What has Benny Cemoli done now? Hood wondered. According to the Times, in its misphased chronicling of the man’s epic …what stage, actually taking place years ago, has now been reached? Something climactic, deserving of an extra. It will be interesting, no doubt of that; the Times knows what makes a good story.

  He, too, could hardly wait.

  In downtown Oklahoma City, John LeConte put a coin into the slot of the kiosk which the Times had long ago established there. The copy of the Times, the latest extra, slid out and he picked it up and read the headline, briefly, spending only a moment on it to verify the essentials. Then he crossed the sidewalk and stepped once more into the rear seat of his chauffeur-driven steam car.

  Mr. Fall said circumspectly, “Sir, here is the primary material, if you wish to make a word-by-word comparison.” The secretary held out the folder, and LeConte accepted it.

  The car started up; without being told, the chauffeur drove in the direction of Party headquarters. LeConte leaned back, lit a cigar and made himself comfortable.

  On his lap, the newspaper blazed up its enormous headlines.

  CEMOLI ENTERS COALITION UN GOVERNMENT,

  TEMPORARY CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES

  To his secretary, LeConte said, “My phone, please.”

  “Yes sir.” Mr. Fall handed him the portable field-phone.

  “But we’re almost there. And it’s always possible, if you don’t mind my pointing it out, that they may have tapped us somewhere along the line.”

  “They’re busy in New York,” LeConte said. “Among the ruins.” In an area that hasn’t mattered as long as I can remember, he said to himself. However, possibly Mr. Fall’s advice was good; he decided to skip the phone call. “What do you think of this last item?” he asked his secretary, holding up the newspaper.

  “Very success-deserving,” Mr. Fall said, nodding.

  Opening his briefcase, LeConte brought out a tattered, coverless textbook. It had been manufactured only an hour ago, and it was the next artifact to be planted for the invaders from Proxima Centaurus to discover. This was his own contribution, and he was personally quite proud of it. The book outlined in massive detail Cemoli’s program of social change, the revolution depicted in language comprehensible to school children.

  “May I ask,” Mr. Fall said, “if the Party hierarchy intends for them to discover a corpse?”

  “Eventually,” Le Conte said. “But that will be several months from now.” Taking a pencil from his coat pocket he wrote in the tattered textbook, crudely, as if a pupil had done it:

  DOWN WITH CEMOLI

  Or was that going too far? No, he decided. There would be resistance. Certainly of the spontaneous, schoolboy variety. He added:

  WHERE ARE THE ORANGES?

  Peering over his shoulder, Mr. Fall said, “What does that mean?”

  “Cemoli promises oranges to the youth,” LeConte explained. “Another empty boast which the revolution never fulfills. That was Stavros’ idea…he being a grocer. A nice touch.” Giving it, he thought, just that much more semblance of verisimilitude. It’s the little touches that have done it.

  “Yesterday,” Mr. Fall said, “when I was at Party headquarters, I heard an audio tape that had been made. Cemoli addressing the UN. It was uncanny; if you didn’t know—”

  “Who did they get to do it?” LeConte asked, wondering why he hadn’t been in on it.

  “Some nightclub entertainer here in Oklahoma City. Rather obscure, of course. I believe he specializes in all sorts of characterizations. The fellow gave it a bombastic, threatening quality which in my opinion was a little overdone, but certainly effective. Plenty of crowd-noises…I must admit I enjoyed that part.”

  And meanwhile, LeConte thought, there are no war-crimes trials. We who were leaders during the war, on Earth and on Mars, we who held responsible posts—we are safe, at least for a while. And perhaps it will be forever. If our strategy continues to work. And if our tunnel to the cephalon of the homeopape, which took us five years to complete, isn’t discovered. Or doesn’t collapse.

  The steam car parked in the reserved space before Party headquarters; the chauffeur came around to open the door, and LeConte got leisurely out, stepping forth into the light of day, with no feeling of anxiety. He tossed his cigar into the gutter and then sauntered across the sidewalk, into the familiar building.

  RETREAT SYNDROME

  Peace officer Caleb Myers picked up the fast-moving surface vehicle on his radarscope, saw at once that its operator had managed to remove the governor; the vehicle, at one-sixty miles per hour, had exceeded its legal capacity. Hence, he knew, the operator came from the Blue Class, engineer and technicians capable of tinkering with their wheels. Arrest, therefore, would be a tricky matter.

  By radio Myers contacted a police vessel ten miles north along the freeway. “Shoot its power supply out as it passes you,” he suggested to his brother officer. “It’s going too fast to block, right?”

  At 3:10 a.m. the vehicle was stopped; powerless, it had coasted to a halt on the freeway shoulder. Officer Myers pressed buttons, flew leisurely north until he spotted the helpless wheel, plus the red-lit police wheel making its way through heavy traffic toward it. He landed at the exact instant that his compatriot arrived on the scene.

  Together, warily, they walked to the stalled wheel, gravel crunching under their boots.

  In the wheel sat a slim man wearing a white shirt and tie; he stared straight ahead with a dazed expression, making no move to greet the two gray-clad officers with their laser rifles, anti-pellet bubbles protecting their bodies from thigh to cranium. Myers opened the door of the wheel and glanced in, while his fellow officer stood with rifle in hand, just in case this was another come-on; five men from the local office, San Francisco, had been killed this week alone.

  “You know,” Myers said to the silent driver, “that it’s a mandatory two-year suspension of license if you tamper with your wheel’s speed governor. Was it worth it?”

  After a pause the driver turned his head and said, “I’m sick.”

  “Psychically? Or physically?” Myers touched the emergency button at his throat, making contact with line 3, to San Francisco General Hospital; he could have an ambulance here in five minutes, if necessary.

  The driver said huskily, “Everything seemed unreal to me. I thought if I drove fast enough I could reach some place where it’s—solid.” He put his hand gropingly against the dashboard of his wheel, as if not really believing the heavily-padded surface was there.

  “Let me look in your throat, sir,” Myers said, and shone his flashlight in the driver’s face. He turned the jaw upward, peered down past well-cared-for teeth as the man reflexively opened his mouth.

  “See it?” his fellow officer asked.

  “Yes.” He had caught the glint. The anti-carcinoma unit, installed in the throat; like most non-Terrans this man was cancer phobic. Probably he had spent most of his life on a colony world, breathing pure air, the artificial atmosphere installed by autonomic reconstruct equipment prior to human habitation. So the phobia was easy to understand.

  “I have a full-time doctor.” The driver reached now into his pocket, brought out his wallet; from it he extracted a card. His hand shook as he passed the card to Myers. “Specialist in psychosomatic medicine, in San Jose. Any way you could take me there?”

  “You’re not sick,” Myers said. “You just haven’t fully adjusted to Earth, to this gravity and atmosphere and milieu factors. It’s three-fifteen in the morning; this doctor—Hagopian or whatever his name is—can’t see you now.” He studied the card. It informed him:

  This man is under medical care and should any bizarre behavior be exhibited obtain medical help at once.

  “Earth doctors,” his fellow officer said, “don’t see patients after hours; you’ll have to learn that, Mr.—” He held out his hand. “Let me see your operator’s license, please.”

  The entire wallet was reflexively passed to him.

  “Go home,” Myers said to the man. His name, according to the license, was John Cupertino. “You have a wife? Maybe she can pick you up; we’ll take you into the city…better leave your wheel here and not try to drive any more tonight. About your speed—”

  Cupertino said, “I’m not used to an arbitrary maximum. Ganymede has no traffic problem; we travel in the two and two-fifties.” His voice had an oddly flat quality. Myers thought at once of drugs, in particular of thalamic stimulants; Cupertino was hag-ridden with impatience. That might explain his removal of the official speed regulator, a rather easy removal job for a man accustomed to machinery. And yet—

  There was more. From twenty years’ experience Myers intuited it.

  Reaching out he opened the glove compartment, flashed his light in. Letters, an AAA book of approved motels…

  “You don’t really believe you’re on Earth, do you, Mr. Cupertino?” Myers said. He studied the man’s face; it was devoid of affect. “You’re another one of those bippity-bop addicts who thinks this is a drug-induced guilt-fantasy…and you’re really home on Ganymede, sitting in the living room of your twenty-room demesne—surrounded no doubt by your autonomic servants, right?” He laughed sharply, then turned to his fellow officer. “It grows wild on Ganymede,” he explained. “The stuff. Frohedadrine, the extract’s called. They grind up the dried stalks, make a mash of it, boil it, drain it, filter it, and then roll it up and smoke it. And when they’re all done—”

  “I’ve never taken Frohedadrine,” John Cupertino said remotely; he stared straight ahead. “I know I’m on Earth. But there’s something wrong with me. Look.” Reaching out, he put his hand through the heavily-padded dashboard; officer Myers saw the hand disappear up to the wrist. “You see? It’s all insubstantial around me, like shadows. Both of you; I can banish you by just removing my attention from you. I think I can, anyhow. But—I don’t want to!” His voice grated with anguish. “I want you to be real; I want all of this to be real, including Dr. Hagopian.”

  Officer Myers switched his throat-transmitter to line 2 and said, “Put me through to a Dr. Hagopian in San Jose. This is an emergency; never mind his answering service.”

  The line clicked as the circuit was established.

  Glancing at his fellow officer Myers said, “You saw it. You saw him put his hand through the dashboard. Maybe he can banish us.” He did not particularly feel like testing it out; he felt confused and he wished now that he had let Cupertino speed on along the freeway, to oblivion if necessary. To wherever he wanted.

  “I know why all this is,” Cupertino said, half to himself. He got out cigarettes, lit up; his hand was less shaky now. “It’s because of the death of Carol, my wife.”

  Neither officer contradicted him; they kept quiet and waited for the call to Dr. Hagopian to be put through.

  His trousers on over his pajamas, and wearing a jacket buttoned to keep him warm in the night chill, Gottlieb Hagopian met his patient Mr. Cupertino at his otherwise closed-up office in downtown San Jose. Dr. Hagopian switched on lights, then the heat, arranged a chair, wondered how he looked to his patient with his hair sticking in all directions.

  “Sorry to get you up,” Cupertino said, but he did not sound sorry; he seemed perfectly wide-awake, here at four in the morning. He sat smoking with his legs crossed, and Dr. Hagopian, cursing and groaning to himself in futile complaint, went to the back room to plug in the coffee-maker: at least he could have that.

  “The police officers,” Hagopian said, “thought you might have taken some stimulants, by your behavior. We know better.” Cupertino was, as he well knew, always this way; the man was slightly manic.

  “I never should have killed Carol,” Cupertino said. “It’s never been the same since then.”

  “You miss her right now? Yesterday when you saw me you said—”

  “That was in broad daylight; I always feel confident when the sun’s up. By the way—I’ve retained an attorney. Name’s Phil Wolfson.”

  “Why?” No litigation was pending against Cupertino; they both knew that “I need professional advice. In addition to yours. I’m not criticizing you, doctor; don’t take it as an insult. But there’re aspects to my situation which are more legal than medical. Conscience is an interesting phenomenon; it lies partly in the psychological realm, partly—”

  “Coffee?”

  “Lord no. It sets the vagus nerve off for four hours.”

  Dr. Hagopian said, “Did you tell the police officers about Carol? About your killing her?”

  “I just said that she was dead; I was careful.”

  “You weren’t careful when you drove at one-sixty. There was a case in the Chronicle today—it happened on the Bayshore Freeway—where the State Highway Patrol went ahead and disintegrated a car that was going one-fifty; and it was legal. Public safety, the lives of—”

  “They warned it,” Cupertino pointed out. He did not seem perturbed; in fact he had become even more tranquil. “It refused to stop. A drunk.”

  Dr. Hagopian said, “You realize, of course, that Carol is still alive. That in fact she’s living here on Earth, in Los Angeles.”

  “Of course.” Cupertino nodded irritably. Why did Hagopian have to belabor the obvious? They had discussed it countless times, and no doubt the psychiatrist was going to ask him the old query once again: how could you have killed her when you know she’s alive? He felt weary and irritable; the session with Hagopian was getting him nowhere.

  Taking a pad of paper Dr. Hagopian wrote swiftly, then tore off the sheet and held it toward Cupertino.

  “A prescription?” Cupertino accepted it warily.

  “No. An address.”

  Glancing at it Cupertino saw that it was an address in South Pasadena. No doubt it was Carol’s address; he glared at it in wrath.

  “I’m going to try this,” Dr. Hagopian said. “I want you to go there and see her face to face. Then we’ll—”

  “Tell the board of directors of Six-planet Educational Enterprises to see her, not me,” Cupertino said, handing the piece of paper back. “They’re responsible for the entire tragedy; because of them I had to do it. And you know that, so don’t look at me that way. It was their plan that had to be kept secret; isn’t that so?”

  Dr. Hagopian sighed. “At four in the morning everything seems confused. The whole world seems ominous. I’m aware that you were employed by Six-planet at the time, on Ganymede. But the moral responsibility—” He broke off. “This is difficult to say, Mr. Cupertino. You pulled the trigger on the laser beam, so you have to take final moral responsibility.”

  “Carol was going to tell the local homeopapes that there was about to be an uprising to free Ganymede, and the bourgeoise authority on Ganymede, consisting in the main of Six-planet, was involved; I told her that we couldn’t afford to have her say anything. She did it for petty, spiteful motives, for hatred of me; nothing to do with the actual issues involved. Like all women she was motivated by persona] vanity and wounded pride.”

  “Go to that address in South Pasadena,” Dr. Hagopian urged. “See Carol. Convince yourself that you never killed her, that what happened on Ganymede that day three years ago was a—” He gestured, trying to find the right words.

  “Yes, doctor,” Cupertino said cuttingly. “Just what was it? Because that day—or rather that night—I got Carol right above the eyes with that laser beam, right in the frontal lobe; she was absolutely unmistakably dead before I left the conapt and got out of there, got to the spaceport and found an interplan ship to take me to Earth.” He waited; it was going to be hard on Hagopian, finding the right words; it would take quite some time.

  After a pause Hagopian admitted, “Yes, your memory is detailed; it’s all in my file and I see no use in your repeating it—I frankly find it unpleasant at this hour of the morning.

  I don’t know why the memory is there; I know it’s false because I’ve met your wife, talked to her, carried on a correspondence with her, all subsequent to the date, on Ganymede, at which you remember killing her. I know that much, at least.”

  Cupertino said, “Give me one good reason for looking her up.” He made a motion to tear the slip of paper in half.

  “One?” Dr. Hagopian pondered. He looked gray and tired. “Yes, I can give you a good reason, but probably it’s one you’ll reject.”

  “Try me.”

  Dr. Hagopian said, “Carol was present that night on Ganymede, the night you recall killing her. Maybe she can tell you how you obtained the false memory; she implied in correspondence with me that she knows something about it.” He eyed Cupertino. “That’s all she would tell me.”

  “I’ll go,” Cupertino said. And walked swiftly to the door of Dr. Hagopian’s office. Strange, he thought, to obtain knowledge about a person’s death from that person. But Hagopian was right; Carol was the only other person who was present that night…he should have realized long ago that eventually he’d have to look her up.

  It was a crisis in his logic that he did not enjoy facing.

  At six in the morning he stood at Carol Holt Cupertino’s door. Many rings of the bell were required until at last the door of the small, single-unit dwelling opened; Carol, wearing a blue, pellucid nylon nightgown and white furry slippers, stood sleepily facing him. A cat hurried out past her.

  “Remember me?” Cupertino said, stepping aside for the cat.

  “Oh god.” She brushed the tumble of blonde hair back from her eyes, nodded. “What time is it?” Gray, cold light filled the almost deserted street; Carol shivered, folded her arms. “How come you’re up so early? You never used to be out of bed before eight.”