“I’m sorry,” Nomura mumbled.

  “It’s okay, Tom.”

  “No, I…I thought…when I saw her vanish, my first thought was that we could make up a party, ride back to that very instant and snatch her clear—”

  “A natural thought in a new man. Old habits of the mind die hard. The fact is, we did not. It’d scarcely have been authorized anyway. Too dangerous. We can ill afford to lose more. Certainly we can’t when the record shows that our rescue attempt would be foredoomed if we made it.”

  “Is there no way to get around that?”

  Everard sighed. “I can’t think of any. Make your peace with fate, Tom.” He hesitated. “Can I…can we do anything for you?”

  “No.” It came harsh out of Nomura’s throat. “Except leave me be for a while.”

  “Sure.” Everard rose. “You weren’t the only person who thought a lot of her,” he reminded, and left.

  When the door had closed behind him, the sound of the falls seemed to wax, grinding, grinding. Nomura stared at emptiness. The sun passed its apex and began to slide very slowly toward night.

  I should have gone after her myself, at once.

  And risked my life.

  Why not follow her into death, then?

  No. That’s senseless. Two deaths do not make a life. I couldn’t have saved her, I didn’t have the equipment or— The sane thing was to fetch help.

  Only the help was denied—whether by man or by fate hardly matters, does it?—and so she went down. The stream hurled her into the gulf, she had a moment’s terror before it smashed the awareness out of her, then at the bottom it crushed her, plucked her apart, strewed the pieces of her bones across the floor of a sea that I, a youngster, will sail upon one holiday, unknowing that there is a Time Patrol or ever was a Feliz. Oh, God, I want my dust down with hers, five and a half million years from this hour!

  A remote cannonade went through the air, a tremor through earth and floor. An undercut bank must have crumbled into the torrent. It was the kind of scene she would have loved to capture.

  “Would have?” Nomura yelled and surged from the chair. The ground still vibrated beneath him. “She will!”

  He ought to have consulted Everard, but feared—perhaps mistakenly, in his grief and his inexperience—that he would be refused permission and sent upstairs at once.

  He ought to have rested for several days, but feared that his manner would betray him. A stimulant pill must serve in place of nature.

  He ought to have checked out a tractor unit, not smuggled it into the locker on his vehicle.

  When he took the hopper forth, a Patrolman who saw asked where he was bound. “For a ride,” Nomura answered. The other nodded sympathetically. He might not suspect that a love had been lost, but the loss of a comrade was bad enough. Nomura was careful to get well over the northern horizon before he swung toward the seafall.

  Right and left, it reached further than he could see. Here, more than halfway down that cliff of green glass, the very curve of the planet hid its ends from him. Then as he entered the spume clouds, whiteness enfolded him, roiling and stinging.

  His face shield stayed clear, but vision was ragged, upward along immensity. The helmet warded his hearing but could not stave off the storm which rattled his teeth and heart and skeleton. Winds whirled and smote, the carrier staggered, he must fight for every inch of control.

  And to find the exact second—

  Back and forth he leaped across time, reset the verniers, reflicked the main switch, glimpsed himself vague in the mists, and peered through them toward heaven: over and over, until abruptly he was then.

  Twin gleams far above…He saw the one strike and go under, go down, while the other darted around until soon it ran away. Its rider had not seen him, where he lurked in the chill salt mists. His presence was not on any damned record.

  He darted forward; Yet patience was upon him. He could cruise for a long piece of lifespan if need be, seeking the trice which would be his. The fear of death, even the knowing that she might be dead when he found her, were like half-remembered dreams. The elemental powers had taken him. He was a will that flew.

  He hovered within a yard of the water. Gusts tried to cast him into its grip, as they had done to her. He was ready for them, danced free, returned to peer—returned through time as well as space, so that a score of him searched along the fall in that span of seconds when Feliz might be alive.

  He paid his other selves no heed. They were merely stages he had gone through or must still go through.

  There!

  The dim dark shape tumbled past him, beneath the flood, on its way to destruction. He spun a control. A tractor beam locked onto the other machine. His reeled and went after it, unable to pull such a mass free of such a might.

  The tide nearly had him when help came. Two vehicles, three, four, all straining together, they hauled Feliz’s loose. She sagged horribly limp in her saddle harness. He didn’t go to her at once. First he went back those few blinks in time, and back, and back, to be her rescuer and his own.

  When finally they were alone among fogs and furies, she freed and in his arms, he would have burnt a hole through the sky to get to shore where he could care for her. But she stirred, her eyes blinked open, after a minute she smiled at him. Then he wept.

  Beside them, the ocean roared onward.

  The sunset to which Nomura had leaped ahead was not on anybody’s record either. It turned the land golden. The falls must be afire with it. Their song resounded beneath the evening star.

  Feliz propped pillows against headboard, sat straighter in the bed where she was resting, and told Everard: “If you lay charges against him, that he broke regulations or whatever male stupidity you are thinking of, I’ll also quit your bloody Patrol.”

  “Oh, no.” The big man lifted a palm as if to fend off attack, “Please. You misunderstand, I only meant to say, we’re in a slightly awkward position.”

  “How?” Nomura demanded, from the chair in which he sat and held Feliz’ hand, “I wasn’t under any orders not to attempt this, was I? All right, agents are supposed to safeguard their own lives if possible, as being valuable to the corps. Well, doesn’t it follow that the salvaging of a life is worthwhile too?”

  “Yes. Sure.” Everard paced the floor. It thudded beneath his boots, above the drumbeat of the flood. “Nobody quarrels with success, even in a much tighter organization than ours. In fact, Tom, the initiative you showed today makes your future prospects look good, believe me.” A grin went lopsided around his pipe­stem. “As for an old soldier like myself, it’ll be forgiven that I was too ready to give up.” A flick of somberness: “I’ve seen so many lost beyond hope.”

  He stopped in his treading, confronted them both, and stated: “But we cannot have loose ends. The fact is, her unit does not list Feliz a Rach as returning, ever.”

  Their clasps tightened on each other.

  Everard gave him and her a smile—haunted, nevertheless a smile—before he continued: “Don’t get scared, though. Tom, earlier you wondered why we, we ordinary humans at least, don’t keep closer track of our people. Now do you see the reason?

  “Feliz a Rach never checked back into her original base. She may have visited her former home, of course, but we don’t ask officially what agents do on their furloughs.” He drew breath. “As for the rest of her career, if she should want to transfer to a different headquarters and adopt a different name, why, any officer of sufficient rank could approve that. Me, for example.

  “We operate loose in the Patrol. We dare not do otherwise.”

  Nomura understood. and shivered.

  Feliz recalled him to the ordinary world. “But who might I become?” she wondered.

  He pounced on the cue. “Well,” he said, half in laughter and half in thunder. “how about Mrs. Thomas Nomura?”

  Operation Incubus

  “No,” I said to my bride’s business associate. “You are not coming along on the honeymoon.”

  He laid back his ears. “Mneowrr!” he said resentfully.

  “You’ll be quite all right by yourself in this apartment for a month,” I told him. “The superintendent has promised to feed you every evening, the same time as he sets out the milk for the Brownie. And don’t forget, when the Brownie comes in here, you are not to chase him. The last time you did that, the Good People sweetened our martinis three days in a row.”

  Svartalf glowered yellow-eyed and switched his tail. I suppose that was cat for, well, dammit, anything the size of a mouse, which scuttles like a mouse, has got to expect to be treated like a mouse.

  “He’ll be here to dust and change your litterbox,” I reminded Svartalf in my sternest voice. “You’ve got the run of the place, and you can fly up the chimney on the whiskbroom anytime you want fresh air. But the Brownie is off limits, bucko, and if I come back and hear you’ve been after him, I’ll take wolf shape and tree you. Understand?”

  Svartalf jerked his tail at me, straight upward.

  Virginia Graylock, who had now for an incredible few hours been Mrs. Stephen Matuchek, entered the living room. I was so stunned by the view of tall slenderness in a white dress, straight aristocratic features and red hair shouting down to her shoulders, that the voice didn’t register except as a symphonic accompaniment. She had to repeat: “Darling, are you absolutely sure we can’t take him? His feelings are hurt.”

  I recovered enough to say, “His feelings are made of tool steel. It’s okay if he wants to share our bed when we get back, I guess—within reason—but fifteen pounds of black witchcat on my stomach when I’m honeymooning is out of reason. Besides, what’s worse, he’d prefer your stomach.”

  Ginny blushed. “It will be so odd without my familiar, after all these years. If he promised to behave—”

  Svartalf, who had been standing on a table, rubbed against her hip and purred. Which was not a bad idea, I thought. However, I had my foot down and wasn’t about to lift it. “He’s incapable of behaving,” I said. “And you won’t need him. We’re going to forget the world and its work, aren’t we? I’m not going to study any texts, nor visit any of my fellow theriomorphs, even that were-coyote family down at Acapulco who invited us to drop in. You’re not going to cast any spells nor attend any covens. It’s going to be just us two, and we don’t want any pussy—” I braked as fast as possible. She only sighed a little, nodded, and stroked a soothing hand across the cat’s back.

  You might think a successful, high-salaried New York witch would be anything but innocent. Certainly Ginny had a temper and her own kind of sophistication. However, quite apart from a stubbornly loyal and clean personality, she had hitherto practiced those branches of the Art which require maidenhood. She would have to relearn a great many aspects of her own trade, now she was married. Which was one reason we were going to college together: I for an engineering degree (getting straight A’s in Shamanistics and Differential Equations, but having some trouble with Arcane Languages and Electronics) and she for a doctorate in thaumaturgy (plus instruction in those techniques she would have to know to compensate for being wedded).

  In short, my fire-and-ice girl had become, temporarily, only another bride. And what’s so only about that?

  “All right, dear,” she said. With a flick of her earlier self: “Enjoy wearing the family pants while you can.”

  “I intend to do so all the time,” I bragged.

  She cocked her head. “All the time?” Hastily: “We’d best be on our way. Everything’s packed.”

  “Check, mate,” I agreed. She stuck out her tongue at me. I patted Svartalf. “So long, chum. No grudges, I trust?” He bit a piece out of my hand and said he supposed not. Ginny hugged him, seized my arm, and hurried me out.

  The home to which we’d be coming back was a third-floor apartment near Trismegistus University. Our wedding this morning had been quiet, a few friends at the church, a luncheon afterward at somebody’s house, and then we made our farewells. But Ginny’s connections in New York and mine in Hollywood have money. Several people had clubbed together to give us a Persian carpet: a somewhat overwhelming present, but show me the bridal couple that doesn’t like a touch of luxury.

  It lay on the landing, its colors aglow in the sun. Our baggage was piled in the rear. We snuggled down side by side on cushions of polymerized sea foam. Ginny murmured the command words. We started moving so smoothly I didn’t notice when we were airborne. The carpet wasn’t as fast or flashy as a sports-model broomstick, but the hundred-dragonpower spell on it got us out of the city in minutes.

  Midwestern plains rolled green and enormous beneath us, here and there a river like argent ribbon; but we were alone with birds and clouds. The force screen was so well designed that we never felt the wind of our passage. Ginny slipped off her dress. She had a sunsuit beneath it, and now I understand transistor theory—the absence of material has as real an existence as the presence. We sunbathed on our way south, stopped at twilight to have supper at a charming little restaurant in the Ozarks, but decided not to stay in a broomotel. Instead, we flew on. The carpet was soft and thick and roomy. I started to raise the convertible top, but Ginny said we’d keep warm enough if we flew low, and she was right. Stars crowded the sky, until a big yellow Southern moon rose to drown half of them, and the air was murmurous, and we could hear crickets chorus from the dark earth below, and nothing else is any of your business.

  I knew exactly where I was bound. A wartime friend of mine, Juan Fernandez, had put his Army experience to good use. He’d been in the propaganda section, and done many excellent scripts. These days, instead of nightmares, he was broadcasting one of the most popular dream series on the West Coast, and his sponsors were paying him accordingly. In fact, everyone loved Fernandez except the psychoanalysts, and they’re obsolete now that scientific research has come up with some really efficient anti-possession techniques. Last year he had built a lodge in the country of his ancestors. It stood all by itself on the Sonora coast, at one of the loneliest spots on Midgard and one of the most beautiful. Fernandez had offered me the use of it this month for our honeymoon.

  We glided down about noon the next day. Westward, the Gulf of California burned blue and molten white. Surf broke on a wide strip of sand beach, then cliffs raised tier after tier, finally the land itself rolled off to the east, dry, stark, and awesome. The lodge made a little spot of green, perched on the lowest bluff just above the strand.

  Ginny clapped her hands. “Oh! I wouldn’t have believed it!”

  “You Easterners don’t know what big country is,” I said smugly.

  She shaded her eyes against the sun-dazzle and pointed. “But what’s that?”

  My own gaze traveled no further than her arm, but I remembered well enough. Atop a cliff, about a mile north of the lodge and several hundred feet higher, crumbling wall surrounded a rubbleheap; the snag of one tower stood at the northwest angle, to scowl among winds. “La Fortaleza,” I said. “It’s Spanish work, Seventeenth Century. Some Don had an idea he could exploit this area for profit. He erected the castle as a strong point and residence, even brought a wife here from Castile. But everything went wrong and the place was soon abandoned.”

  “Can we explore it?”

  “If you like.”

  Ginny laid a hand on my shoulder. “What’s wrong, Steve?”

  “Oh…nothing. I don’t care for the Fortaleza myself. Even as a human by daylight, I sense wrongness. I went over there once after dark, wolf shape, and then it stank. Not so much in a physical way, but— Oh, forget it.”

  She said soberly: “The Spaniards enslaved the Indians in those times, didn’t they? I imagine a lot of human agony went into that castle.”

  “And left a residuum. Yeah, probably. But hell, it was long ago. We’ll have a look around. The ruins are picturesque, and the view from there is tremendous.”

  “If you really are worried about ghosts—”

  “Forget it, darling! I’m not superstitious!”

  And then we landed at the lodge and did indeed forget it.

  The place was built in cloister style, white walls and red-tile roof enclosing a courtyard where a fountain played. But there was also a garden surrounding the outside, green with leaves and grass, red and white and purple and gold with flowerbeds. We were quite alone. The grounds were elementalized for Earth and Water, so they needed no attendants; the other two elemental forces kept the house air-conditioned, and there was also an expensive cleanliness spell on it. Ginny prepared a Mexican lunch from the supplies we’d brought along. She was so beautiful in shorts, halter, and frilly apron that I hadn’t the heart to offer to teach her to cook. She exclaimed aloud when the dirty dishes floated back to the kitchen and followed to watch them dive into soapy water and frisk around. “It’s the most up-to-date automatic dishwasher I’ve ever seen!” she cried.

  So we had plenty of time for an afternoon of surfbathing. At sunset we climbed back up a stairway hewn from the yellow rock, ravenous, and I prepared steaks by introducing them to a charcoal fire but allowing no further conversation. Afterward we moved out on a patio overlooking the sea. We sat in deck chairs, holding hands, and the stars came out to greet us.

  “Let’s Skinturn at moonrise and frolic a bit,” I suggested. “You’d make a delightful lady wolf. Or, hm, I wou— Never mind!”

  She shook her head. “I can’t, Steve, dear.”

  “Sure, you can. You’d need a T-spell, of course, but—”

  “That’s just it. You have lycanthropic genes; all you need to change species is polarized light. But for me it’s a major transformation, and…I don’t know…I don’t feel able to do it. I can’t even remember the formulas. I guess I’m not able, any more. All my professional knowledge has gotten even fuzzier than I expected. I’ll need refresher courses in the most elementary things.”