There existed, for one thing, the slight but definitely non-zero possibility that Alpha might kill me.

  For another, simply killing Alpha wasn’t good enough.

  I wanted to make him suffer first.

  Third idea: I could float through history for a while, perform some minor time thefts, and then arrange that the Time Corps discover evidence connecting Alpha with the crimes. This idea had its appeal, but had the misfortune of incriminating myself as well as Alpha.

  Fourth idea: I could return to Alpha’s time, capture him, and strand him somewhere in the past, the Age of Heroes, say. Let him become a minor character in Homer.

  That struck me as the best idea yet. I pictured him wandering about the Peloponnese, struggling to learn archaic Greek and jumping into ditches to avoid the chariots of the heroes who were racing hither and yon on errands of murder and savagery.

  It seemed an appropriate punishment for being a bad twin to strand him in a place where the other bad twins could take care of him. Alpha might end up responsible for a whole new myth cycle: the wandering SEAL.

  And then, as I drank my third cup of coffee and wandered mentally through fantasies of revenge, one of those stray memories, unconnected to anything in my conscious thoughts, suddenly broke surface in my mind, and I remembered where I’d seen Scorsese’s lady friend before.

  I went to the pilot house, spent some time working out the controls, then weighed anchor and piloted the yacht out of the bay, through the deep channel—narrower than in my own time—between Therasia and Apronisi. Once away from the island, I set the autopilot to take us on a fast sweep in the general direction of Cyrenaica and spent the rest of the day methodically searching every piece of paper on the yacht, finding very little.

  I did, however, find a twenty-first century map of western Greece, with a course worked on it that led into the northern entrance to the Bay of Navarino, and with some temporal coordinates marked onto it: 23:01:01, November 11, 1699 C.E.

  Eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month. Thieves with a sense of history. Hoodlums in general seemed to be improving.

  I spent the next three days cruising in autopilot circles halfway between Kithera and Malta, well out of sight of land where no contemporary navigator would dare venture, while I went through every file I could dig out of the yacht’s computer. It was all coded, of course, but the Time Corps had taught me a number of classified and for the most part highly illegal skills, and by the end of that time I’d cracked the file open.

  I found that the yacht was called Simon’s Folly and belonged to a Honduran holding company controlled principally by an interlocking directorate chartered in TanUganda, the seats of the directorate held both by private individuals and representatives of financial institutions scattered hopelessly throughout the world. The current owners were also the sixth group in four years. The papers on the boat were almost impossible to trace. No help there.

  I didn’t find out who Simon was, either

  I did, on the other hand, recover the codes for a dozen numbered bank accounts in places like Tobago, Singapore, and the Republic of Thule. It appeared that Scorsese had a bad memory for numbers, and had to keep them in his computer files, the ones he thought were secure.

  Better and better.

  I moved the fresco to more spacious quarters in the yacht’s cargo bay, and then jumped upStream. It took eight subjective days to reach my own present, battling the Stream currents all the way. Moving an individual costs much less energy and effort that moving a whole yacht, which is why the Theran salvage team was going the easy way, letting the Stream currents assist the move—but I had no choice. I lived, bored out of my skull in the self-contained environment of Scorsese’s time box, the yacht itself not being airtight. I’d seen prison cells that were bigger. I ate canned food and kept myself amused with isometric exercises and thoughts of revenge.

  I tried reading Sophocles’ Theban trilogy, two plays rescued from oblivion by the Time Authority’s scholars and the Seven Against Thebes that had survived on its own, but the plays were about a family that went to hell, and brothers who killed each other, and I didn’t want to think about that subject at all.

  There was nothing else to read. All Scorsese had were magazines written in Italian, which I don’t read, and adding to the frustration was the fact that most of the magazines were filled with crossword puzzles. The near-naked women illustrating the puzzle books, however. provided some consolation.

  Once happily in the twenty-first century, I spent some time on the radiotelephone and made several calls to Tobago, Singapore, et cetera. I presented the codes and quietly transferred all funds to new accounts, then wiped all record of the transactions from the computer.

  However this came out, I was going to be rich.

  Then I routed a telephone call through several satellites and through Gibraltar, Tientsin, Aden, Nairobi, and Salt Lake City, which I hoped would confuse anyone trying to trace it. “Extension two one nine,” I said, and hoped the right man would pick up.

  “Macintyre,” a voice said.

  “Mac,” I said. “Do you recognize the sound of my voice?”

  The answer came after a long pause: the signal was being routed through so many satellites and exchanges it was taking nearly three seconds for my words to get to New York.

  “Yes,” Macintyre said. I pictured him in his wheelchair at the Time Corps regional office in New York, his beefy face lit by humming data banks.

  “I need to vet some prints,” I said, “but the query can’t go into the record.”

  “Can’t do it,” Macintyre said, again after a long delay. His voice was Scots, modified by years of living in America. “You know I have to log every inquiry,” he said. “Records go to about a dozen different departments.”

  “I also know,” I said, “that you were one of the best time agents in the Corps, and that you know ways to make log entries disappear.” I tried to put all the urgency in the world into my voice. “This is very important, Mac. It’s Scorsese. “

  There next silence was longer than it had to be. “Do you have the bastard?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Just about.”

  “Call back in thirty minutes. My supervisor will be out to lunch by then.”

  I routed the next call through Berlin, Hong Kong, Beirut, Baku, Darwin, and Bogota. There must have been B’s in my mind for some reason.

  “Macintyre,” said the voice.

  “This is Valli,” I said. “Do you have my information?”

  “No need for phony names,” he said. “Just send me the prints, okay?” He sounded edgy.

  I passed the scanner over the prints I’d taken, then waited for Macintyre’s confirmation that he’d received them.

  “Running,” he said, and then, “I have positive I.D.”

  I tapped the yacht’s computer. “Ready for download,” I said.

  I watched the file load into memory, and then I thanked Macintyre.

  “Just nail Scorsese for me,” he said, and hung up.

  Again I pictured him in the little blank-walled duty room, a redfaced, thick-necked man in a wheelchair, putting on weight now that he wasn’t as active as once he’d been.

  Once he’d been an athlete, a star rugby player.

  For the last twelve years he’d been pissing into a plastic bag because of the bullet Scorsese had put into his spine in Florence.

  I called up the dossier and paged through it. The woman’s name was Kaetie Verberne, and she was an investment counselor in Amsterdam.

  I had seen her once before, on the arm of Gautier de La Tour, the comptroller-general of the International Time Authority at The Hague.

  Time theft gets a lot of attention from the press, but the most sophisticated form of time crime is not theft, but investment. Once a time criminal can acquire some of the local currency—by unloading an art treasure stolen a few centuries earlier, say—he can put the money into places where he knows it will increase. Then he can take the money, buy another art treasure with it, and repeat the whole procedure until he’s got enough money to live happily ever after.

  In general, this brand of criminal only gets caught if he gets too greedy and calls attention to himself. The Corps doesn’t have the personnel to police every investment market throughout history.

  Gautier de La Tour appeared often in the tabloids, because he was a photogenic man with striking blue eyes and a halo of white hair, because he was a prominent bachelor and a very wealthy man I began to wonder if he’d inherited his money from himself.

  The office of comptroller-general of the Time Authority handles disbursement of all the Corps’ funds, for all periods, in all currencies. The comptroller-general doesn’t have access to the operational side, but he provides funds for operations and thus was in a good position to guess where the operations would be, the better to avoid them.

  If de La Tour was a time criminal, he might also have partners high in the Time Corps. I couldn’t trust anyone even in my own outfit.

  Except maybe one person.

  I took the Folly into Malta and bought some supplies and a lot of reading material in languages I understood. All light reading, nothing about family tragedies or twins or brothers who kill each other. Then I took the Folly one week downStream and entered Palermo, where I checked into a hotel with an attached gym and spent a week getting myself into good physical condition. I rented a welding rig and spent some time making modifications to the back of the time box.

  I also sent out six letters to some people I thought I could trust, with other letters enclosed and a note to mail them to the addressees enclosed if I hadn’t contacted them in the next month. De La Tour might have a hard time stopping six letters from reaching six different people, or so I hoped.

  Then I headed back to Thera and the thirteenth century B.C.E.

  There, two hundred years following the island’s destruction, I anchored for another week and got myself into shape again. I ran daily, worked out, did a lot of target practice. I was ready.

  I took the time box back to 1461, at the end of July. I landed at night, high on the volcano at four in the morning, when Alpha would most likely be sound asleep—we had been taught that people sleep most soundly just before dawn. I told the time box to meet me in a few days, then watched as it winked out of sight. I found a good observation post and settled in.

  I covered one area of the island thoroughly, then dropped back in time to cover another. I played it cautiously, not wanting to go into buildings on the chance he might be there, and after six days of subjective searching I found him.

  He was leaving Agia Therasia on his patrol, still doing his job, keeping the principal sites under guard. Perhaps he was scared not to.

  I followed him for three days. He did not seem a happy man. He looked as if he had lost weight, and he had developed a new nervous twitch, always looking over his shoulder. He was staying in shape and doing a lot of target practice and martial arts, but his exercises seemed to lack conviction.

  Twice I trailed him to the villa. He worked a lot with his notebook and a pocket computer, obviously trying to find a way to go downStream and edit me without losing Scorsese in the process. He seemed very uncertain.

  Once I left him there and went through Agia Therasia to find where he was living. He’d rigged some booby traps, but I knew myself well enough to look for them and had no trouble. He was living in the three-storey Minoan complex, where he had a good view of the town. He had found a bed that fit him—evidently there was a Minoan giant in residence—but his belongings were disorganized, scattered around in a random way, as if his morale was suffering.

  At least he had indoor toilets.

  I had worked out a number of ways to get to him, but in the end I went into the Minoan building when he was away and drugged his water supply. After he was out I disarmed him, cuffed his hands, took his chronometer, cuffed his feet to his bed, and made some coffee for when he woke up. His eyelids began to twitch, and then they cracked open. When they focused on me I gave him a nod.

  “You’ll notice,” I said, “that I don’t call you Fubar.”

  “Piss off,” he said, without conviction, and shut his eyes again.

  “I’d drink this coffee if I were you,” I said. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.” He shook his head to clear it, then opened his eyes again, staring at me uncertainly from beneath his eyebrows, and reached his cuffed hands toward me. I handed him the coffee mug. He sipped it noisily.

  I waited patiently for caffeine and adrenaline to burn the drug away. Alpha looked at me levelly over the rim of the mug, saying nothing. Even considering the drug, he was more relaxed than seemed reasonable. He was slumped back against the wall behind his bed, perfectly at ease, showing no apprehension or curiosity. I began to wonder whether he had some trap set for me, but then I realized that what he was feeling was relief.

  The worst had happened. He didn’t have to worry any more.

  “You’ll be pleased to know,” I said, “that I’ve been following your advice. I’ve become a time criminal—a fairly modest one, but successful. I’ve stolen a number of pieces, and I’ve stowed them in places where they’re sure to turn up sooner or later. They’re hidden in places traceable to me, with my—our—fingerprints on them.

  “Only I know where they’re hidden. Therefore, only I am able to remove the evidence and prevent myself from being arrested, sooner or later, in our own time.”

  I paused and made sure that I had his attention. It seemed to me that I did.

  “Get it straight,” I said, “you’re not ever going back to our own time. If you did, you’d be arrested and tried by our friends, and the only way to explain how the evidence got there is to explain our duplication, and then they’d nail you for that.”

  I gave him a thin smile. “You know what they’re like,” I said.

  “You have plans for me, I assume,” Alpha said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

  So I told him. He listened carefully, scratching the bristles on his chin, and when I was done, he nodded. “I agree,” he said.

  I thought he might.

  “It may occur to you,” I said, “that the time thieves may make you a better offer than I have. I don’t think they’ll take a shine to you. Even if they help you get rid of me your status will make them nervous, and it won’t be long before they edit you.”

  “I guess,” he said.

  “Think about it,” I said. “You’ll see I’m right.”

  He said nothing, but I think he agreed with me.

  I cuffed his hands behind his back and then freed his feet. We left the town and moved up the slope of the volcano to where the time box would be waiting for us, then I strapped his chronometer to his shackled wrist, set coordinates, pressed his go-button, then jumped upStream myself.

  I cuffed him to the back of the time box, to staples I’d welded there. I had a cot, food, and a portable toilet for him, and for the long ride to the nineteenth century C.E. he was only slightly less comfortable than I was.

  I assumed that de La Tour had backup. Now, so did I.

  I steamed the Folly around the Peloponnese and set the autopilot to make circles beyond the horizon, off the Bay of Navarino, where fifty years downStream Greek independence had been won by the last wooden fleet to fight under sail. Then I waited for night and flew the time box to land.

  On Sphacteria, the island that filled the central mouth of the bay, the Athenian fleet and army had once trapped a Spartan army, forcing it to surrender and ending their claims to invincibility. A few miles farther inland the wise king Nestor had once built his palace and lived for five generations, until the Dorians burned the palace and drove him to exile in Athens. On the southern end of the bay, the Turks had watched from their giant Byzantine-built castle as their fleet was destroyed, and their rule in Greece ended.

  Alpha and I intended to make a little history ourselves.

  We looked like pinups for a mercenary journal, wearing brown-and-green camouflage body armor and tight-fitting caps pulled down over our hair. Our faces and hands were smeared with camouflage paint and our boots had camouflage spats. Our packs contained a three-day supply of water and concentrated rations for two weeks. On our belts were small personal communicators with an antenna that ran around our bodies, and connections for throat mics and for the mastoid receivers in our specs. I had a silenced pistol in my armpit and another in the small of my back, specs adjustable to day or night conditions, my rifle with its sniper attachments and self-powered night scope. I had knives on my belt, boot, and my left sleeve, and strangling wires threaded through my belt, collar, and bootlaces.

  I was so deadly it was ridiculous.

  Alpha was similarly equipped, minus the guns. And of course the fact his hands were cuffed behind his back tended to constrain his image.

  We landed the time box on the night of November 4, 1899, in a grove of tall pine. There was a gusty wind blustering in from the west, bringing the scent of the sea to mingle with the brisk pine odor. I took a pistol and shoulder holster from the storage compartment, picked up Alpha’s pack, and walked across the bed of pine needles to place them under a tree. Then I returned to the time box, drew one of my pistols, and pointed it at Alpha while I released his leg irons. Then I stepped backward, gestured him to the door, and with the pistol on him released his handcuffs.

  He rubbed his wrists and locked at me resentfully over his shoulder.

  “Was that absolutely necessary?” he asked.

  “You’d know better than I would,” I said. “There’s your pistol and your pack over there. You have three days to get in shape and get used to the weapon. I’ll be back at sunset, November 7, and I’ll expect you to have a thorough knowledge of the terrain and conditions of the island. When I get back, I’ll expect to see you reclining under that tree, with your pistol placed in plain sight at least ten feet away. Got that?”

  He nodded. “You’re not cutting me any slack, are you?” he asked. There was a forlorn sound to his voice.