade. A girl during daylight hours on the streets of Tijuana dressed with incomprehensible smartness: high heels, angora sweater, shiny purse, gloves, coat over her shoulders, preceded, as she hurried, by high, sharp-as-tacks breasts, the smartness carrying even to the detail of her modern bra. What did these girls do for a living? Where had they learned to dress so well, not to mention the problem of financing such a wardrobe? He had wondered this in his own time and he wondered it now.

The answer, he speculated, would be to stop one of these daytime Tijuana girls in flight, ask her where she lived and if she bought her clothes here or across the border. He wondered if these girls had ever been across to the United States, if they had boy friends in Los Angeles, if they were as good in bed as they looked to be. Something, some force not visible, made their lives possible. He hoped that at the same time it did not make them frigid; what a travesty of life, on the potency of natural creatures, that would be.

The trouble with such girls, he thought, is that they get old so fast. What you hear is true; by thirty they’re worn out, fat, the bra and the coat and purse and gloves are gone; all that remains is the black, burning eyes peering out from beneath the shaggy brows, the original slender creature still imprisoned somewhere within but unable to speak any longer, play or make love or run. The click of heels against the pavement, the rushing forward into life; that’s gone and only a slopping, dragging sound is left behind. The most horrid sound in the world, that of the once-was: alive in the past, perishing in the present, a corpse made of dust in the future. Nothing changes in Tijuana and yet nothing lives out its normal span. Time moves too fast here and also not at all. Look at my situation, for instance, he thought. I’m committing suicide ten years in the future, or rather I’ll wipe out a life ten years ago. If I do this, what becomes of the Eric Sweetscent now working for Kaiser in Oakland? And the ten years he’s spent watching over Kathy – what does that do to her?

Maybe this is my weak way of hurting her. A further punishment because she’s sick.

Underneath my rationality my warped view, he thought. You can’t quite manage to punish the sick enough. Is that it? Christ, he thought. No wonder I feel hatred for myself.

Holding the package of g-Totex blau in the palm of his hand, he weighed it, experienced its mass. Felt the Earth’s attraction for it. Yes, he thought, the Earth likes even this. She accepts everything.

Something ran across his shoe.

He saw, skittering away into the safety of the shadows and heaps of debris, a small wheeled cart.

The cart was pursued by another of its kind. They met, in the tangle of newspapers and bottles, and then the debris trembled and bits flew everywhere as the carts fought it out, ramming each other head-on, trying for the cephalic unit mounted in each other’s center. Trying to knock out the Lazy Brown Dog.

Still alive? he thought in disbelief. Ten years later? But possibly Bruce Himmel still manufactured them. By now Tijuana must be overrun by them, if that was so. It was hard to know how to take such a sight. He continued to watch the two carts as they battled it out to the end; now one had knocked its antagonist’s Lazy Brown Dog loose, seemed to be triumphing. It withdrew and, like a goat, maneuvered to locate itself for the coup de grace.

While it was positioning itself the damaged one, in a last burst of native wit, popped into the sanctuary of a discarded galvanized zinc bucket and was out of the fray. Protected, it became inert, prepared to wait things out, forever if necessary.

Getting to his feet, Eric stooped and grabbed up the stronger cart; its wheels spun futilely and then somehow it managed to twist out of his grasp. It bounced clatteringly to the pavement, backed, maneuvered, and then hurled itself against his foot. Surprised, he retreated. The cart made another menacing move toward him and he retreated again. Satisfied, the cart wheeled in a circle and then rattled off, out of sight.

In the bucket the loser could still be seen. Still waiting.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ Eric said to it, crouching down in order to get a better glimpse of it. The damaged thing, however, remained where it was. ‘Okay,’ he said and straightened up. ‘I get the idea.’ It knew what it wanted. There was no point in molesting it.

Even these things, he decided, are determined to live. Bruce was right. They deserve their opportunity, their minuscule place under the sun and sky. That’s all they’re asking for and it isn’t much. He thought. And I can’t even do what they do, make my stand, use my wits to survive in a debris-littered alley in Tijuana; that thing that’s taken refuge there in that zinc bucket, without a wife, a career, a conapt or money or the possibility of encountering any of these, still persists. For reasons unknown to me its stake in existence is greater than mine.

The g-Totex blau no longer seemed attractive to him.

Even if I’m going to do this, he thought, why does it have to be now? Like everything else it can be put off – ought, in this case, to be put off. And anyhow he did not feel well; he felt dizzy and he shut his eyes, although by doing so he was inviting another attack by the fearsome Lazy Brown Dog cart which Bruce Himmel had made.

The slight weight in his hand disappeared entirely. He opened his eyes, saw that the paper bag with its black carton inside, the box of g-Totex blau, had disappeared. And the litter heaped here and there in the alley did not appear quite as extensive. From the long shadows cast by the sun he knew that it had become late in the day and this meant that the JJ-180 had worn off and he had gone back in time to – roughly – his own period. But he had taken the piece of capsule at night, in the dark, and this seemed more like five p.m. So, as before, the return was not exact and he wondered just how far off it was in this instance. After all, the ‘Starmen were on their way.

In fact, he saw, they had already arrived.

Overhead a vast, dark, ugly mass hung in the sky, like something that had descended into this world from a lightless land of iron and surprise and frightened, purposeful silence. It was huge enough, he thought, to feed forever; even from the spot where he stood, at the very least a mile from it, he could see that it consisted of a limitless, appetitive self which would begin any time now to gulp down everything in sight. It made no sound. Its engines were off. This ship had come a long way, from the lines deep in intersystem space. It was a seasoned, informed, world-weary apparition, brought out by strange needs from its normal place of residence.

I wonder how easy it’s going to be, Eric wondered. For them simply to drop to the surface and enter key buildings and take everything over. Probably easier than I think, than anyone here on Terra thinks.

He walked from the alley to the street, thinking to himself, I wish I had a gun.

Strange, he thought, that in the center of the greatest abomination of our time, this war, I should find something meaningful. A desire animating me equal to that possessed by the Lazy Brown Dog cart hiding in the zinc pail ten years from now. Maybe I’m its compatriot at last. Able to take my place in the world beside it, do as it does, fight as it fights; whenever it’s necessary and then some, for the pleasure of it. For the joy. As was intended from the start anterior to any time or condition I could comprehend or call my own or enter into.

Traffic had slowed to a near stop along the street. Everyone, in the vehicles and on foot, watched the ‘Star ship.

‘Taxi!’ Walking out into the street he hailed an autonomic cab capable of non-surface flight. ‘Take me to Tijuana Fur & Dye,’ he ordered it. ‘Make it as fast as you can and don’t pay any attention to that ship up there, including any instructions it might broadcast.’

The cab shuddered, rose slightly from the asphalt, and hung stationary. ‘We’ve been forbidden to take off, sir. The Lilistar Army Command for this area sent out orders that—’

‘I’m in supreme charge of this situation,’ Eric told the cab. ‘I outrank the Lilistar Army Command; they’re dirt compared with me. I have to be at Tijuana Fur & Dye immediately – the war effort hangs on my being there.’

‘Yes sir,’ the cab said, and soared up into the sky. ‘And it’s an honor, sir; believe me, a rare honor to convey you.’

‘My presence there,’ Eric said, ‘is of incomparable strategic importance.’ At the factory I’ll make my stand, he said to himself. With the people I know. And, when Virgil Ackerman escapes to Wash-35, I’ll go along with him; it’s beginning to unfold as I witnessed it a year from now.

And, at Tijuana Fur & Dye, he realized, I’ll undoubtedly run into Kathy.

To the cab he said suddenly, ‘If your wife were sick—’

‘I have no wife, sir,’ the cab said. ‘Automatic Mechanisms never marry; everyone knows that.’

‘All right,’ Eric agreed. ‘If you were me, and your wife were sick, desperately so, with no hope of recovery, would you leave her? Or would you stay with her, even if you had traveled ten years into the future and knew for an absolute certainty that the damage to her brain could never be reversed? And staying with her would mean—’

‘I can see what you mean, sir,’ the cab broke in. ‘It would mean no other life for you beyond caring for her.’

‘That’s right,’ Eric said.

‘I’d stay with her,’ the cab decided.

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ the cab said, ‘life is composed of reality configurations so constituted. To abandon her would be to say, I can’t endure reality as such. I have to have uniquely special easier conditions.’

‘I think I agree,’ Eric said after a time. ‘I think I will stay with her.’

‘God bless you, sir,’ the cab said. ‘I can see that you’re a good man.’

‘Thank you,’ Eric said.

The cab soared on toward Tijuana Fur & Dye Corporation.