'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 Neuro-psychiatric 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.