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             Mister Justice
                        Doris Piserchia


                                     I

   Jan. 6, 2002: Three men named Darby, Scarpi and Olsen built a large
coal fire on a hilltop in Pennsylvania. The youngest man, Olsen, seemed
uneasy and frequently turned to look down the hill, as if he were expecting
to see someone.

  Time passed and the fire became a roaring cauldron.

  "How much longer do we have to wait?" said Olsen. "Are you sure he's
coming?" He was staring down the hill and didn't know that his two
companions were closing in behind him.

  They picked him up and threw him into the center of the flames. He
gave a hideous scream and died.

  The man named Scarpi took a handkerchief from his pocket and
rubbed at the coaldust on his hands. While he was cleaning himself, he
absently glanced toward his right. Suddenly he yelled.

  "Get that man."

  But there was no man. The hilltop was barren of shrubbery and so was
the slope for a quarter-mile around them. Scarpi finally decided that what
he had glimpsed was a mirage made by the heat of the fire. He couldn't
have seen a man crouching behind a small rock taking photographs of
them. His eyes had been playing tricks on him.




   Jan. 6, 2033: Two men named Scarpi and Darby rode in a black sedan
on a deserted road in the mountains of New York. They picked up a
hitchhiker along the way. An hour later, they rounded a bend in the road
and braked to a quick stop in order to avoid crashing into a fallen tree. A
man came walking out of the woods. He paused by the driver's door,
yanked it open and stuck a gun against Darby's head.

  "Get out," he said. He waved the gun at Scarpi who sat in the back seat:
"You, too."

  As the two climbed from the car, the stranger pasted a plastic seal on
the windshield. It was a small replica of the figure of Justice, except that
there was a difference. The figure had no blindfold across her eyes.

  The hitchhiker hid behind trees and followed the three into the woods.
He saw them climb a hill to where a large fire blazed. In horror he
watched as the stranger calmly shot Darby and Scarpi in the leg, picked
them up one at a time and threw them into the fire.




  That same day, New York City Police Department, Fifth Precinct;
delivered in the mail: photographs of Carl Scarpi and Jack Darby in the
act of murdering a man who was later identified as Philip Olsen. The
photography was clean, clear and professional. Included in the material
was a note telling the police where they would find the corpses of the
executed. The note was signed, "Mr. Justice."




   Feb. 15, 1997: In the basement of an abandoned tenement building in
New York City, Charles "Little Boy" Keys had an argument with a man
named Mace Lipton. The quarrel proceeded quietly with Keys doing most
of the talking. All at once he began making threats.
  "You can go to hell," said Lipton and made as if to leave.

   Keys took a gun from his pocket and shot him dead. Before he buried
the body in a hole in the floor, he cut off the right hand. This was wrapped
in tarpaper and mailed to Lipton's address.




   Feb. 15, 2033: A large carton wrapped in tarpaper was mailed to the
address of Charles "Little Boy" Keys. In the carton was his body. He had
been shot in the chest. New York City police received a folder in the day's
mail containing photographs of Keys shooting Lipton. Included in the
folder was a plastic seal bearing the figure of Justice. She wore no
blindfold.




   Nov. 1, 2033, New York City: A man named Toby Rook was arrested
and bound over for trial. Evidence indicated that he had committed
several murders. The newspapers did not mention that "several" meant
thirty. The police were aware that Rook had launched himself into his
profession at the age of sixteen when he stabbed his girlfriend to death.

   Rook had his trial. He was a man with friends. His impulsive character
dictated that people either liked him or hated him. Most of those who had
hated him were dead. During the trial, Rook showed the public the many
faces of his personality. Handsome, hot-tempered, arrogant, he spoke long
and earnestly of the various indignities he had suffered at the hands of the
police. His friends came forward with two alibis for every charge brought
against him. People already hostile toward the police began taking sides
with him. They talked about justice. The jury listened, doubted. They
looked at the handsome individual in the defendant's chair and their
doubts intensified.

  Rook was acquitted for lack of evidence. As he walked from the
courtroom, he thumbed his nose at the jury.




  Nov. 5, 2033, New York City Police Department, Eighth Precinct;
received in the day's mail: photographs of Toby Rook in the act of killing
twelve people. Included in the folder was a card signed by Mr. Justice. It
told the police where they would find Rook's body.

  He hung from the yardarm of a derelict boat in the East River, his own
knife in his heart.




   March 30, 1999, New York: A man named Jacob Levy walked down the
street and stopped to look in a store window. All at once he groaned and
grabbed at his stomach. In a few minutes his groans became shrill
screams. He died before the ambulance arrived. Poison had been dropped
into the coffee he drank at a cafe a short time before.




   March 30, 2034, the mountains of New York: A group of people met at
a private inn to wine, dine and discuss business. Their numbers were
twenty-three. Six of them had shrimp toast as an appetizer, the rest ate
egg-roll. As the dessert was being served, one of the guests who had eaten
shrimp toast began screaming in pain. The man beside him also
screamed. Then another.

  Six of the twenty-three died of poisoning.

  In a coffee can in the kitchen the police found a packet of tapes. They
played them and listened to the six poison victims conspiring to kill a man
named Jacob Levy. Also in the can was a plastic seal left by Mr. Justice.




  April 17, 1998, New York: Twelve men played poker in a garage. The
door suddenly burst open. Several hooded men ran in and sprayed the
room with machine-gun bullets.




   March 31, 2034, a New York mountain retreat: A group of people met
to wine, dine and discuss business. Their numbers were sixty-five. In the
midst of dinner a stranger came walking into the room. Clasped in his
hands was a machine gun. He stopped several yards away from the seated
group and calmly opened fire with his weapon.




  Fourteen of the group lived; not a hair of their heads was touched. The
rest were dead. The survivors swore the stranger had left the way he came,
through the open door. The lookouts swore just as vehemently that no one
could have gotten past them.

   Mr. Justice mailed material to the police: photographs of the mass
killing of twelve men in a garage thirty-seven years before, plus tapes
identifying forty-eight members of the group as having been involved in
the conspiracy to kill. The five who had done the actual shooting were
among the dead.




  April 5, 2034, New York Times, front page, a letter:



Mr. Justice,
You are a sick man in need of medical treatment. I
urge you to stop this insane vendetta of yours and surrender yourself
to the authorities. I promise that you will not be harmed.

  John F. Jenson

  Governor of New York




  April 9, 2034, New York City, Fifth Precinct Police Station: An
anonymous phone caller reported that a crime was being committed. The
police arrived at the docks and found three men beating another man with
chains. The attackers had guns. In the resulting shoot-out, two policemen
were killed. The three criminals were taken to jail. The jail was new and
was virtually impossible to escape from without assistance. Sometime
during the night the three killers got away.
  April 10, 2034: The police received an anonymous phone call. The
bodies of the escaped killers were found in an apartment. They had been
shot.




  April 11, 2034, New York Times front page, a letter:



Mr. Justice,
In the name of decency and sanity, stop your
killing and surrender yourself to the authorities. This country
neither needs nor wants your kind of justice. We have a skilled force
of people equipped to deal with criminals.
Any lawbreaker who is brought into an American
court will receive full dues according to the law.

  Clyde M. Sullivan

  President of the United States




  April 14, 2034, New York City: A dwelling was broken into and its five
residents were subjected to torture and death by persons unknown.




  April 15, 2034, a New York City Police Station: Found on the front lawn,
bound and gagged, two male and three female hippies along with
photographs of them torturing and murdering five persons the day before.




  Dec. 12, 2034, a New York court: The trial of the five hippies was
completed; the verdict was guilty. Empowered by the Unusually Brutal
Crime Amendment, the judge sentenced the defendants to death in the
gas chamber on 1 July 2034.

  The sentence was appealed. July 1 came and went. After the trial was
reviewed, a new date of execution was set for 3 September. The sentence
was appealed.

  September 3 came and went. After the trial was reviewed, a new date of
execution was set for January 5, 2035. The sentence was appealed.




  On January 5, 2035 a prison guard in the women's ward wheeled a cart
bearing dinner trays into a cell. She found the three female hippies lying
on the floor. In the men's ward the two male hippies were also found on
the floor. All were dead of cyanide gas. Somehow, someone had tampered
with their cigarettes.




  January 6, 2035, New York Times, front page, a letter:



Mr. Justice,
We apologize to the people of the world for your
behavior. We do not apologize for our courts. The due process of law
is often lengthy. We intend to improve this condition. Obviously you
possess a distorted sense of justice. Perhaps you also have no
patience. Would you care to try some?

  Clyde M. Sullivan

  President of the United States




  January 7, 2035, a New York City police station: A man, bound and
gagged, was found lying on the front lawn. The officer who discovered him
thought he looked familiar. To his horror he realized the man was Abner
Teech.
  The situation was embarrassing. Abner Teech was the Vice President.
Tied to his neck was a folder containing enough evidence to prove beyond
any reasonable doubt that he had committed extortion thirty years before
when he was an obscure politician.

  The police decided to leave it to the judge. One was quietly approached.
The judge decided that New York hadn't jurisdiction over Abner Teech
because his crime of extortion had been committed while he was a
resident of Washington, D.C. It was a technicality, to be sure, but Teech
was no common man and the law must be exact. The judge quietly
advised the Vice President to turn himself over to the authorities in
Washington, then he was set free.

  Teech didn't go to the police in Washington. He went home. The New
York police frowned, the judge who had handled the case frowned,
everyone involved frowned.




  January 10, 2036, Washington, D.C: Abner Teech was delivered, bound
and gagged, onto the front lawn of a police station. Tied about his neck
was a folder which contained evidence showing that fifteen years earlier
he had engaged in a conspiracy to pad construction contracts and had
made a profit of $50,000.

   It was an embarrassing situation. It was kept quiet. That same
afternoon Abner Teech walked the streets a free man. The evidence
against him had been misplaced and couldn't be located.

  That evening he was found bound and gagged on the front lawn of the
Supreme Court building. Around his neck was tied a folder. Its contents
revealed that five years ago he had financed eight loanshark companies
and had cleaned up to the tune of a million dollars.

  No one knew how it happened but the new evidence against the Vice
President was misplaced. He was not detained.




  January 12, 2036, a New York police station: Abner Teech walked in
and asked to be placed under arrest. He confessed to the crime of
extortion. No one but his lawyer learned immediately why he had given
himself up. Later everyone heard about it.

   According to Teech, he was having dinner alone in his home when a
man walked in. This in itself was startling since the house and grounds
were guarded by federal agents. Nevertheless the stranger came walking
into the dining room and sat down beside the Vice President.

   The man's face had an odd shiny material on it that kept the features
from coming into clear focus. Teech couldn't describe him other than to
say that he was tall and slender and had brown hair.

   The stranger had spoken calmly and quietly for a few minutes. Then he
had laid a small seal of Justice on the table, after which he stood up and
left the room. The federal agents were alerted at once. They searched the
house and grounds but found no one.

   Teech had thought it over before deciding to place himself in the hands
of the law. They at least knew what mercy meant. Mr. Justice didn't.
Teech was told that if he didn't publicly confess to at least one of his major
crimes he would be tried in some deserted spot by Mr. Justice, not for one
of his crimes but for all of them. His punishment would be the maximum
demanded by the law, imprisonment for the remainder of his life. Mr.
Justice said he would imprison Teech, that he would do it personally, that
the sentence would hold for as long as the Vice President lived and that he
would never again see daylight as a free man.

  Eventually Abner Teech was sentenced to seven years in a federal
penitentiary. More than once he was asked to describe the visitor who had
sent him running to the police. He tried, but there wasn't much that he
could say. Mr. Justice had sat in his dining room no more than four
minutes. He had spoken as if he were reading a grocery list; he inflected
no particular word or phrase. Though he had threatened, he had done it
impassionately. He obviously knew how to disguise his personality.

   How tall was Mr. Justice? About six feet. As for build, he was on the
slender side, but Teech had already mentioned that. Yes, he had seen the
hands. They were long and bony and the nails were trimmed and clean.
His hair? It was ordinary brown hair, straight and dark, combed back, no
sideburns to speak of. Why worry about the hands? No, they weren't
wrinkled, neither were they particularly smooth; they were just hands.
  The clothes? A brown flannel suit, white shirt, gray tie, no pin, no
handkerchief. Shoes? Teech hadn't noticed.

   The face? It had something on it, not a mask, something like gelatin or
plastic. It was shiny and Mr. Justice kept moving his head so that the light
bounced off it from different angles. It was impossible to describe the
features.

   What about the eyes? They were light blue. Lashes? Dark. Ears? Not
large but not small enough to attract special notice.

  Timbre of the voice? Pleasant, not high or scratchy, not too deep.
Accent? Teech wasn't enough of a linguist to be certain. Mr. Justice spoke
English like an educated American.

  It wasn't much to go on. Still, it was something. For three years there
had been nothing at all.




   New York City: Arthur Bingle, a young man old in subtlety and craft,
liked the gambling life. It was obvious to him and to everybody that Mr.
Justice wouldn't tolerate crime in New York. Lawns of police stations were
daily decorated with some bound and gagged criminal. Every few days a
body turned up with the seal of Justice sticking to it. Shady characters
were fleeing the state for safer pastures.

  But Arthur Bingle liked the gambling life. When he thought about Mr.
Justice, he did it with a quick smile and a slow shaking of his head. He
didn't think Justice would be captured as quickly as most people
predicted. The guy had a strong thing going for him.

  Shady operations were Bingle's bag. No one knew what his aspirations
were. He began by setting up a little numbers game. His friends advised
against it.

  "You don't understand Mr. Justice," Bingle said.

  "And you do?"

  "No, but I like to do what I please."
  The numbers game thrived. Bingle got away with it. His friends didn't
know why. Only Bingle knew. He also had a strong thing going for him.

  The city of New York was clean, so was the state. There was plenty of
grumbling over the fact. Law enforcement agents began to breathe a little
easier. It looked as if Mr. Justice had retired.




   July 14, 2037, Chicago: A group of people met on the top floor of a
swank hotel. Wining, dining and discussing business were on the agenda.
In the midst of dinner, a skylight above the table was suddenly heard to
roll open. Fifty heads raised to look at a man standing on the roof. In his
hands was clasped a machine gun.




                                    II


  Bailey. That was all they ever called him. Maybe he didn't have a first
name. It didn't matter. Bailey was the type who concerned himself with
important matters.

   He was big and scrubbed-looking. He wore a wig and good suits. His
eyes were gray and round and shining. His nose was long. His chest was
large, his belly was a washboard. He had a mouth like a double-edged
blade. He resembled a lawyer or a high-class pimp. Bailey smiled a great
deal but few associated the habit with humor. He had a high IQ. He was a
patriot. He was the tail that wagged the dog of Secret Service.

  Turner had a first name but no one used it, not even his wife. She was
number three. Turner had trouble empathizing with women. His bank
book showed a balance of $125,000. He seldom used any of it. Though
money was usually a means to an end, Turner required no more than he
made in the Service. An athlete in college, he didn't move these days
unless he had to. He had cracked the books and run all those downs so
that he could relax later. Now he had what he wanted and knowing it
didn't make him feel guilty.
  A man was nothing unless he was somebody in his own eyes. Youngsters
were awed by the idea of spies and undercover work. Turner was no
youngster but he was still awed by the same idea, which was why he was a
good agent, plus the fact that he had a high IQ and was a patriot.




  Thomas Burgess. Tom to his friends. He had two friends, Bailey and
Turner. Burgess was small and thin and gray. It was his observation that
people never did anything for nothing. A good look at a man's destination
would tell you what motivated him. Once you knew why he did something,
you had a piece of his background. Keep adding pieces and you backed
him into a hole he couldn't get out of without your spotting him.

  Burgess was extremely intelligent. He was a patriot. He was an agent in
the Secret Service.




  "This is the one I want," Bailey said. He smiled his meaningless smile
and tossed a paper onto the table. Turner snatched it up, glanced at it and
passed it on to Burgess. Sunshine came in the windows, glittered on the
chrome furniture, glittered on the plastic walls, glittered on the
perspiration beading Bailey's forehead like strands of pearls.

   Burgess looked at the paper and then looked up. "You're joking. This kid
is twelve years old."

  Bailey was a professional smiler. He could do it even when enraged.
"What else have you learned about him? You spent forty seconds reading."

  The expression on Burgess' face didn't change. "Middle class, mama
and papa, no sibs, an I.Q. to knock your eye out, medical prognosis
predicts he'll live to one-ten barring bullets, slashes, drowning or
bludgeoning."

  "You plan on taking your time," said Turner. He regarded Bailey with
curiosity. "Ten, fifteen years?"

  "Maybe," said Bailey. He smiled at Burgess. "Notice his SP?"
  "Strength-potential maximum. He'll be as strong as a bull. So what?
He'll be using his brains, not his muscles."

  "But twelve," said Turner. "For God's sake, Bailey—"

  "Yes?"

  Turner stared, shrugged, remained silent.




  They had him a week and he seemed all right, and then he began to cry.
He kept it up. "Take him home," said Bailey.

  They tried again in a month. This time he lasted three weeks.

  "What the hell makes him bawl?" snarled Turner.

  "He isn't used to being among adults." The dry little voice of Burgess
was positive but his expression wasn't.

  "He isn't afraid," said Bailey.

  Turner glared at him. "Then what is it?"

  "Principles."

  "What the hell does that mean? Kids are always patriotic."

   The smile on the blade-like lips grew even more cruel. "How would you
feel if you were twelve years old and knew that some day you were going to
kill Superman?"

  Turner's eyes narrowed. "You give him that much credit? You think a
kid can figure things like that?"

  "I wouldn't have chosen him if he couldn't."

  "That's it," Burgess murmured. "You've hit it on the nose."

  "Shut up," said Bailey. His eyes were on Turner. "You didn't answer my
question."
  Turner frowned. "Someone has to do it."

  "Would you like the job if you were a kid?"

   "Hell, I'm no kid." There was a hint of blustering in Turner's voice. "We
know goddamn well Justice isn't Superman. He's a killer just like Capone
or Dillinger."

  "You think so stupid you make me sick," said Bailey.

   The big brown eyes of Turner widened, then darted toward Burgess and
fastened on the shrunken face. "What is this? Damn both of you, you're
always talking in riddles. You do it on purpose. But this time I'm not
falling for any kidding. We're going to string Justice up by his thumbs
because he has it coming. He's a killer. He breaks laws. He's for mob rule.
You can't take the law into your own hands. It's dangerous. Let one man
get away with it and the first thing you know civilization goes down the
drain."

  As Turner dropped the words, he examined the two faces in front of
him. Bailey's desire shone like a banner. Then there was Burgess. A dry
man. Just dry. Secretive, calm, knowing. But old Bailey wanted to string
up Justice.

  For some reason Turner found himself asking a why to that last
thought. Why did Bailey want Justice? Well, first of all, it was his job. No,
that was a hell of an answer. Bailey did most of his work by rote. This
Justice thing was like a crusade. Why? It wasn't as if the opposition had
never been tough. There had been plenty of wily ones.

   Turner went on thinking. Bailey was afraid. Okay, who wasn't? The idea
of a vengeful Superman was enough to make anyone afraid. Jealousy?
Well, that was no crime. Bailey had enough ego for ten people.

  Turner tried to abandon the ego idea and go on to something else in his
analyzing. He found he couldn't. He was hung up on ego and Bailey.
Something… something… couldn't snag it.

   So, all right, what about Burgess? Little old dry man of forty, thinking
his quiet thoughts. Was there any fear there? No, none. Burgess wasn't
afraid of Justice. He just wanted him.
   How much did Burgess want Justice? Turner began to perspire.
Empathize and what did you get? A sensation of murkiness emanating
from dry Burgess. But God, how the man wanted Justice.

   Bewildered, he clung to the aura coming from the man seated alongside
of him, grappled with it and tried to probe deeper. A great deal of emotion
existed in Burgess and nobody would ever believe it to look at him.

  Why? Turner suddenly didn't want the answer. Almost against his will
he continued probing the thick aura with his inner antennae. And
encountered…

   He recoiled in disgust. Good God, who in his right mind would ever
associate evil with Burgess? There must be something wrong with his own
intuitive sense.

  Almost desperately he let a part of himself dive into the heavy shroud
around the little gray man. Again he withdrew, this time in shock. He
hadn't been wrong. The evil was there.

  He was startled to find himself standing in the middle of the room.
These two were the best friends he had, but Bailey was Ego and Burgess
was Evil.

  The perspiration on his neck became a trickling down his back. In
college everyone had called him innocent. I am innocent, he thought in
dazed wonder. I want Justice because he's a killer of killers, Bailey wants
him because Bailey is jealous, Burgess wants him because Burgess is evil,
the kid cries because Justice is Superman.

  He knew he wouldn't last. He was innocent. He was looking but he
wasn't seeing. Why? Why couldn't he see what they saw? They had gone to
the same schools in the same country, eaten the same philosophies, grown
up and taken the same kind of job.

    His hands clenched into fists. They shouldn't do it. They were using the
job to indulge their own neuroses. That wasn't what patriotism was.
Dammit, he wasn't a complete fool, he knew this country wasn't God's
blessing to the peons, but it was the best there was and he would work for
it to his last breath, only… they shouldn't do it for those reasons.

  "This is getting us nowhere," said Burgess. He wore a little smile. "We
have to think of the boy. If he relates Mr. Justice with Superman, we'd
better start drilling some loyalty into—" Burgess broke off because Bailey
was staring at him in an odd way. Maybe Burgess had intended that.

   "I'll have your jobs," said Bailey. "I'll have your skins. Don't either of you
ever say anything like that again. Don't even think it. You're treading on
dangerous ground. Foul this up and I'll have your"—he raised his fist and
slammed it down on the table and his expression didn't change as he said
the last two words—"rotten lives."

  Turner was a wilted thing feeling for his chair. Burgess got up and
sedately paced. He kept his eyes on Bailey. "Give it to us in first-grade
grammar. I thought this was a three-man project."

 "This is a project without any men. There is only one boy. It's all his.
We're staying out of it."

  Turner opened his teeth and croaked, "Why?"

   "This has nothing to do with country or creed. Try to cram that down
his throat and he'll walk out."

  "If we don't encourage him—" Burgess began mildly.

  "As if anything you or I or God thinks will make any difference to him."

  "He'll be so lonely," Turner muttered.

  The fist of Bailey rose and fell on the table. His eyes seemed to dim, then
they assumed their normal sterile brightness. "Impetus. That's all we're
good for."

  Burgess: "You hope."

  Turner: "Why do we need him?"

  Bailey's smile was a soundless snarl. "We planted a seed over a month
ago. It's been sprouting since the first week."

  "When he began to cry." Turner looked at the floor. "We told him why
we wanted him and in a week he started to cry."

  "What do we do now?" said Burgess. "Shall we bring him back?"
  Bailey looked at neither of them. "We leave him alone."

  "How long?" Burgess was frowning.

  "Until he comes to us."

  "What if he doesn't?"

  "He will."

  "He's so young," said Turner.

  Bailey scratched his crotch and ignored both of them. He started to get
up and changed his mind. "Goddammit, Mr. Justice won't be brought
down accidentally. For five years every gun in the country, legal and illegal,
has been hunting him and nobody has found him. Tell me how many guns
that is. How many brains? How many plots and plans? How many hours
out of lives?"

  "They won't catch him," said Burgess.

  Turner looked at them and his eyes were wounded. "Why haven't they
caught him?"

   "Because he's Superman," said Bailey. "Only his own kind are a match
for him."

  "That isn't the answer," said Turner. "I don't know what the answer is,
but that isn't it."

  Bailey and Burgess stared at each other.




  He was fourteen. His name was Daniel Jordan.

   "I have to go away," he said to his father. They sat on a hill overlooking
a river. Behind them, a field sent ripe smells onto the four winds. There
were trees and bushes with berries on them, mice in holes, flowers existing
like musical notes heard by no one, except that now and then someone
heard and experienced the rapturous agony of the mind saying, "This
belongs to me for now."
  Love life because that's all there is? No, love it because death,
nonexistence, pain, apathy, flight are not its opposites, because they do
not present an alternative. Please, God, I don't know what to do.

  "For how long?"

  "I don't know. I'm not certain I want to go."

  "It's for the country."

  The young head turned. "Do you love me?"

  "How can you ask that?" came the sharp whisper.

  "It will be dangerous." Putrid thing, whining in low levels. Somebody
help me.

  "Without the strong, everyone dies," said Jordan, and his gaze was on
the river. After a long silence, he said, "I love you."

   Daniel heard with his ears, heard with his mind, banked the concept
and tone, frequently referred to that isolated cache of memory in the years
to come. It took all those years before he finally understood.

  Two days later he walked into Bailey's office.

  "I'm here."

  He never came to like Bailey, but he met only one other man for whom
he had more respect.

  Bailey made him think of a diamond with skin on the outside. Scratch
away the skin and there were timelessness and immunity, impenetrable
non-surface and non-depth.

  Bailey hadn't said anything right away that first day. Only after a long
while had he spoken. Then he said, "Why?"

  "I don't know yet."

  "Yes, you do."

  "Go to hell."
  They sent him to SPAC. It was a school fifty miles from his home and he
hadn't known it existed.

  The school was free. All one had to do to get in was be a freak. Wasn't
that what you called a person whose IQ could be matched or bettered by
no more than one-tenth of one percent of the world's population?

  You called him gifted? Oh.

   Nobody told him what to do, nobody came around to see if he were
alive. He found an empty room in a dormitory and moved in. To keep from
starving he had to sit down with an unmarked map of the campus and
figure out the most logical place for a cafeteria to be situated.

   The school staff didn't do things like this as a game. They took it for
granted that a student could find what he needed. Maps were unmarked.
Where else would a building or a closet or a concept be located but in its
logical orbit?

  Somewhere, he supposed, his name was on a roster. He consulted his
map and decided that most of the buildings contained classrooms, then he
went on to guess that the buildings were not segregated as to subjects
taught. For instance, all the math classes wouldn't be held in one building.
Why make a thing simple when complicating it was simple? It took him a
month to visit every room on the campus.

   There were fifty students in SPAC: six Americans, six Russians, one
German, one Frenchman, one Puerto Rican, eight Israelis, two Africans,
three Chinese, two Japanese, one Indian, two Eskimos, one Swiss, one
Pole, one Brazilian, one Argentine, four Egyptians, two Mexicans, one
Italian, three Australians, three British.

  Twenty-six of the fifty were male, twenty-four were female. One of the
females, the Swiss, was eleven years old. She cried a great deal. One of the
Chinese was seventy-two. He had been at SPAC for thirty years.

  The Africans had more energy than anybody. The Russians were the
most reticent. The Americans—four Caucasians, one Indian, one
Negro—were the most heterogeneous. The Australians were wry, the
Mexicans amiable, the Israelis homogeneous, the Chinese patient, the
Italian lonely, the Frenchman verbose, etcetera.

   They lived in any dormitory they pleased. Sometimes the adults had
intimate relations, but not often. The focused eye of the mind, it occured
to Daniel Jordan, bored too keenly for flesh to deflect it.

   It was a healthy group. Except for the little Swiss girl, all were older
than Daniel, though some were not much older. There was Pi Stavros, a
seventeen-year-old Russian who sometimes struggled from his reticence
long enough to be anxious. He gravitated toward Daniel and began
following him.

  "I do it because I'm afraid," he confessed one day.

  "Of what?"

  "How do we know they're right? Can anyone be infallible?"

  "Explain," said Daniel.

  "They give us no standards. Can a man live without them? Can he
function alone? We are the only people in the world who live as we please.
What if they're wrong?"

  "Who are you afraid of disappointing?"

  "That isn't it," Stavros said and sounded anxious. "I have no creed, no
country, no root. I've been shoved from the boat and I suppose I'm
swimming, but am I? Maybe I'm drowning."

  "A dead or dying person doesn't eat as much as you do."

  "That's partly why I follow you. In a place like this you can make a joke.
You are an extrovert."

  "I'm the worst introvert you ever saw."

  Stavros leaned forward and peered intently at the young face, drew back
and chuckled. "That doesn't compute."

  "It wouldn't if you were a machine."
  "But aren't we machines?"

  "Not me. I'd rather wade in mud puddles than collect facts."

  Stavros looked startled. "Then why are you here?"

  "Mud puddles and SPAC represent the highest achievements man can
realize. Both make him delirious."

  "Are we talking about the same thing?"

  "You'll stop following me when you know that we are."

  "I believe you're a hedonist."

  "Damn right."

   There were no class schedules. The lowest levels of study were just
barely within Daniel's span of comprehension. Often a classroom had only
one student in it. At times there were none, in which case the instructor
waited for someone to appear. When a student did come in, the instructor
began his lesson, one of a series he had planned long before, and he
proceeded from one to the next in the series whenever he had an audience.
He never covered old material, never questioned his students'
preparations or qualifications, never deviated from his lesson plan. A
student who wished to study, say, physics, discovered which level fitted his
present stage of learning and went off in search of a classroom where the
instructor was on or near that level. He could always find one.

   Daniel concentrated on mathematics and psychology for a while. He
soon abandoned psychology and took up philosophy. He added a
smattering of physics. There were no examinations, no field trips; there
were plenty of films and the completely equipped laboratories were open
at all times.

   "You don't know any languages," Pi Stavros once pointed out to him.
The Russian was in the final stage of his syndrome of following footsteps.
Soon he would fade away and become someone Daniel occasionally passed
in the halls.

  "I speak eight."
  "But you aren't expert in them."

  "How many things can I be expert in?"

  Stavros looked pained. He spoke condescendingly. "I'm older than you. I
know the sciences demand too much memorizing. If you concentrate on
the humanities, your mind will develop more quickly. You will receive a
broader education all around."

   "I don't care if I get a broad education. I just want to do the things I
like."

 "You had better learn to control that hedonistic bent of yours. What
makes you think you're living to enjoy it?"

  Daniel laughed. "You sound just like the Italian."

  "You don't sound like anyone."




                                     III


  The little Swiss girl took to following him around. Her name was Pala.

  "All those foreigners frighten me," she said one day.

   She sat on his bed with her head on her knees. Her own room was on an
upper level, but she was rarely in it. Usually she roamed the halls or
loitered in the cafeteria and ate peanut-butter sandwiches. If someone
came near, she pretended to be annoyed and hurried away. If anyone
spoke to her, she began to cry.

  She was crying now, softly, absently, as other people breathed, with no
conscious effort. Her companion was a box of Kleenex.

  "I'm a foreigner," said Daniel.

  "You're a human. Humans have no nationality."
  He hadn't been doing anything important, not that it would have
mattered to her. She always came in at a moment's notice without
knocking and if he were in his underwear she didn't apologize or go away
but took the handiest seat and proceeded to watch him with profound but
sad interest. He thought about locking the door, yet he never did.

  The room wasn't small. He had a bed, a desk, a bureau, a TV, a lounge
and bathroom. Everything was neat except for the desk which was littered
with paper and books. Now he sat in a swivel chair before the desk and
doodled.

  "What are you studying?" he said.

  "Nothing."

  He got up and went into the bathroom, ran some hot tap water into two
cups, dumped teabags in them and carried them out. Pala laid her box of
Kleenex aside and accepted a cup. She held it with the tips of her fingers.
He thought she looked like a bleary-eyed swami examining a crystal ball.

  "Nothing?" he said.

  "Yes. The contradiction."

  "Oh."

   "I'm an orphan," she said, and when he admitted that this was news to
him she actually began to talk. "That's why I cry all the time. I'm looking
for the home hatchery. It's a fixation kind of thing that everyone has but
eventually gives up as hopeless. It's part of that Nothing, that
contradiction, which I'm studying. There is no hatchery, there's no
incubator. Man is alone and he can't bear to admit it. There's no nest to
which he can return."

  "Do you like your tea?"

  She dipped her head and peered into the cup as if it had asked the
question. "It's delicious. It's very human of you to—"

  She burst into tears.

  After a few minutes she quieted, "I have to go now." She crawled off the
bed with care but still managed to slop tea on the cover. Taking the cup
into the bathroom and putting it in the sink, she came out again and
started for the door.

   "Maybe you should choose another subject and leave Nothing alone,"
said Daniel.

  She paused. "What did you have in mind?"

  "Maybe you should study Something."

  "It isn't abstract enough."

  "Are you sure?"

  She laid an arm on the edge of the open door, leaned her head against it
and began to cry.

  He said, "I live in Kenyon. It's about fifty miles away. Would you
consider it abstract if I invited you to go home with me for a three-day
holiday?"

  She choked on a sob, blew her nose and looked at him with red eyes.
"That would be very abstract."

  "Do you want to go?"

 Hiding her face in her arm, she peeped at him from under it. "Is your
mother the clinging type?"

  "Not with boys. I don't know how she'll behave with a girl."

  He didn't know that his invitation meant he was acquiring a roommate.
He took her home with him and she had her first taste of family life.

 "I like them," she said on the train going back to SPAC. "Especially your
mother."

  "Ummm."

  "Your father is—"

  "Yes?"
  "A contradiction there. A confusing type. Very warm and generous,
but—"

  "Really?"

   As he slept that night, he dreamed of his dog. It had died years ago but
his dreaming mind remembered its warm body.

  He awoke in the morning to find a snoring Pala beside him.

  She explained to him, with an expression of hopelessness, that it was
another fixation.

   Why her presence brought him grief he didn't know. He wanted to kick
her out, but he didn't. Was it charity that made him take her into his bed
every night as a child took a teddy bear, or was it because the warm lump
beside him almost thawed a frozen spot in his mind? He reasoned that if it
were the latter, he was accepting her for the same reason a person ate food
or read a book: he was getting something out of it.

  It wasn't embarrassing, which proved that logic wasn't the
cut-and-dried thing it was supposed to be. Everybody in the dorm was
perfectly aware that she walked into his room every night promptly at nine
and emerged every morning at eight. He wondered if they wondered.

   Eventually he stopped wondering. SPAC was an asylum of freaks and he
was one of the inmates. Pala sleeping with him was no weirder than, say,
the old Chinese who had nothing in his room but a coffin in which he slept
because he wanted death to know he wasn't a coward. Or take the
Japanese who always waited until the cafeteria was full in the morning
before he came in with his quart bottle of milk and fish. Maybe he knew
the sight of the fish floating in the yellow cream upset occidental
stomachs. Maybe he didn't, but he did the same thing every morning.

  Poor Pala was a kitten whose psyche had been wounded because
someone dumped her out to starve. Daniel seemed to have become her
bowl of milk. More accurately, he was her mother. There were times when
he thought she might be becoming his father. None of it was logical.

  Holding the warm body against him at night, he would stare into the
darkness and wonder. She snored and her toenails scratched his legs, she
took more than her share of space, she wasn't friendly with him during the
day. In fact, he rarely saw her. The few times he passed her in the halls, he
noticed that she wasn't crying. He suspected that the whole thing
impressed him far more than it did her, yet he knew the truth had to be
exactly the opposite. Fear had driven her to him. Had it been hers or his?

   Practically speaking, she was a pain in the neck. He was a young man
and she was a girl, and there was such a thing as modesty. She had never
heard of the word. He knew it would have been more sensible to kick her
out and invite one of the women to be his roommate. That would earn him
a horselaugh but at least there would be logic to it.




  For Daniel growth came slowly; he was fifteen and in love with
psychology and Pala. The instructor had something to do with the first.

  One morning he took a good look at Golden Macklin and suddenly
began to grin. A tailor and a barber could have done wonders for the
character sitting behind the desk in the classroom. Even the eyebrows
were shaggy. There didn't seem to be anything about Macklin that
couldn't have used a little upkeep. The whole of him looked incongruous,
something like an elegant dude caught wearing a dirty cowboy hat.
Somewhere along the line, Macklin had been meant to look elegant.
Maybe it was his face that created such an impression. It would never be
anything but aristocratic: broad forehead, thin nose, faintly hollowed
cheeks, severe blue eyes, mouth at ease. The mind here was always hard at
work; the eyes gave that fact away.

   The man didn't return the grin. He sat with his chin on his hand and
examined his pupil. There were the usual two arms and legs, etcetera, but
the boy was a little too big, a little too pretty, a little too bright, a little…
freakish?

  Macklin gave a grunt. "No crackerbarrel philosophy was ever worth a
dime. You know why?"

  "No."

  "Too tolerant."

  "This is a psychology class."
  "I never teach anything but philosophy."

  "Can Kant do anything for a neurotic?"

  "No, but I can," said Macklin.

  Daniel sat back and stretched out his legs. "Okay, go ahead."

   There were weeks when he never entered a classroom. He had a crush
on the gym. Barbells, punching bags, parallel bars, rings, swimming,
track—these he came to know ultimately. Had anyone reminded him that
he had a brain, his response would probably have been, "Who needs it?"

  Golden Macklin's wife was dead and he had no children. He took Daniel
with him to his mountain retreat for a vacation.

   Like the backwoods of West Virginia, no one had set foot in the place
since the dawn of man. On summer days it baked in the sun and in winter
.the snow piled up around it like cliffs. The walls of the cabin were made of
logs a foot in diameter; so perfectly did they match that only the corners
were patched. The roof was tin. Inside was a frontier-style house. An alien
or an amnesiac would have said the year was somewhere in the eighteenth
century if it hadn't been for the food cache in the cellar and the magazines
on the bookshelves.

  "How did you ever find this place?" said Daniel.

  It was early morning and they were fishing in a lake. The air was cold.
The canoe bottom was wet and froze his feet. Through the trees he could
see the sun coming up. A mist rose from the water and gave the area a
ghostly quality. Nothing was real. Neither was anything threatening. The
sounds of the rods rapping against the canoe fled across the lake surface
and echoed on the trees. As he stared at the rising mist, terror came. His
heart picked up its pace. It happened so fast that he shrank. A thought
had flashed through his mind: a human life was like a person sitting in a
canoe on a lake. The mist was the unknown, full of enemies and emotion,
swirling up to engulf the sitter. How would he survive with so many
unseen things threatening? What defenses could he develop against the
threats? His ego was raw and open and there was no one to stand between
him and the danger. He was alone and vulnerable in a cave of creatures
who peered at him through savage eyes.
   His own eyes were wild. All the menace of the cave seemed to have
collected in front of him. Perhaps he would have stood up and thrown
himself from the canoe if he hadn't jerked upright and suddenly met the
gaze of the man seated facing him. Golden Macklin's eyes were all he saw.
Between them passed one long glance that might have been carved in
stone.

   Panic beat in Daniel's throat like twin hammers. He was experiencing
his first real fear of life. But it wasn't just that, was it? His life wouldn't be
ordinary, but it couldn't be just that.

   The eyes set in stone held his. He didn't speak but the cry flashed from
his mind and he saw the eyes receive the message and understand it.

  Help me.

  No.

  The reply rocked him. There was no nest to which one could return, no
haven, no hatchery. Each man was alone and who was there who could
bear it? There were, after all, no choices to be made. One simply began
walking and tried to understand everything which he passed.

   He felt himself being transported back to Earth. His fear was gone.
There was much here that was real. A man in tune with his environment
was the realest thing in existence. Golden Macklin hadn't shaved in three
days. Though he had bathed in the lake, he hadn't changed his clothes. He
looked like a grizzled trapper, a tough-eyed prospector, a panhandler
down on his luck, a genius who had stuck out his tongue at schoolbooks.

  Daniel smiled faintly. Never again would he respect charity. Someone
had helped him by refusing to help him. He had been hauled upright and
planted on his own two feet where he belonged. He wasn't mud clinging to
the boots of someone better, he wasn't a hitchhiker — because someone
had listened to his fear, known where it led and turned a cold ear to it.

   "I needed a home away from home," said Macklin. "We all do, so I
scrounged and found this."

  "Do you own all this land?"

  "Been in my wife's family for years. Anytime you want to come here,
don't hesitate."

  "Why me?"

  "There will be times when you'll want to get away. No matter if you do
the most exciting or the dullest work in the world, you'll need a vacation
now and then."

  They caught no fish but it didn't matter.




  Pala seemed pleased to see him when he returned. "I didn't mind your
going away. Did you think I would?"

  "I forgot to think about it. Did you sleep here or in your room?"

  "Here. You left your aura behind and it was thick enough to hold onto."

  "This fixation of yours—"

  Plastered on his back like an extra layer of skin, she said sleepily, "Don't
worry about it, I'm working on a solution."




  He wrote to Bailey and asked for the originals of all the photographs.

  "My God, he might lose them," said Turner.

  "I think he's at the voyeur stage," said Burgess.

   "Why don't you bastards get out of my hair and go run down a lead?"
said Bailey and mailed the photographs.

   Daniel didn't open the package when it came. He put it on the top shelf
in his closet and covered it with textbooks. A week went by before he
visited the computer section of SPAC. It was the least-used section in the
school. Most of the time he was the only one there.

  The section had no instructor. One of the machines had an
"Information" label on it and he asked it where he could find material on
the professions. It referred him to another machine which in turn referred
him to another. This process continued until he found the one he wanted.
Someday he would have to find better computers.

  "List the names of the world's top photographers for the last twenty
years."

  The machine provided him with a list of forty names.

  "Give me the names for the last fifteen years."

  The list shortened to twenty.

  "I want the top twelve names for the last ten years."

   He compared the final list of twelve names with the other lists. Seven of
the names appeared on all of them. He could have asked the machine for
one name, the best of all, but he didn't. The man he was after was the best,
but the machine might not know it. People made mistakes and the
computer would repeat them. Conceivably his man was not even one of the
seven. He didn't really consider this as a possibility. The light was always
there and sometimes the bushel was an afterthought that occurred too
late.

   He withdrew volumes of photography publications from the Records
Library. Each page of the volumes was set into a plastic frame and he
removed the pictures he wanted and made seven separate stacks. He
didn't look for anything as elusive as degree of ability because he wasn't
trained to recognize it. What he concentrated on was technique., and that
was easy. The seven had contrasting styles that became obvious when one
thought of theme.

  The first photographer captured his subjects a moment after some
action had taken place. His people experienced letdowns. Their eyelids
were lowered, their bodies were twisted in relaxed angles and in a moment
they would go to sleep.

  Another liked to see things that were in retreat. His subjects drifted
away with liquid motions. Everything in reality came and then passed
onward. Only the passing was significant.

  Flowers were popular with the third photographer. They were his
symbol of life, and he saw their shapes and colors in buildings. Sunflowers
clustered around boulevards, smokestacks in the shape of weeds
threatened delicate violet-like cottages. The ecologist protested the
destruction of his symbol.

   Quo Vadis piqued the mind of the fourth. Always there were two
travelers, on a road, in a boat, climbing a mountain, ascending stairs, two
going somewhere. One deliberately stayed a brief distance behind the
other. His expression was one of curiosity. He wondered which way his
companion would go when he reached the fork ahead.

   Nihilism was evident in the work of the fifth. He saw the aged and
marred. Skulls with burning eyes in them, imbeciles with drooling
mouths, coffins filled with skeletons, and always in each picture was a slap
in the face in the form of something newly born. Sometimes this was an
infant, at other times it was the ghost of a smile on the dead.

  The sixth was in love with love. Couples, joy, sadness, parting, reuniting,
the pictures told and retold the oldest story in the world.

  The seventh was the youngest. In plastic, from flesh, he reincarnated the
work of Michelangelo, but where the ancient master had seen nobility, this
modern artist beheld sensuality. His men and women were mighty in body
but meek in spirit.

  Daniel studied all the photographs before he had Pala study them.

  "I like love," she said wistfully and handled the beautiful bodies with
care.

  "You are neurotic. That's sex, not love. Love is in the sixth stack."

  "Holding hands?"

  "The hand has more nerves in it than any other part of the body."

  "Any?" she said in surprise.

 Daniel swung around and looked at her. "What's that supposed to
mean?"

  "Mind your own business. Why are you so nosy? What makes you think
everything I say has a double meaning? Why can't I say something—"

  "Look at this batch by Quo Vadis. See what an unearthly glow that haze
puts on all his work?"

  "What glow? What haze?"

   He sat at his desk until midnight and looked at the pictures taken by
the man he thought of as Quo Vadis. Joe Gentry. Pala saw no cloudy mist
over the pictures. She detected no softening of detail because of that clever
cloak the photographer had hidden his subjects behind. But it was there
and Daniel could see it with no trouble. Now and then he lost it if he
stared at it too long, but all he had to do to find it again was shift his
glance for a few seconds. It was subtle, almost an optical illusion, but Pala
should have been able to see it.

  Quo Vadis. He could be mistaken about that. The theme might be idle
curiosity about the quirks of human personality. Which road will you
choose? How much portent was there in that question?

  "Move the lamp a bit more to the left so the light shines through your
hair," said Pala. She lay under the blankets and watched him. He moved
the lamp and looked at another picture.

  "You shouldn't get a haircut so often," she said. "You'd look wonderful
with a shaggy mop."

  "Too hot."

  "Beauty requires sacrifice."

  "Why?"

  "With a little sweat you could be a stuffed shirt. You should try to be
more natural. You're developing defense mechanisms and practically all
those things are ugly."

  He looked around in surprise. "Since when am I getting any?"

   "You're using them right now. Instead of looking straight at me, you're
looking at the wall. Instead of coming to bed you're pretending to be
interested in pictures. I know why you have them, but you already know all
you're going to learn about them. The fact is you're stalling. You don't
want to sleep with me anymore. You wish I'd scram."

  "You're a little liar which means you may be guilty of what you're
accusing me of."

   She pushed the blanket down a bit in order to see him better. "Maybe
so. I have problems."

  "Anything I don't know about?"

  "You don't know everything about me."

  "For instance?"

  "My physical needs, for instance. Right now I have to go to the
bathroom."

   He looked at the pictures and listened to her tumble out onto the floor,
heard her go into the bathroom and come out again, waited for the sounds
of her getting into bed.

  "Sometimes I think—"

  He didn't turn around. "Since when have you taken to sleeping nude?"

  "Remember when I told you I was working on a solution to my fixation
problem?"

  "Yes."

  "Notice anything different about me?"

  He still didn't turn. "It's about time. You're twelve now."

  "That isn't all. I jumped all the way into puberty last week."

  "Fine."

  "I figure in a couple of months I'll have a pretty good figure."

  "It'll take at least that long." Slowly he swung the chair about. The
lampshade cast a shadow across her face, but he knew she wasn't smiling.
  "I'm for you and you're for me, right?"

  "Yes," he said.

  "Never mind all that stuff about fixations. It was love."

  "Partly. Fear, too."

  "I'm not afraid anymore."

  "Neither am I," he said.

   "I'm not convinced of that. What would you do if something happened
to me?"

  "Or vice versa?"

  "I couldn't stand it for a while, but I think I could hold on somehow.
Could you?"

  "I never tried experiencing death."

  She came over to him and touched him on the shoulder. "You see?"

  "Of course."

  "I know how you can be safe. Burn all those pictures, including the
package in your closet. Don't write any more letters to that man Bailey.
We'll go away from SPAC and get jobs washing dishes. We'll hide from our
brains for the rest of our lives and that way you won't be afraid."

  "And let him get away."

  Her fingers tightened on his shoulder. "They say he's cleaning up the
world, that he only kills lice. I wouldn't care if he killed them all. But one
day he'll make a mistake and kill something that doesn't crawl."

  "Me?"

  "Tell Bailey to go to hell," she said.

  He drew a deep breath, shuddered and sat up straight. "Go to bed."
  She moved around the chair, stood between his knees and drew his face
against her. As he touched his cheek to one small breast, he felt a sob
gather in his throat.

  "I usually don't care what people think of me," he said. "But I think I'd
hate it if they thought I was a cradle robber."

  She released him and stepped back. She walked to the bed and looked
over her shoulder at him. "Can we at least neck a little? I want to know
what a French kiss feels like."

  There was one kiss that lasted three minutes and then they fell asleep.

  She woke him up screaming.

  "God, God," she gasped when he finally got her awake and she realized
where she was.

  "A nightmare?"

  "A dilly."

  "Want a cup of tea?"

  "Please."

  He lay on his side and watched her while she drank it.

  "I can't scratch my toe without slopping this on the bed," she said.

  "Which one?"

  "Left foot, third."

  He scratched for her.

  "I read something interesting last week," she said. "About the Ridleys."

  "The name sounds familiar. Wasn't there something mysterious about
them?"

   "Charles Ridley performed illegal experiments on four babies,
artificially increased their intelligence. He got sent to jail for it and his
claim that the kids were geniuses was discounted. They were given a lot of
tests and came out average. But they lied."

  "They were geniuses?"

  "The reporter who wrote the article says they were more than that."
Pala had finished her tea and now she set the cup on the floor and slid
under the covers. "You want to hear about my nightmare?"

  He turned out the light.

  "I was standing on a seesaw. Its fulcrum was the world. God, what a
sensation. Over my head were black space and faraway stars and under
me was Earth. That damned seesaw kept tipping. It didn't move fast,
otherwise I'd have fallen off, but I kept sliding. First I'd be headed
downward and then I was stuck up the other way, far out in space."

  "This isn't the first time you've screamed in your sleep."

  "You're kidding."

  "Once a week on the average, sometimes more often."

  "That settles it. I'll see a psychiatrist. I don't mind other people keeping
secrets from me but I won't tolerate myself doing it."

   He waited until long after she started snoring before he got out of bed.
Taking the package from the closet shelf, he went into the bathroom,
switched on the light and stood looking down at the brown wrapping. His
feet froze and his head ached. He wanted to throw the package in the
wastecan.

   He untied the string with stiff fingers, tore the paper open and took a
quick glance at the top picture. Swiftly he slapped the wrapping in place,
returned the package to the closet and went back to bed. In a little while
he got up again. He laid the pictures out on his desk. A few minutes
passed and then he climbed in beside Pala and lay shivering. The pictures
Bailey had sent him had a filmy pink haze across them.




                                     IV
  "Mr. John Ridley?"

   The man in the doorway had looked ordinary and pleasant but his
expression underwent a sudden change. Graying at the temples, he was
still a young man, but he grew old in an instant. Defeat quickly
overwhelmed him.

  "Honest to God, my name is Rand."

  "Ridley is the name the public gave you. You're one of the four."

  "Who are you?"

  "My name is Dan Jordan."

   Rand stood away from the door. "Come in," he said. He walked into the
living room with Daniel behind him. A young boy sat playing a piano; he
got up and left the room.

  "Your son?" said Daniel.

  "Yes, I have two. Please sit down."

  Daniel sat in a chair facing a large square of windows that overlooked a
yard dotted with pine trees.

  "I'm sorry to intrude."

  The man looked at him wearily. "What do you want?"

  "To ask some questions. Do you want to see my credentials?"

  Blinking and frowning, Rand slowly shook his head. "I didn't know they
gave such things to people your age. No, I don't want to see them."

  "What do you do for a living?"

  "Marine biology, Farber Research Plant." Rand stood stiffly. "You're
wasting your time coming here. Ridley's trial proved that we weren't what
he claimed we were."
  "Please." That was all Daniel said.

   Again defeat crept into Rand's expression. He shrugged and sat down.
"I'm glad he's dead. I'm a goddamn freak."

  "In what way?"

   "I can read a book in thirty minutes. I can memorize it in two hours. My
I.Q. is pretty startling."

  "But you wish it weren't."

   "He didn't do anything for us emotionally. If I'd never met him, I'd be
working in some office. You see, I don't have the personality to fit my I.Q.
All I've ever really wanted to do was make enough money to pay my bills.
Basically I'm a plodder. My family is all I'm interested in. Ridley did me no
favor. I ran out on him when I was sixteen. We all left him. None of us
were what he hoped for."

  "The others?" said Daniel.

  "I haven't seen them for twenty years. Not any of them. I don't know
where they went or what happened to them. I thought maybe one or two
might do something unusual. I watched the papers for a long time to see if
maybe I could pick them out by what they did." Rand shook his head.
"Nothing. There hasn't been anything I could identify."

  Daniel sat without moving. "Mr. Justice?"

  Rand looked startled. A long moment went by before he spoke. "So
that's it. No, you're headed in the wrong direction. Mr. Justice isn't just
brilliant, he's dedicated. None of us ever followed a thing. We were
mistakes, loose ends, castaways adrift in the stream. If one of the others is
Mr. Justice I'll be incredulous."

  "You say you ran out on Ridley when you were sixteen?"

   "I was terrified that they'd put me in a hospital to study me. I wanted to
be free and anonymous. Our pictures were all over the papers and I knew
I'd be easily recognized. I lost myself in the New York slums. I nearly
starved before a boy found me hiding in a cellar. He took me home with
him. If it hadn't been for him I would have died."
  "You stayed with him how long?"

   "About four years." Rand seemed to shrink in his chair. "That's how
long it took me to realize that despite what everyone said, I still had a
right to live my own life." The sober face turned bleak. "You're barking up
the wrong tree. We Ridleys are too neurotic to stand on our convictions.
You'd do better to look elsewhere. Take that boy in the slums who helped
me; his mind was like iron."

  "Mr. Justice isn't a common person."

  "There was nothing common about that boy. He was twelve years old
when he found me. I was sixteen. Compared to him I was a baby."

  "What was his name?"

   "Joe. Just Joe. You know something, Mr. Jordan? I think Ridley was
born too late. He did things artificially that nature may have been ready to
do herself. I've heard of a special school they have in New York where all
the students have I.Q.'s over two hundred. Mine is one-ninety-eight. I
think Joe's was far above that. It wasn't measurable, I'm thinking, but if
there are people that unusual who are born naturally, it makes Ridley's
experiments with us redundant. He tried to outrace nature and lost."

  Daniel stood up.

   "I'm not your Mr. Justice," said Rand. "I can't seem to give a damn
about evil. I know I should but I don't have the stamina for it. I couldn't
kill for the simple reason that I'm not emotionally involved. I don't care
enough. I'm one of the boobs. The mobs and the politicians rake in the
world while a billion of me stand around watching."

  "Thank you."

  "I hope you don't catch him," said Rand in a soft voice. "There's
something there that I don't understand, but I have the feeling that he's
fooling all of you. You're not capable of seeing."

  "What about all those if's?"

  "I know what you mean, but maybe you're one of the boobs too. A
hundred years ago they lynched people who took the law into their own
hands. Did you ever wonder if maybe we're not just living a hundred years
ahead of the past, that we may be entering a totally different existence?"

  "He'll have to prove it to me," said Daniel.

  "Will you give him the chance?"

  "I'd like you to write down that address for me."

  Rand was at once wary. "Which address?"

  "Joe's. Also write down everything you remember about him."

  "No, I won't do that."

  Daniel smiled. "I thought you weren't the dedicated kind. And
remember, it's for the country."

  Now Rand was perspiring. "He saved my life. He taught me how to be a
man. He gave me half of what he had and he had barely enough for
himself. No. I'm sorry I mentioned him. I won't tell you a thing about
him."




  Bailey smiled, Burgess frowned, Turner was obviously annoyed and
spoke with a snarl in his voice.

  "Why do we always have to wait for him? A snot-nosed brat. I'm for
hauling him in by the ears and laying down the law."

  Bailey's flat gray eyes flicked lazily over him. "Don't try it."

   A week later Turner was still snarling. "We see you much too often," he
said with sarcasm.

   Daniel kept his eyes on Bailey and didn't reply to the remark. It didn't
irritate him. He scarcely noticed the other two men.

   Bailey sat in a swivel chair. It was tipped back and he seemed to be
thinking hard on something. His hands were folded on his stomach and he
twiddled his thumbs. Sunlight came through the window and made his
cheeks rosy.

  Laconically, nasally, he said, "Yes?"

  "Those photographs were all taken by the same person."

   "How do you know that?" snapped Turner. He started to say something
else but fell silent as Bailey raised a lazy hand.

  "You're right."

  "He works methodically," said Daniel. "It's easy to spot the pattern."

  "We found that out. It took us a bit longer than a week."

  "Flattery?"

  Bailey almost sneered. "Never touch it."

  "I don't intend to come here everytime I pick up a hair. If you know
what I know about those photographs, please say so."

   "Wouldn't think of it. You're not expected to substantiate our
information. You're on your own. What we think we know doesn't enter
into it. If we have something you need, don't hesitate to ask."

  Daniel experienced a moment of cold amusement. His dislike and
respect for this chill-eyed man increased. "You know that all the
photographs were taken with the same camera." It wasn't a question but
he paused just the same. The three men watched him with blank
expressions. He continued. "The camera is a Renz. It was first
manufactured in twenty-thirty."

  They made no comments, which meant that he was telling them
nothing new. "The pictures are genuine."

   So they knew that, too. But there was something else, something here
besides plain old-fashioned fear. Someone in the room was more than a
little afraid. Which one was it?

  "How can it be possible?" said Turner.

  Much too mildly, Bailey said, "Why, damn you, I was just then thinking
how silly that question would sound. Why ask if it can be done if someone
has done it? The question to ask Mr. Jordan is, can he find the time
machine?"

  "When I do I'll have Mr. Justice."

  "Maybe he has partners," said Burgess.

  Daniel shook his head. "His Nietzsche complex wouldn't permit that."

  "Nietzsche?" Bailey said softly and Daniel looked at him.

  "You disagree?"

  "I'm an observer at this stage, as you are."

   Burgess coughed, then spoke. "A time machine would have to be quite
large, wouldn't it?"

  "Gigantic," said Daniel. "He would have to have a hook-up, carry a
device on him. It would tie in with the main unit."

  "Jesus," said Turner.

  "Surely we could have tracked him down," said Burgess. "A man like
that must have left a trail a yard wide."

  "He did," said Daniel. "Mostly red herrings."

  Turner squirmed in his chair. "I think we're assuming a lot. We're in an
uproar because of some photographs. They could be phony."

  "They aren't."

  "So Justice has taken pictures of things that happened three and four
decades ago with a camera invented eleven years ago?"

  "Yes."

  "He has a time machine?"

  Daniel hesitated.
  Turner persisted. "A big one that produces the power and a little
hook-up that he carries around with him to go on his trips?"

  Again Daniel didn't answer.

  "You know how outlandish that sounds?"

  Daniel shrugged.

  "Who else do you know who can travel in time?"

  "Nobody."

  "Who else is near to cracking the barrier?"

  "Nobody," said Daniel wearily.

  "Yet you're confident Mr. Justice can do it."

  "He can be anywhere. Once a moment is past it is completely open to
him."

  Resting his chin on his hand, Burgess murmured. "A madman with a
power like that."

  "There's another possibility," said Daniel, and they looked at him with
angry eyes. "There may not be any machine."

  Something intangible but powerful flared in the room. Like a lighted
candle it flickered from a slow glow to an intense flame and Turner
suddenly jerked his head around to stare at Bailey. Burgess sat still and
watched without a change of expression. Bailey was staring at Daniel. His
eyes were wide and round and bright with fear.

  It was all there to see and Daniel saw it. Turner didn't know what had
been meant by that last statement. Burgess had an inkling and was
curious. Bailey knew and was frightened.

  How many computers had Bailey used and how many questions had he
asked? In how many places in the world could a thing the size of a time
machine, giving off awesome power, be secreted? The computers knew
where the power was, and there weren't any that hadn't been thoroughly
investigated by the various governments. Machines existed everywhere to
detect power emissions of other machines. The machine couldn't be made
that utilized one hundred percent power. Some part had to be lost and it
was always detectable. If there was nothing to detect, there was no
mechanical power being lost, which meant no mechanical action in the
first place. Bailey knew this, and the inference scared him. How many
times had he said Justice was Superman? He hadn't really believed it.
Now he might have to. If Justice traveled in time, he had to have power,
and if this didn't come from a machine, there was only one other place it
could come from: his mind.

  "Incidentally, his name is Joe Gentry."

  Bailey closed his eyes for a second. "What did you say?"

  "Or Joe Doe. Or anything. Gentry is a name he used at least once.
Maybe you can track him down. I doubt it, so I won't try that way. New
York slums, an orphan or a runaway, he'll be in his early thirties now. A
hell of a photographer, won a couple of prizes."

  "Goddam you, where do you find all this stuff?" yelled Turner.

  Daniel kept his eyes on Bailey. "I keep thinking about that camera. He
could have used an old one and we'd have been in the dark awhile longer."

  "He wanted us to know."

  "Maniacs usually want to get caught," said Daniel.

  "I don't believe that any more than you do."

  "Odd, isn't it? He wants pursuit. Why?"




  Pi Stavros visited Daniel's room and announced that he was leaving
SPAC.

  "Why?" said Daniel. .

  The Russian gave a little smile. "I'm glad you asked that. I've cornered a
dozen students and told them I was going, but not one of them gave me
the satisfaction of answering questions. Do you remember a conversation
we had about people and roots?"

  "I remember."

   "Perhaps I sounded casual that day. Probably I did. I'm a very casual
person. But I'm also a person who must take root somewhere and SPAC is
a home for transients. None of us will ever end here except for the old
Chinese, and he's not right in his head. He pretends to be a philosopher
but he's really a worshipper of the vampire cults."

  "When are you leaving?" said Daniel.

   "Soon, I expect. Guglielmo put me onto an agency that does nothing but
interview SPAC alumni and find jobs for them. I've already been
interviewed once and I'm going again tomorrow. They're very interested in
my card-playing ability."

  This information came as no surprise to Daniel, except for the fact that
such an agency existed. SPAC was kept pretty much a secret for no other
reason than that the students rarely mentioned it on the outside. As for
the Russian's card playing, a new student had only to play one evening of
poker with him to be warned off. Stavros seemed to know where
everything was at all times.

  "What kind of job will they find for you? It sounds as if you might wind
up in some gambling casino."

  Stavros looked pleased. "Of course I'll do no such thing. The cards are a
hobby. I can do more than that. They have assured me that my work will
be purely intellectual and challenging. I can hardly wait. This moldy old
place has been getting on my nerves. I want to settle down, marry some
nice Russian girl and have one or two little geniuses. In case you hadn't
noticed, I'm a bit of a stick in the mud."

  Daniel laughed and Stavros went away to prepare his roots for planting.




   Two boys were chasing a rabbit through a meadow in New Jersey when
the one in the lead plowed into a soft area and sank to his knees. His
friend tried to get him out but when this failed he went for help. He
brought back a farmer and the two of them managed to get a rope around
the trapped boy. The mud was thick and it took a great deal of tugging but
eventually the boy's legs came free. He was hauled onto solid ground and
attended to, and it soon became obvious that he wasn't harmed.

   The three were making ready to leave when their attention was drawn
back to the swamp. A huge bubble of air broke the muddy surface and a
moment later a human hand emerged. The farmer snagged the hand with
his rope and dragged the body of a young man out of the muck. It was Pi
Stavros. He had been dead about a week. There were two bullets in his
head.

  As soon as Daniel heard about it, he went to find Guglielmo. He
searched through SPAC for three days before he finally accepted the fact
that the Italian was gone. Guglielmo's roommate knew nothing of his
whereabouts, knew nothing of Stavros or the interviewing agency. No one
seemed to have any information. Stavros had made no close friends and
those who had associated with Guglielmo swore he hadn't confided in
them.

  Daniel went to Bailey.

  "There is no such agency. The boy was pulling your leg."

  "You're pulling mine. Where's Guglielmo? You know this smells to high
heaven."

  Bailey hemmed and hawed and tried to plead that the situation didn't
come under his jurisdiction, but all the time Daniel had the feeling that
the man was edgy and worried.

  "Why don't you do the investigating yourself?" said Bailey.

  "I already have a job."

  "You're certain the two aren't connected?"




  After that Daniel went away. Of course he wasn't certain. It was only
that he still had difficulty tying Mr. Justice in with every damned thing
that went on in the country. But he was certain of one thing. Justice
hadn't shot Stavros or thrown him into the swamp. It wasn't his style.
  Burgess spoke in his dry and emotionless way. "The agency interviews
every student in SPAC. Sooner or later they get around to everyone.
Usually they go for the older ones but if a youngster is restless they tab
him."

  He waited for comments, received none, and continued.

   "It's on Euclid Street, downtown, a nice little unprepossessing place like
a thousand others. The sign says, 'Asa Pickman.' That's all. No blurbs.
Pickman is a dumdum who stands behind a counter and takes vital
statistics and sets up appointments for somebody in the back named Eric
Fortney. This one is no dumdum. No background. He stepped out of a
portrait, maybe."

  "Quit speculating," said Bailey.

  "He lives in the Cliffside Hotel. Six feet, good build, good clothes, light
hair, blue eyes, middle twenties, looks like a ladies' man but never goes
near them. He drives a new Dexter with a New York license and talks like
an egghead. He says he doesn't want to interview secret agents and would
we all please stay out of his territory. Tabbed me the second I walked in."

  "You goofed," said Bailey.

  "For the first time in my life? No one ever spotted me that fast before."

  "What's the answer?"

  "You tell me," said Burgess.

   They were sitting in a restaurant booth. It was neither a luxurious
establishment nor a dive. The lights were dim, smoke swirled like fog, the
odors of beer and liquor were heavy, yet through it all drifted an aura of
respectability.

  Turner spoke for the first time and his manner was anxious. "Why
waste time on that? It's nothing. They're hustling for brains, like
everybody. That kid could have gotten killed a thousand miles away from
that swamp. What we have to do is get onto the Ridleys. I say to the devil
with everything else."
  Bailey glared at him and said nothing.

  "They're perfect. Never mind the trial, everyone lied their heads off.
Ridley swore they were supermen and every sheet in the dossiers proves
him right. Those four freaks—"

  Bailey sighed.

  Burgess leaned forward. "You know, I—" he began and then gave it up.

  "What do you want?" said Turner to Bailey. "You told us to get Justice
and you said you didn't care how. He's one of the Ridleys."

  "Proof?"

  "How can I prove it? If Justice were that dumb we wouldn't need
Jordan. And what's he doing, anyway? Sitting on his ass lovestruck.
Strolling through the flowers with his infant girlfriend."

  "Proof," said Bailey.

  "Ah, gad," said Burgess in quiet resignation.

   Turner laid a fat brown folder on the table. "There are a dozen dossiers
here. One of them has to be Justice. We believe he's American and we
know he's in the top bunch as far as brains are concerned, so there's a
possibility that he's hiding at SPAC. Okay, four of the possibilities are too
old. That leaves Golden Macklin who is a philosophy nut or a nut, period. I
can't see him in the role. He's too sloppy and casual. The only other
Americans who have the brains to build a time machine are Ridley's
freaks."

  "Maybe," said Bailey.

  Turner looked angry. "I don't go for the mind-travel idea. It's a red
herring and we'd be fools to consider it."

  "What do I care what you think? I'm interested in what you can do."

  "With my hands tied? What happens if I go it on my own?"

  "Don't try it."
   A flush sped up Turner's neck. "We're not getting our money's worth out
of Jordan. It's a lucky break that he has good eyesight, but that's all he
has."

   "That's only the beginning," said Burgess. "His vision is better than
most and he spotted that film across the photographs. To top that, he's
already come up with a name."

  "That's no big deal." Turner looked at Bailey. "What if the Ridleys were
put out of action and Justice stopped operating?"

  "What if he continued?"

  Turner started to make a reply but broke off as a small man stopped
beside the table and stared down into his startled face.

   The Chinese seated himself beside Bailey and folded his hands on top of
the table. His robe was long and dark and flowing and emphasized the
paleness of his face. A white pigtail lay down his back. Small black eyes
stared from a lined forehead. He had no eyebrows and his lips were thin.

  "Please forgive me," he said softly.

  "Who the hell are you?" said Burgess.

  "You may call me Mr. Wu."

   "Why did you stop at this booth?" Burgess' eyes were riveted in
fascination on the white hair.

  The answering voice was low, the English flawless. "I have been strolling
among the flowers."

  "For how long have you done so?" said Bailey.

   The old man nodded, and without turning his head he said, "Since I was
a boy. I am an observer."

  "Then you must have seen a great deal." Bailey reached out with a
napkin and dried a spot of spilled beer in front of the man. "Some human
minds are like machines. They collected data and they never forget."

  Mr. Wu smiled faintly. "If such minds cannot interpret the data, then
they are indeed machines."

   He fell silent and the three men sat and waited. Burgess relaxed against
the seat and allowed his eyes to partially close, Turner wore a puzzled
expression, Bailey sat without moving and kept his gaze on the delicate
face of the man beside him.

  "I am interested in clocks," said Wu. "Inside each of us one ticks.
Something makes this happen." He turned his head and glanced at Bailey.
"Wounds disturb the rhythm."

  Turner squirmed in his seat and the Chinese gave him a blank stare.

   "I am walking among the flowers. Their perfume promises me that man
still has more heart than logic. My tears are nonexistent and I am far
removed from the wrangling of unevolved people. I walk at my leisure and
examine everything. The sky is cream, the sun is a red match. Beneath my
feet the gardens come to an end and grass begins. I see a road ahead. I
lean against a tree. My person is hidden from the child who approaches
from the direction of a building."

  One of Bailey's hands lay on the table, fingers clenched. Now the fingers
uncurled and the hand slid away to disappear in his lap.

  "The child does not see the automobile coming slowly from a distance. I
have seen it. The child is singing and laying waste to flowers by plucking
them and pulling them apart. I wait beside the tree. It is ill-formed, has
unattractive growths low on its trunk and these possess heavy foliage so
that I remain unseen."

  Wu gave Bailey another glance. At once Bailey signaled the waiter and
ordered straight whiskey. The drink was placed in the middle of the table
and after a moment a tiny hand went out and picked up the glass.

  "Thank you," said Wu and drank. He smiled at Turner and Burgess but
when he looked at Bailey his expression was harsh.

  "The auto passes the child, turns in the road, approaches her once again
and stops. She is between me and the driver. A man's voice says a thing I
cannot hear. I observe the child's hand which clutches a flower. Now I see
the flower fall to the ground, watch her body which is no longer supple like
the plants. Now it resembles the tree beside which I wait. She is startled."
  "She is frightened?" said Bailey.

  "This I did not say."

  "Continue."

   "Thank you. A man removes himself from the auto. He is very tall, very
slender, very interesting because he does not seem like a human being. He
extends a hand to the child who begins to move away. The man does not
pursue her, but he speaks rapidly for a long time and I cannot tell you
what he says because his voice is soft. The child listens and finally she
again begins moving away. Still the man speaks. At last the head of the
child moves, and she is staring at the buildings behind them. She looks at
each one, as if she is savoring the view. Her eyes rest on the man before
she raises her glance to the sky. A few moments later she climbs into the
back seat of the auto. The man resumes his place behind the wheel. Two
doors close, one with a slam, the other with a whisper, like the closing of a
coffin. The child is as if she goes to her death, yet she goes willingly and
does not fear the man."

  "And then they went away," said Bailey.

  The Chinese merely touched his lips with a sleeve.

  "Why didn't the man look like a human being?"

  "His face is full of light."

  "Thank you for coming here and telling us this."

  "I do it because of wounds. Even now I hear his cries."

  "He is young."

  "Of course."

  "It will pass."

  Wu turned his head with a lazy motion. His face was calm but the eyes
that touched Bailey were frozen and hard. "I beg your pardon." Gathering
up the skirts of his robe, Wu stood and slowly walked away.

  When he was out of earshot, Burgess said, "What I want to know is how
that old bastard knew who we were and how to find us."

  To Turner, Bailey said, "What did you think of him?"

  "I don't believe it. He's so little and fragile-looking. Honest to God, his
soul is made out of rock."




  Bailey mailed an anonymous photograph.

  "It must have been a white slaver," he said later. "I'm sorry."

  "Why would they send a picture? Since when do they do that?"

  "Maybe they do it as a matter of course to discourage relatives. This is
their kiss-off. Look at it. Look good and hard and then forget it."

  "I will. Maybe tomorrow. Will that be okay? This goddamn picture is
very well done, I'll say that for it. But wouldn't you say she's a little out of
place? I mean, she looks her age and so do these other bats. I'd guess that
the youngest is forty if she's a day. The competition is certainly nothing."

  "Cut it out," said Bailey.

  "The Chinese have a saying, you know. About people who carry bad
news."

   "I'm not the one who carried it. I merely came here to help you. But this
picture is good news. She isn't dead. She wasn't picked up by some
maniac. You know where she is. Anytime you want to find her, go ahead.
Of course it might take a while since bordellos are legion, and when you
finally do succeed in locating her she'll be in a slightly screwed condition,
but what's the difference?"

   Sometimes a human scream could cut like a knife, and Bailey hurried
away with a pain in his chest. He went straightaway to a sleazy
photographer's shop to pay the man who had done the job for him. The
man was a drunken bum but he knew his business and not even Daniel's
ferret eyes would be able to detect the fraud. Pala in a bordello surrounded
by whores? The drunk had faked the background. The girl was gone and
until the boy got over it he wouldn't be worth a damn. The process of
forgetting had been speeded up. He wouldn't hunt for her because he
wouldn't be able to think about what he would find, and since he couldn't
think about it he would have to forget. That was only natural. He was
young. He'd get over it.

  Bailey had words with Turner and Burgess. "Now you have a nest to
plunder."

  "You want us to find her?" said Burgess.

  "Hell no. I want to know what Mr. Wu does beside take up space at
SPAC."

  "But you know Justice took her."

  "I don't know any damned such thing and neither do you."

   "Just a minute," said Burgess. "We know he took her, but you want to
pretend that we don't know. If we find her, we'll find him, but you want us
to go chasing after the Chinese. Why don't you let us in on what you have
in mind?"

  "I don't want to waste time. You think you can find her? Nuts. When he
brings her out of the woodwork is when you'll see her and not before. It's
about time you realized you aren't going to catch him. That's why I hauled
Jordan from his cradle, to do a job we can't do."

  "You have too much confidence in him."

  Bailey grinned at Turner. "Have I too much confidence in Daniel?"

  "He'll catch him. There's nothing standing in his way now."




  Afternoon, a building, a room with the sun coming in the window, a
chair beside a radio, and a man sat in the chair. No pipe, no spectacles, no
drink sitting nearby, only an ordinary-looking man sat and read a
newspaper.

  An article caught his attention and he read for a few moments after
which he laid aside the paper, stood and paced the room, finally crossed to
the window to look down at the street, turned and paced some more. For a
while he stood motionless and then he slowly walked out the door, took an
elevator to the ground floor, went outside and waited on the curb until a
bus came along.

  Two hours of walking from the bus stop took him to the swamp. A
crowd was there, detectives and neighborhood gapers, and these walked
about or stood and stared at a large patch of soft mud in which a red stick
had been imbedded as a marker.

  The ordinary-looking man mingled with the crowd. Policemen looked
past or over him without hesitating. They knew he was there because their
conditioning made them know it, but he was only one more face in the
crowd, another morbid onlooker who had heard about the murder and
come to view the final resting place of an insignificant young man.

   The stranger stood at the edge of the swamp and gazed at the red
marker. A flicker of what might have been pain crossed his face. One
slender hand moved at his side. An eyebrow trembled. The wind roused
his hair. Finished with it, the wind laid the hair over his forehead and let a
strand or two drape an eye. The man made no movement to unclutter his
vision. With the one clear eye he looked long and hard at the red marker
before he took a backward step. He brushed against a woman who
promptly made room for him.

  He stepped backward until he was at the edge of the crowd, and there
he stopped. Glancing behind him, he found no one there. To his left was a
boy who stared at the sky; to his right was a farm girl who watched some
detectives standing beside a police van.

  The man closed his eyes.

  The girl lost interest in the detectives and decided to engage the man
nearest her in conversation. He had looked sympathetic and she was
growing bored. She thought it was too bad that they had taken the body
away. Turning, she started to speak. Immediately she was annoyed. The
man was gone.

  Perhaps he actually was gone. Each time he did it, he felt as if he were
the one who had moved, he and not space. It didn't matter that his feet
touched the exact same portion of ground, didn't matter that the same
piece of sky stretched overhead—nor was it of consequence that the time
of day hadn't altered. It was approximately 4:30 p.m. and he was standing
beside the same New Jersey swamp, and very little had changed, except
that it was now seven days earlier than it had been a moment before, and
he was alone.

  There were other differences, though it took a while to notice them. For
one thing, sounds were muted. A sick breeze blew here and though the sun
was brightly visible there was no real heat, only a still and silent warmth.
Leaves on trees seemed to be frozen, grass stood stiff and petrified as if
suddenly overwhelmed by a terrible coldness. But it wasn't cold, only
warm and silent.

   The man did a thing he could not refrain from doing. He stood and
listened for his body to make some sound. Presently the gastric juices in
his stomach stirred. The man relaxed. He was alive. Always in this place
he had been alive and he knew he was alive now, but never had he failed to
check. It was the human in him that made him do the checking. At times,
another word for human was "fear."

   The woods beside the swamp were veiled by a faint pink haze which the
man didn't see. His vision was excellent yet he did not discern the haze.
Only one person in ten thousand could have seen it because only that
number possessed eyes able to differentiate between such subtle shades of
color. Down through the ages there had been a few people with such good
vision. It was a human trait that had yet to establish its permanence.

   Maybe this place was death. Often the man had considered that it was.
Life had passed it by. Substance had moved in another direction and left
its shadow behind.

  He raised a foot and stepped on a dandelion which yielded to the
pressure and sprang back up again once the pressure was removed.
Kneeling, he tried to pluck the plant. His strength wasn't enough to pull it
out of the ground. It was fastened in its place forever. This phase of its
existence had already happened and what had once taken place could
never be changed.

   The things around him were eternal. Didn't this mean they were the
same as dead? Grass could be bent but not cut, trees could be climbed but
no saw would ever knock them down, not in this place. A visitor had only
to move through the space of seven days and everything here would be at
his disposal and he could add or subtract at will.
  The man stood up straight, brushing back his hair. He checked his
watch and looked off in the direction of the highway. Slowly he walked
toward the patch of trees.

 He didn't have long to wait. From far away came the sound of a cry. He
moved behind a tree and hid himself.

   They came from the direction of the road. The one in the rear was short,
no more than five feet tall. He would never be mistaken for a child because
he was too broad. The abnormal thickness of his body was evident even
from a distance. His shoes were expensive and shiny. He wore a
pin-striped suit, white shirt, little bowtie, and in his lapel was a rosebud.
The neck about the taut collar was ten inches in diameter, the shoulders
were yards broad, the arms were short and thick and the legs were like
pipes. The face was not visible because a dark hood draped the head. Two
holes had been cut for the eyes.

  One arm raised and a beefy hand yanked at a rope it held. At the other
end of the rope was a boy eighteen or nineteen years old. The rope was
around his neck. As the rope went taut, the boy gagged. His head shot up
and-his eyes bulged as he fought for air. His fingers clawed at the rope. It
was yanked again and his body stiffened. On the tips of his toes, he
perched and trembled and tried to cry out. Suddenly his mouth opened
and he vomited. As he bent forward, the man kicked him.

  The boy staggered forward and as he went he clawed at the rope on his
neck. His face was gray. On his temple was a black bruise. His clothes
were torn and muddy. Once he fell and the man ran across his body, then
skipped around behind him. Once he was dragged several yards over the
ground.

   They headed toward the swamp. A squirrel ran up a nearby tree and the
squat man grabbed a gun from his pocket. He let go of the rope, stooped
to take careful aim and shot the squirrel dead. The boy grabbed the rope
and began to run. The man turned, giving a great whoop of laughter. With
quick little leaps he caught up to the trailing rope, grasped it, and with no
effort he swung the boy into the air, swung him high, around and around
like a ball on a string. Several times he whirled his toy before he laid it on
the ground beside the swamp and took the rope away.

   The man kicked the boy. He slapped the gray face. He slapped with
force, first one cheek and then the other, and at last the boy opened his
eyes, tried to sit up and finally managed to prop himself on one elbow. He
began to cry. Slowly he raised his head and saw the man standing ten feet
away with the gun pointed at him.

   His body shuddered. His weight slipped from his elbow and one hand
went plunging into the swamp. At the same time the gun fired. The boy
followed his buried hand. He fell slowly. Soon his arm was submerged,
then his shoulder, then his head. The rest of him went rapidly. The weight
of his hips turned his body in the mud and the top of his head showed for
a few moments. The gun fired again.

   For a long time the man stayed beside the swamp and watched. In the
meantime he cleaned his gun with his handkerchief. He picked up the
discarded shells and put them in his pocket. The rope was rolled up and
put in the same place. He tore up some grass and cleaned his shoes. Once
he carefully raised the front of the hood and spat.

   Finally he turned and headed back toward the road. When he was a
good distance away from the swamp, he stopped and turned around to
stare at the patch of trees. One arm raised in a wave.

  "Good hunting, you bastard," he called, and at the same time he gave
the hood on his head a jaunty flick with a finger. Turning, he hurried
across the meadow.

  The other man, the time traveler, had already burst from the trees and
now he was doing a curious thing. His hands were out in the air, and he
was struggling as if an invisible barrier lay across his path.

   Usually he didn't react like this. Almost always logic had been enough to
keep him impassive, at least superficially, but he hadn't been able to
tolerate this one. Logic hadn't helped him this time.

  His fists rose and fell against the wall that kept him out of someone's
present. Anyone's present, it didn't matter whose, he couldn't get through
while he was in the past and he knew it, yet it was too much to bear and
he had to smash at the barrier with all his strength. It was like fighting
foam rubber.

  He looked at the swamp and his imagination drew him a picture of
what lay just beneath the surface of black mud. His face turned paler still
and his eyes glowed with the fierceness of wild anger.
  At last he stopped fighting the wall. Standing with his back to the trees,
he stared down at the grass. For a few moments he stayed that way and
then he straightened. His eyes felt hot and dry. He would go back to the
present and get the shell of the bullet that had killed the squirrel. It
wouldn't help, but he would get it anyway.




  Turner picked himself up off the floor more bewildered than bruised.
That anyone would hit him was amazing in itself, since he was as
muscular and trim-looking as he had been fifteen years ago. But that
Burgess would hit him, to think of skinny little old man Burgess doing
such a thing…

   His nose was bleeding and he still couldn't believe it. Going into the
locker room lavatory, he looked in the mirror. Already his nose was
swelling. It might even be broken. He stuffed the oozing nostril with toilet
paper.

  All of a sudden he felt sick. His body sagged against the sink and he
thought he was going to faint. The sight of the blood hadn't done it nor
was it because he was in pain. It was the memory of Burgess's face just
before he got hit.

   Innocence be damned, he wasn't that way anymore. All it had taken was
that one second, and then he hadn't been deluded any longer. Burgess
either hated him or Burgess was insane. Well, what did he care if his best
friend loathed his guts?

  "Wait a minute, Bob," said Burgess. He was standing by the far window.
He didn't look ruffled or apologetic and that enraged Turner further.

   "You want to smack the other side, is that it? You want me to stand still
so you can take another poke at me?"

  "Of course not." Burgess came across the gym floor. As usual, he was in
no hurry. "I apologize. I had no right. One thing you must remember is
that everyone has emotions. For a second you had me by the short hairs
and I went wild. I hate that kind of outburst. Right now I hate myself."

  "Come off it. I said something that made you mad as hell and you
busted me like I was a slob. Okay, I'm a slob. Now I'm going home."

  "I'd like to talk this over. I'd like it if we went around the corner to the
bar. I'll buy you a drink and we can sit and relax and then I'll talk to you.
That's what I want."

  Turner almost told him to go to hell. "All right," he said.

  With a drink in his hand and a cozy atmosphere around him, he felt no
better. "Talk," he said. "We can't afford wrangles unless we intend to split
up. Do you want that?"

   "That's the last thing I want." Burgess sipped his drink and looked
pensive. "I'll start at the end and go backward. I hit you because I lost my
temper. That was inexcusable. I'll spend the next year making it up to you.
Now let me go on. You've busted your coconuts tracing the Ridleys, you
gathered detailed dossiers on every one of them and had the whole thing
set up prettier than a picture. I know how much time you spent on it, and
I know how tedious it was to scrounge in the woodwork for those freaks.
Okay, fine. I was proud of you. I didn't interfere because I couldn't have
done it half as well. I've no talent for scouting, all I'm good for is cleaning
up. So you did all the work. Then why in hell were you ready to dump it in
the garbage can?"

  Turner went red. "Why shouldn't I if I thought that was the thing to
do?"

  "Since when is this a kind of deal where everybody is independent?"

  "I don't follow you."

  "But you do. That's why I hit you. Again, I'm sorry."

  "It was my stuff," said Turner.

  "It was ours. Yours and mine."

  "It belonged in the garbage can. I worked for nothing. It was a dead
end."

  "Mr. Justice is one of the Ridleys." Burgess looked casual but his eyes
were alert.
  "Since when did you start believing that?" said Turner in surprise.

  "Since the beginning. You only had to ask me."

  "But I didn't know it."

  "Now you do."

   Turner grew restless. He squirmed in his seat and nearly dropped his
glass. "Now I know it, but didn't anything I say reach you or sink in? The
Ridleys are nobodies."

  "Who says so?"

  "Dammit, I just said—"

  "Hold on and relax. You say so. My God, you're liable at any time to give
the entire human race a clean bill of goods."

  "Not this time," said Turner.

  "Especially this time. I don't have to tell you what you're relying on
because you know it as well as I do. Your intuition is interfering again."

  "No."

  "Intuition. No facts, only feelings. Every time I turn around I run into
your feelings. This time I'm paying no attention to them. I'm sorry I hit
you, but I won't let you close up the best chance we've had in years."

   "The Ridleys aren't our target. They're fleas. Paul Reese is a cripple
living on welfare. He's been writing an opera for twenty years. Emma
Stoker is a housewife who plays bridge. We know John Rand is a nothing.
Then there's Robert Vine. You know how he makes his living? Washing
windows. Okay, the woman is automatically crossed off. As for Reese, he's
in no shape for acrobatics and we know Justice is in top condition. That
leaves Vine and Rand. Well, Vine hasn't got the brains to go to high
school, had encephalitis five years ago and came out of it a high-grade
moron. Who's left? John Rand. A middle-class shmoo. I worked on him
the longest because he fit better than the others. I tell you he isn't Justice.
I know he isn't."

  Burgess smiled. "I've waited while you got the information. I prayed you
wouldn't flub it. Now you've got it. They're nailed down and we can pot
them anytime we please."

  Turner was suddenly on his feet. "Pot them? You're crazy."

  "Sit down. Don't be emotional every goddamn minute of your life."

   Later Turner tried to remember how Burgess talked him into listening.
At that point in the conversation he had been angry and alarmed and all
set to storm out of the bar. It was uncanny how Burgess had done it.
Burgess could do almost anything. Burgess had kept him there for over an
hour and in the end Turner hadn't been certain of the time of day, let
alone anything else.

  "Where does Daniel come in?"

  "He doesn't for a while," said Bailey.

  Turner persisted. "Why not?"

  "He ran off," said Burgess.

  "You mean we don't have him anymore?"

  Bailey answered. "I know where he is. He's in the woods with Golden
Macklin, trying to grow up. Leave him alone. Don't go near him. He'll
come back to work when he's ready."

  "In the meantime—" Turner began.

  "You go down to the interviewing agency and get yourself a job."

  "But they can spot us."

  "They won't spot you. You carry innocence around with you like a
shroud. Why else do you think you're working for me?"

   Bailey was right. Turner wasn't spotted by Asa Pickman. When he
phoned in to say he was on Eric Fortney's payroll and doing nothing but
sitting on his ass in a city hotel, Bailey smiled a grim smile and wiped it
from his face before he looked at Burgess. The little man was enraged. He
looked casual, but Bailey knew better. Burgess was cooking something on
the pot, he needed Turner because he never did anything alone, and now
he was doing a slow burn. It was just as well. Lately Burgess had been
sliding away from sanity and common sense. Now he'd have to cool his
heels until his sidekick returned.

  As for Bailey, his main concern was for an anonymous letter someone
had sent him. It had been written in pencil:




  The real name of Mr. Justice is Arthur Bingle. You can contact him
through a man named Eric Fortney, New York City.




   "Why would I believe it?" Bailey had said to himself. And he hadn't
believed it. What he did believe was that the person who had sent the
letter was the man he had been hunting all these years.




                                    V


   Eric Fortney had all kinds of facial and bodily expressions ready to
hand. These had been practiced over the years until they could be brought
to the fore at a moment's notice. At this moment, he wore his hat-in-hand,
I-am-respectful facade, but it wasn't all pretense, since he did respect the
man who sat in the center of the papier-mach é replica of New York City.
Arthur Bingle sat with one hand resting on the top spire of the Brant
Building while around him stretched a panorama of tiny skyscrapers and
tenement houses. The entire replica was twelve feet square and four feet
high. The center square in which Bingle sat measured about three feet.

   Bingle owned the city, just as he owned the state, and he was preparing
to extend his tentacles of power into Jersey. At his disposal were fifty
hand-picked men, each with an army of five hundred to one thousand
members. The fifty were called Numbers. These resided over various
business establishments, and usually they remained in the background as
shadows behind people who had built or inherited the businesses.
   Where Eric was tall and impressive-looking, Arthur Bingle was of
medium height, medium complexion, medium build, and his face was
bland and still. Only his eyes moved. They focused on the Brant Building,
on Eric, on nothing at all. A quiet man, Bingle gave the impression that he
never did anything impulsively. This was not the case, though the things
which he did on impulse appeared to be deliberate acts. Bingle's body was
simply quiet and slow while his mind was exactly the opposite.

   "I found a new feeler," said Eric. "He's the best one I ever saw. His name
is Robert Turner. He's been an accountant for a New Jersey law firm for
the past fifteen years, came to the agency looking for a client who had
mentioned the place. The client was the Russian. The law firm wrote out
his will. The thing about this Turner is that he has all the qualifications.
There's no hostility in him. Asa says he's a babe. He has the talent plus the
brains, and he isn't even aware of it."

  Bingle's hand caressed the spire of the Brant Building. "If he has the
brains, that puts him over Asa."

  "Certainly, if that's what you want. Asa is stupid; he has the talent with
nothing else, but I trust him."

   "Do it your way. Always do it the way you see fit. I don't want anybody
slipping past."

   "Nobody has, nobody will. Turner will stay close until I know he's
trustworthy."

  Bingle changed the subject. "I want you to go and see Brant. He says we
can kiss his ass till doomsday but he won't sign. How does that strike
you?"

  "It sounds bad for him. I rather liked him."

  "Don't use Teuton for a while."

  "Did he keep that hood down tight?"

  "He took a spit."

  Eric frowned and started to speak.
  "It was nothing," said Bingle.

  "What made you decide to check on him?"

   "The Man is softhearted. You didn't know that, did you? That's why I'm
sitting here and you're standing there. I know how the Man thinks.
Without me, you wouldn't do well. He'd pick you up in twenty-four hours
and either dump you on a lawn beside a police station with a rag in your
mouth, or he'd kill you. The Russian was too young. The Man must have
worked overtime trying to get a look at Teuton's face."

  "I told Asa not to take any kids," said Eric.

  "Yes, you did."

  "He didn't tell me until it was too late. The kid heard about the
gambling setup and started bellowing."

  "No one is to be told anything until you meet them. Asa is answerable
only to you. The Russian was your mistake. I want the mature people in
that school. If they won't go along with us, that will be too bad for them."

  Eric didn't say anything, just stood rigid and waiting.

   "This is a new operation," said Bingle. "All of you had to make mistakes
at first, and I anticipated them. When the biggest brains in the country
began to disappear and when a certain number of them were found dead,
there was bound to be a reaction. I want all processes tightened. You've
had enough time. There will be no more mistakes."

  "There won't be." Eric turned and started out of the room. He had his
hand on the doorknob when Bingle spoke again.

  "Leona wants to go shopping this evening, and I've some business to
take care of."

  "Be happy to take her. Tell her I'll pick her up at seven. And I won't keep
her out too late."

   He wore a smile as the elevator took him to the ground floor. He would
enjoy taking the kid shopping. He felt like walking around doing dumb
things with a little girl who knew how to laugh and who didn't ask nosy
questions. Leona was fifteen and straight out of a picture book. More and
more Bingle was depending on his right-hand man to chaperone her
around. Only last week Eric had taken her to a ballgame, and he had
promised to take her to a show tomorrow night. Come to think of it, he
was seeing her at least twice weekly. For how long had he been seeing her
that often? About six months. But she should be going out with boys her
own age, not running around with a man ten years older than she was.
Only Arthur wouldn't let her go out with boys. He wouldn't let her go out
with anyone but…

  As Eric left the elevator, the smile on his face faded. He climbed into a
car sitting by the curb, sat back and did some thinking while the driver
maneuvered into traffic.

  He went to see Jimmy Brant. Mr. Brant was too busy to see him just
now. Could he come back later? Eric sat in the waiting room and watched
the secretary. She was young and attractive and he admired her as he
would have admired a good painting or a fine animal.

   The woman didn't seem to appreciate his interest. After twenty minutes
of enduring his scrutiny, she got up and hurried into Brant's office. A few
minutes later she came back and ushered Eric through the gate.

   Jimmy Brant was a shambles. A tough, muscular, middle-aged man, he
looked as if he hadn't shaved for a week. His suit was wrinkled, his eyes
were red and sore-looking, and he kept gripping his left arm as though it
pained him. Standing beside one of the windows, he stared down at the
gleaming sides of the building.

  "This is mine," he said without turning. "Why should I give it to you? It
took me forty years, since I was fifteen, to make this place what it is."

  Eric sat down in a chair beside the desk and folded his hands on his lap.
"Life isn't the same as it was forty years ago, or even ten."

  Still Brant looked out the window. "What kind of country is this? What
happened to it?" He swung around and his burning eyes were narrow.
"Rather than give it to you, I'd burn the damned thing down."

  "We've gone all through this. I explained the situation to you."

  "You ordered me to turn eighty-five percent of my life over to you."
  "That isn't exactly what I said."

  Gripping the windowsill with one hand, Brant said, "I can't transfer
west, south or north. I've tried. I also tried to sell out. How odd it is that
not a single fur man in the country is interested in buying the top
company. Nobody wants my furs. Don't you think that's odd?"

  "I told you it would be bad business to try to make deals at this time."

   Brant swayed, caught his balance. "What happens now? I can't transfer,
I have to stay here, you're going to take my business; I want to know how
you think you're going to do that."

  Eric gazed out the window and said nothing.

   "What kind of threats should I expect? My wife is dead, I have no
children nor any friend for whom I'd give my life's work." Brant
straightened, went over and sat down at his desk. "What's hanging over
my head?" he said softly. "Will I end up in prison accused of something I
didn't do? If I don't sign your paper, will I be sent to jail?"

   "No, Mr. Brant, you'll be dead and we'll get your business from the law
firm that handles the estate."

   The man behind the desk showed no reaction. His eyes focused on Eric
with indifference. His large hands lay flat on the inkpad. "I've gone to the
police. They promised to look into it. A week later I went back and they
said they couldn't do anything because this wasn't really happening. They
said I was imagining it, and that I should see a doctor. I made recordings
of yours and my conversations, but the tapes were garbled when I listened
to them later. I've installed hidden cameras, but the photographs don't
come out. I don't know how you're preventing any records being made of
our meetings, but I'm more interested in the why than in the how. It
strikes me as being an uncommon lot of trouble for you to go to when the
police are already on your side."

  Brant had been staring at his hands as he talked. Now he looked up.
"You see, I haven't just sat around sweating. I've been thinking, and I have
the idea that I know why you're working so hard to make sure our pictures
can't be taken or our voices recorded."

  The folded hands in Eric's lap twitched.
   A smile flickered across Brant's rugged features. "I don't believe I'll
make you kill me. I'd rather give you my business. I want to be around
when he catches you. I used to hope they'd get him. I thought he was a
depraved maniac and deserved lynching, but since I met you I've learned
what a maniac really is. He's a thing that lives in filthy corners, and he
waits until something human comes by. Then he springs out, sinks his
fangs in the human's neck and starts sucking. Mr. Justice exists because
of you. I know that now. It wasn't the bumbling hoodlums and the
penny-ante bums that started him on his crusade. It was your kind, the
slick, cool bloodsuckers who have too many brains and no souls. He knew
you were coming and he got ready."

  Brant stood up and his chair crashed back on the floor. "Where's your
paper? I want to sign it and get the hell out of here and away from you."

  "You can't go," said Eric. "You're to stay where you are and run your
business as usual."

  For a moment, Brant stared, then he laughed. "You can't find anyone as
good as I am. You want me to hand it all over and then work for you.
That's a switch. All right, you've got yourself a deal. I'll be a very obedient
peon. I want to be around to see you bleed."

  "What makes you certain that I will?"

   "Justice has a reason for what he does. You have only instinct, the same
as any wolf."




   Eric Fortney opened his eyes to a gray morning. The grayness was in
himself, since the sun shone hotly and promised to become even hotter
later in the day. The air-conditioner functioned perfectly, but the
apartment felt stuffy and damp. He made coffee, then he gathered the
garbage and carried it outside to where a long row of cans sat on the curb.
He did the same thing every morning.

  The street was empty. He glanced at his watch. It said seven. He had
awakened earlier than he had intended and now he would have to find
something to do to pass the time until the afternoon.
   Savagely he grabbed a lid off a can and threw in the sack. After he
slammed down the lid, he stood and scowled at the street. Sunlight
bounced from the pavement and hit him in the eyes and he leaned against
another can to balance himself. His weight fell on the lid, pressed against
something inside, then he heard a low groan.

 The sound startled him so badly that he leaped away several feet. A
moment later he was tearing the lid off the can and looking inside.

   Jesus Christ. He said it in his mind and he said it out loud, and at the
same time his vision blurred until he couldn't see anything. Jesus Christ.
He felt numb and full of agony. In what kind of world was he astray?
Surely to God there was some place better. There had to be something
closer to heaven somewhere in the universe. No one could stand to live in a
world in which people stuffed their children inside garbage cans and then
went away and left them to die.

   She had been placed in the can upside down. Her skinny rear glowed
like milk in the light of the sun. On one buttock was a dark bruise. Tears
quickly sprang to Eric's eyes. He felt like crying, not quietly but at the top
of his lungs, as he had done when he was little.

  Lowering the can onto its side, he knelt and watched the legs sag to the
walk. The feet were grimy. Reaching down, he started to touch the legs but
hastily withdrew his hand. The thighs writhed, rolled, and Eric found
himself staring at a small triangle of golden hair. She wasn't an infant and
knowing it made him want to cry again.

  The skinniest belly he had ever seen slowly scooted out of the can, then
came a pair of new breasts followed by a long neck, and at last a face
topped by yellow hair emerged. All he could see were her eyes, closed and
puffy-lidded. One by one the lids opened to reveal eyes so blue they were
almost purple.

   The mouth worked, finally spoke. "It took you long enough to find me,"
said the girl. In another instant she had passed out.

  He carried her into his apartment and laid her on his bed. Covering her
with a blanket, he sat on the edge of the bed and watched her sleep.
Something in the back of his mind spoke, but he couldn't hear the
message, didn't make an attempt to hear. He thought of nothing at all as
he sat and looked at the face of the child. Finally his mind functioned. She
was twelve or thirteen. Maybe she had been starved; more likely she was
naturally thin and hadn't missed too many meals. She may have been
beaten. There were several bruises on her back, also some on her legs. One
hand lay near him and he picked it up but quickly dropped it. He was
suddenly terrified that she might have been raped.

  An hour later she opened her eyes, stretched and looked around. "How
did I get here?" Her voice was soft. She didn't sound surprised or alarmed.

  "Who crammed you in that garbage can?"

  She sat up. The sheet fell to her waist, but she didn't seem to notice.
"Let me think. I was chased, I remember that. Someone big. He punched
me a couple of times, and then the lights went out."

  "Where was this?"

  "In the park. I ran along a path, started climbing a fence and he
grabbed my foot."

  "Where are you from?"

  "Noplace. I used to be at an orphanage in Philadelphia, but that was a
long time ago."

  "How have you gotten along by yourself?"

  She leaned back on the pillow and closed her eyes. "I don't want to
answer any more questions."

  "One more. Are you hungry?"

  Smiling, and without looking at him, she said, "Yes."

   Her name was Paula. She was thirteen years old and ate like a
truckdriver. Eric prepared a tray of food and sat beside the bed while she
ate. She had no sense of modesty; she folded the cover in her lap and
propped the tray on it, leaving her upper body exposed.

  "Why are you feeding me?" she said between bites. "Why don't you call
the police to come and get me? I'm a ward of the government, you know.
Nobody wants me, which means I belong to everybody." When he made no
reply, she returned her attention to the food. At last she said, "Ah, God,"
and sank back on the pillow. She groaned. "I think I ate too much. I think
I'm going to throw up. Where's the bathroom?"

   She got up, and Eric watched her run across the room. A little golden
statue, she brightened a room that had been gray a short time before. He
became aware of his heart. It seemed strange to him that he was suddenly
aware of its throbbing.

   He continued to watch the bathroom door until she came out and
climbed back into bed. Incredibly, she began eating again. This time she
did it slowly, burped a few times and did away with a quart of milk. Her
appetite seemed endless. Eric sat and listened to his heart maintain its
steady pace.

  "Do you have any old clothes you could lend me?" she said. "I'll be
arrested if I leave this way."

  "Stay here."

   She took her time answering. "I don't know if I want to. Everything here
is so neat and expensive. I'm not used to fancy surroundings. Maybe I
couldn't feel natural."

  "Everyone should be indulged at least once in their lifetime. A person
should walk on a mink rug with muddy feet just once."

  Leaning over the side of the bed, she looked at the rug. "Is that mink?"

  "No," he said, and laughed.

  "I have to find a job. Is there an employment agency nearby?"

  "Probably, but they don't hire people your age. What's your last name?"

  "I don't have any. You'd be surprised how many jobs I've had. I have a
good brain."

  "Do you never smile?"

  "Sometimes I do." Looking at him soberly, she added, "I want to work."

  "What about school?"
  "I don't need it."

  "Stay here. There's another bedroom."

   Again she took her time responding. "I don't know if I want to live here.
I never had a father and I don't know much about men. You look like you
have a bad temper."

  "The choice is yours. You can stay or you can leave."

  "I'll think about it."

   He went out and bought her some clothes. A few articles were cheap,
most were expensive. He was testing her. She examined them all and
chose the expensive pieces to wear, a little ermine slack suit with shoes to
match. The underwear was too big but she wore it anyway. The shoes were
too small and he went out again and got the right size. He forgot the time,
forgot that he had a business meeting that afternoon, and wouldn't have
gone even if he had remembered. He wouldn't have been able to leave the
apartment for any reason other than to do something for the girl. He knew
he was behaving strangely, but he didn't think about it too much. All he
wanted was for her to stay near so that he could see her.

   He gave her a typing job in his private office, not the one in the Brant
Building but another one in a little building that not even Arthur Bingle
knew of. He hoped. In a week she was bored and he started her on his
disordered files. This took her another week, and he knew she wouldn't be
satisfied until he gave her something more complicated to do. He let her
be his bookkeeper. This seemed to please her. She was very good with
figures, better than the man who had been doing it. That man had been
admitted to the medical clinic for an annual checkup. Someone on the
staff made a mistake and he died of an overdose of morphine.




  A few members of the Army had a meeting. They were royalty, down to
the chauffeur who drove Eric's cars. Each had been given a tentative
number which would become permanent, depending upon how they
performed. Five years in a rank usually guaranteed its permanence. Eric
was Number 2 in the Army, a rank on a level with a prince. There was only
one king, and of course this was Bingle, but only a few people in the Army
knew about him. Not everyone knew the identity of Number 2. Those who
met that afternoon in the bar at the top of the Brant Building knew Eric.
They were his dukes and their numbers went from 25 to 29. The high
numbers belonged to other people, none of whom were present.

  A person who had no number was there that afternoon, and Eric was
unnerved by her appearance. Godiva always had that effect on him, not
that there was anything wrong with the way she looked and not that he
had a talent for feeling. Godiva probably affected everybody the same way.

    She walked into the room without knocking, kicked off her shoes as
soon as she was inside, and then she stood near a window and ran her feet
through the rug. Her long toes playing in the deep tufts reminded Eric of
white worms. Godiva seldom said anything, and he sometimes wondered
if she were a moron. There had been moments when he felt tempted to
find out, but he never proceeded beyond the temptation. She repelled him.

   Godiva wore a purple slack suit. Her dimensions were perfect for her
height, except for her bust, which was rather small. She stood six feet two
in her bare feet. Her wide shoulders tapered to a flat stomach, then the
hips swelled and the long, powerful legs began. She always wore long
sleeves, even in August. Now and then her lower arms were exposed, and
the skin was ripe-looking, rich and rosy and turgid with smooth muscles.
Long straight black hair swirled around a firm neck. Godiva's features
were delicate and beautiful. Dark eyes, heavily fringed with black lashes,
flickered from object to object with interest or with indifference. It was
difficult to tell which it was with Godiva. She never made small talk, never
flirted, never laughed, though now and then her red mouth parted and big
white teeth flashed. She was Arthur Bingle's private recruit, and Eric not
only didn't know her rank, he was unaware of what she did for Bingle. He
thought it might be sex, but each time he considered this possibility he
became more and more certain that it was something else. He knew little
about Bingle's private life other than that there was a crippled wife and, of
course, the daughter, Leona. One thing was understood. Godiva was here
for a purpose; she was to be left alone and she would do what she had been
sent to do. Anyone who interfered would answer to Bingle.

  Asa Pickman, Robert Turner, Joel Farnsworth and Eric's driver had
arrived. Teuton was going to be late if he didn't show up in the next five
minutes. Eric leaned against the bar and watched Turner, the new man,
the feeler who had walked into the agency from nowhere on the hunt for a
little dead Russian. Maybe Turner would be an asset to the Army, maybe
he would be dead in a week or a month; it depended upon how he worked
out. Asa didn't like him. Asa was jealous.

   The new man was watching Godiva from the corner of his eye. Eric
noticed the pallor of Turner's face and smiled. The feeler was good.
Anyone who didn't pick up the scent of death from Godiva was made of
stone.

   Joel Farnsworth also kept his eyes on Godiva. His face wasn't pale. He
stood six feet four and was built like a monument. Prematurely bald
except for a reddish horseshoe, Farnsworth had once been a miner but
now he was a big businessman, Vice President of General Motors. He
looked like a miner. His mind was quick, but in the company of Eric
Fortney he belonged in the back seat. Farnsworth knew when a man was
better than he, but he wasn't jealous. Fortney didn't pleasure women and
was therefore a rung down on the ladder in at least one section of the
ballpark. This was Farnsworth's opinion, and he watched Godiva with all
the eyes of his body. He was tuned in, as usual, and he silently thanked
God that he was always randy. The woman in purple who lounged on the
windowseat was no fluff. She was meat. He had seen her a few times but
always at a distance, and now she was so close that he could walk across
the room and dip his face in the deep V at her throat. Her arms would
slide around his back and grip him tight, those wonderful legs would leap
off the floor and take him around the ass with one gulp. Christ, she could
do anything she wanted to him; she had the kind of female stuff he could
wallow in. Farnsworth stood leaning against the wall and allowed his
thoughts to carry him to a point of near suffocation.

  Bela Guffa was a driver. That was all he did. He drove Eric Fortney
anywhere at any time. He didn't talk business, never entered into
conversations, never intruded. He stood leaning against the door and
waited for orders.

  Asa Pickman complained about the drink Eric handed him. He went to
the bar to strengthen it. Eric didn't mind. He was in a good mood and Asa
knew it or he would have taken the drink as it came. Guffa, the driver,
politely refused to drink anything. Godiva also drank nothing. Turner
swiftly accepted his and gulped it down. Farnsworth had two straight
shots.

  At exactly five o'clock someone outside in the hall took hold of the
doorknob and at the same time, the driver, who had been leaning on the
door, shot forward as if he had been picked up and thrown. With a red
face and a weak grin, Guffa caught his balance and then moved to an
obscure position in the corner of the room.

  Teuton walked in. He glanced toward the corner and winked, then he
immediately went to the bar and made himself a drink. After he had
swallowed half of it, he looked around and said, "Cheers." His voice was a
deep croak.

  "There are a couple of people I want you to meet," said Eric. "Asa, come
on over here and say hello to Teuton."

  "He new?" said Teuton.

  "You just haven't met him. He's been too busy to be sociable."

   Pickman reluctantly moved forward and stopped to stare down at the
round face and abnormally small eyes of the short man. The eyes looked
exactly like lead slugs. Teuton wore his wiry brown hair in a crew cut. His
skin was a muddy color and was without a line or wrinkle. His head was
big, not too big for his body, but both were large beyond normal
proportions. Teuton stood no more than five feet and was nearly as wide
as the doorway through which he had entered.

  Briefly Pickman touched the thick hand. In a dry voice, he said, "Glad to
know you," after which he moved away with an expression of relief.

  "Come here, Bob," Eric said over his shoulder. "Teuton, I want you to
meet Bob Turner, a new man. I hope you like each other as you may be
working together once in a while."

   Turner stiffened as soon as his hand came in contact with Teuton's. His
already pale face lost its last bit of color, then all of a sudden his eyes
rolled up into his head and without a sound he dropped to the rug in a
dead faint.

   Teuton looked down and his lips split to reveal big gold-capped teeth.
"Hey, he's a pretty good feeler. Takes one look at me and keels over. But I
think you got yourself a bum, boss. The guy's a sissy."

  "He's only untrained," said Eric.
  Laying his glass aside, Teuton bent and picked up Turner. He carried
him to the couch and dropped him.

  "Let's get down to business," said Eric.

   Farnsworth began to complain as soon as they were seated. "Discipline
is too lax. Too many Numbers are showing up in the waterfront area. The
damned place lures them. They can't resist the loose money floating
around."

   "Numbers don't interfere with each other," Eric said coldly. "They never
do that. They have their own areas and they don't intrude upon someone
else's. They abide by the rules."

  "Then what was Torre doing over there Wednesday?"

  "He wasn't. Wednesday he was out on the Island having lunch with
Godot."

  Farnsworth was Number 3 and all the Numbers from 10 to 30 took
orders from him. He was the only ruling member in the Army whom they
knew. The Numbers had been chosen by Arthur Bingle, though all but a
few were unaware of it. As far as most members were concerned, Bingle
was a smalltime gambling racketeer who would be wiped out whenever
Farnsworth gave the order. They knew Farnsworth was backed by other
people, but it wasn't in their best interests to find out who the people
were. Number 12, a man named Kusinski, was in charge of the waterfront.
He had an army of a thousand men and women.

   "Maybe I was mistaken," said Farnsworth. "But that isn't what I want to
talk about, actually. I need a replacement for Kusinski."

 Eric's head lifted slowly and he stared at his subordinate for a long
moment. No one made replacements but Bingle.

  "I know it isn't the usual procedure," said Farnsworth, and he sounded
defensive. "You can't do everything, though, which is why I'm bringing up
the subject. He needs to be replaced."

  "Why?"

  "He hasn't showed up. His people are beefing. He was supposed to
report Friday, but he didn't show. Nobody has seen him. That's all I
know."

  "Why didn't you tell me this Friday?"

   Farnsworth cast a. quick glance around the room, then looked at the
floor. "I tried to find him."

  "You allowed one of our biggest businesses to go unattended for three
days?"

  "Wait a minute, I—"

  "Where is he?"

  "Honest to God, he just dropped out of sight. We can put a new
Number in his spot and nothing will be changed. There are ten men ready
and waiting for the job, and any one of them will be as good as Kusinski."

  "Hold it," said Eric. He got out of his chair, went to the bar and made a
drink while he thought about it. From the corner of his eye he watched
Godiva, still perched on the windowsill and still playing in the carpet with
her toes.

  Even before he went back to his chair, he knew everything, or he
thought he did. It all depended on who Farnsworth suggested as a
replacement.

  "Who do you have in mind to take over?" he said.

  "Rick Needle."

  "You've known him for a long time, haven't you?"

  "Yes, but that has nothing to do—"

  "It's all right," said Eric. "First we make sure of Kusinski's
whereabouts."

  Beads of sweat lined Farnsworth's forehead. "That's no problem. If he
ran, we can trace him."

  "He may be dead."
  "You think so?"

  "I don't know what to think."

   "He has his nerve taking off like that." Farnsworth sat rigidly and
looked at no one.

   "These things happen," said Eric. He glanced at Teuton and found the
short man busily staring at Godiva. So Teuton also knew. Eric turned his
attention back to Farnsworth. The dumb bastard. He had killed Kusinski
so that his friend, Rick Needle, could have the job. Bingle had found out.
How? It didn't matter. Bingle couldn't stay in his position without having
eyes in the back of his head. Something had happened to make him
suspicious of Farnsworth.

   No member of the Army was permitted to commit a crime without
orders from his Number. No Number could do something illegal unless
Number 3, Farnsworth, permitted him to do so. As for Farnsworth, he
took his orders from Eric. Under no conditions would any Number be
ordered to kill another Number. There were ways of handling undesirables
in the top ranks, and they were Arthur Bingle's ways.

   You stupid bastard, Eric thought as he smiled at Farnsworth. He
regretted the loss. Up until now, Farnsworth had been an efficient 3. Now
Kusinski's body lay somewhere, and if Bingle hadn't blanketed the killing,
Farnsworth would be fair game for Mr. Justice. The Army couldn't afford
to have its third Number hauled into court, nor could it afford a traitor.
Very soon now Farnsworth would leave this room. Godiva would follow
him. Or they might go out together. Already she was giving him some
pretty pointed stares. Now Eric knew what Godiva did for Arthur Bingle.

  "But how?" he said later to Teuton when they were alone.

  "Oh, boy, boss, that one's a black widow spider."




  Turner sent a letter.

  "The son of a bitch has cracked," said Burgess.

  "Right now that son of a bitch is worth more to me than ten of you,"
said Bailey. "But I don't know what he means."

   Burgess laughed. "He laid it on the line and you don't understand. It's
plain enough."

  "If one of us has cracked, it's you."

  "I've got lead in my pants and you put it there. I don't need Turner
tagging along to get things done. Stop sitting on me."

  Bailey's light eyes glittered. "If I'd had to guess who would go emotional
on me, I wouldn't have chosen you. And don't raise your eyebrows at me."

   Burgess leaned forward, placed his elbows on the table, rested his chin
on his hands and chuckled. "What about it? What do we do about this
letter?"

  "What he knew we'd do; think about it and worry."



Forget Justice. Target is a gang. World
is headed for dictatorship. Expect I'm a
dead man sooner or later; can't react to
suit them. Tell Carol to divorce me. Won't
risk seeing her. She'll probably be pleased.




   Farnsworth was dying and there was nothing he could do to help
himself. As a miner, he had worked like a slave. His body was hard as a
rock, he was big and he was stronger than any female living, which meant
that the woman under him wasn't female. But she was. He had just used
her, and he had believed that she was the best lay he'd ever had in his life.
She had emptied his balloon, and her own, too, and then she gave him a
hug to show him how much she had appreciated him. But, my God, the
hug was killing him, and he knew it was being done deliberately. Eric had
kissed him off. But still he couldn't believe a woman would ever be strong
enough to take a man as big as he was and kill him with her bare hands.

  Godiva was done with mating and what came after was, perhaps,
instinctual. She didn't smile. Maybe she wasn't even thinking. Her legs
were wrapped around Farnsworth's thighs and they felt to him like pillars
of iron. He couldn't move. Her arms encircled his neck, her breath was
heavy in his ear and all the while she slowly crushed the life out of him. He
had the terrifying thought that she wasn't particularly absorbed in what
she was doing, that it was simply a thing which she did as a matter of
course, and he thought that if he could only reason with her… but then his
throat was pressed against hers and it was his throat that was gradually
giving way and he couldn't make a sound. The point of her chin pressed on
the artery in his neck. His chest covered hers, but hers felt like stone. Her
heels dug into the small of his back, and he wanted to scream in agony but
there was no more air in the world, not for him.

  Godiva inhaled. The body above hers elevated a fraction. Still Godiva
inhaled. Her lungs filled, filled, filled with what Farnsworth needed so
badly, then she suddenly stopped inhaling and gave a low, drawn-out
grunt. Her arms changed from lead and became steel. Her legs took on
new strength. Farnsworth sank deeper into her flesh and she broke his
neck with a rapid flexing of her wrists.




                                     VI


  Arthur Bingle was three years old when he witnessed his first scene of
carnage. He toddled out into the front yard of his home and stepped off
the curb just as a car came whizzing down the street and hit a cat. The
driver of the car braked hard, stuck his head out the window and yelled,
"Jesus," then continued driving down the street.

   The little boy had been in the direct line of flying blood. It sprayed his
white sailor suit; some of it even spattered his face. First he looked at
himself and then he walked into the street and looked at the cat. Its hind
parts jerked and shuddered, came up off the pavement in quick spasms,
thudded flat only to leap high again. Its head looked crushed, and one eye
dangled at the end of a two-inch white cord. The pool of blood which had
formed beneath it began trickling toward the small blue sneakers.

  A sob leaked from the boy's throat. He couldn't tear his eyes away from
the cat. While its ruined head lay motionless, the rest of its body went
through an insane little series of contortions.

  The sob changed and became a shrill scream. A few moments later the
boy fell unconscious beside the cat. The neighbor who found him lying
there thought that he, too, had been run over. He had more blood on him
than the animal.

   He was in a coma for eight days and the medics did not expect him to
live. X-rays showed no damage whatsoever, yet the coma would not release
him. Finally, on the eighth day, he regained consciousness. His recovery
was rapid and seemed to be complete.

   The same thing happened another time, when he was fourteen. He was
hiking along a highway and saw the body of a large dog lying on the yellow
line. Without checking the traffic, he ran into the road with the intention
of grabbing the corpse's tail and hauling it to the shoulder.

  A truck with a cursing driver hanging halfway out of the window came
hurtling up the highway, swerved around the running figure, shot across
the dog's body and screeched to a halt several yards beyond.

  "Goddamn sonofabitch, get the goddamn hell out of the way, little
bastard ought to get your neck broken," the driver screamed, added a few
more invectives and then settled down into his seat and drove away.

  Arthur Bingle took one look at the smashed dog and another look at the
receding truck before he dropped unconscious on the road. This time the
coma lasted four days.

   At the age of sixteen he went on a pilgrimage. He traveled backward in
time and visited the cat. It played in the grass at the edge of the road, and
he cried because he couldn't pick it up and carry it to safety. Later he
visited the dog, and watched as it loped along the highway in joyous chase
after an imaginary rabbit. As he said good-bye to it, he cried again. It was
the last time in his life that he shed a tear.

   His faith, his hope, his will and his inspiration were not defeated by
those two journeys into the past. What this meant was that he didn't carry
out his plan to kill himself. He knew now that ugliness had shape and
form; it was more real than beauty, and it waited in the wings like a bit
player. Self-destruction was the fate of all mankind, but what a travesty of
justice it would be to hold off that denouement. He had the desire to
commit such a travesty. In the end he would decorate a hole, but the
notion of kicking fate in the teeth was a satisfying one. Naturally he had
been marked for an early hole. So had all men. Those who staggered into
old age and arthritis were aberrants who had thumbed their noses at
justice.

  Arthur wasn't quite eighteen on the day he had his driver take him
south to Jersey for a relaxing ride. The driver was a borderline moron.
Arthur sat in the back seat of the long, silver-colored car and quietly
mused over some new deals. It was a hot afternoon and the road was clear.

    The driver was bored and cast occasional glances over his shoulder at
his new employer. He had been on the job four weeks and he was thinking
that it was beneath his dignity to work for a snot-nosed brat. It would be
more to his liking to find a boss who looked like an up-and-coming
businessman, somebody who ordered him around and kicked his tail when
he didn't move fast enough or who kicked him simply because he felt like
it. It was essential that an employee be treated like a man. The driver
didn't want polite treatment. Manners were bullshit.

   Ahead in the distance, a fat opossum lumbered up an incline and came
to a halt on the shoulder of the road. It stood there and looked around
before it extended one paw toward the pavement.

    "Hot damn," said the driver. Twisting the wheel, he increased speed and
drove along the shoulder. Both right wheels caught the animal, flattening
it into the dirt. The car skidded on the soft earth, and the driver spent a
few moments fighting to get back onto the road. Once they were running
smoothly again, he grinned and turned his head to speak to his employer.

  It was such a quiet face back there that he grinned again. The hair
above the face was soft and brown, so were the eyes, and the cheeks were
pink with no trace of a beard. Quiet. That was what the driver thought
and he was still thinking it as the gun came up over the seat.

  He had already said, "Sorry, boss, I—" when the gun went off. The
insides of his head splashed against the windshield and he was a dead
man behind the wheel of a vehicle that crossed the shoulder and dropped
down a slight incline to come to rest in a field.

  Arthur heard police sirens in the distance and knew he had to move
quickly. The cruisers were headed his way and the car would be spotted at
once. Even as he climbed into the front seat, he considered what he could
do. He might abandon the car. It couldn't be traced to him, as he always
registered his property under phony names. But then it had cost a great
deal of money and he liked it.

  Taking the driver into his arms was nasty business, but he had to do it.
With the body draped over his shoulder, he sat still and closed his eyes
and went to yesterday.

   He had made a mistake. He hadn't noticed that the field had been newly
plowed. A man stood leaning on a hoe not twenty feet away from him. The
car was gone now. There were just himself and the body and a man who
stood with his back turned.

  Arthur took his corpse to the next yesterday without being seen.
Cursing, he hurled the body to the ground and began hauling it toward a
patch of trees. Once it was concealed, he ran back to the spot where he
had appeared and traveled the other way, not toward the future but to his
present, and again he sat in the blood-spattered car.

   He had the machine on the road and was going at a decent clip as the
first police cruiser came into view. It passed him by and the officer didn't
give him a glance. A few minutes later, a second cruiser passed him. After
they were well out of sight, he turned the car around and headed back to
the field.

   Perspiration dampened his back and his blood raced. He was happy
now. It would have been more intelligent to kill the driver later, but he had
done it this way and it was all right because he was no moron and Mr.
Justice would never catch him. The driver couldn't be left lying in the
trees; he had to be gotten out of there and carried away to a secluded
grave where no one would find him. Hopefully, he hadn't been found yet.
After all, he had been lying there for more than two days, and if the
farmer… This was a close one. Perhaps he had made a serious mistake.
The farmer certainly hadn't stuck to that one spot; this was his land and
he probably wandered around; it was more than possible that he had gone
into the patch of trees, maybe to cool off or eat his lunch.

   New the perspiration on Arthur's back ran in rivulets. His blood was a
thin tide. He was happy.

  He parked the car in the same area in the field and quickly ran into the
trees. The body was lying where he had left it. In twenty-four more hours
he would have had nothing to worry about and could have forgotten about
the body, but he couldn't be sure it would remain unseen that much
longer. Impulsively he extended his hands toward the dead man and met
an invisible wall. He was in the wrong time corridor. The driver was in a
particular period and couldn't be touched by anyone who wasn't in the
same period.

    Arthur had sensed the presence of the barrier before his hands touched
it. His fingers clutched heavy waves of air that shifted in and out of his
grasp. The air seemed to have weight; it pressed against him and then
dispersed, only to grow heavy again. His hands felt neither cold nor warm
but there was an unrealness about them, as if he had lost them to the
strange region.

   This was a passage of non-time. He called it that: a corridor of no-time.
For as long as he could remember, he had been able to travel into the past.
After much experimenting he had discovered several things. His travel
limitation was one hundred years. No matter how much force he used, he
never went beyond the century barrier, and this barrier moved forward as
he aged, day for day. He could take anything with him that he could carry,
and it remained where he placed it until seventy-two hours had passed,
and then it disappeared. He knew where the things had gone. They were in
the corridor of no-time.

   Once he, himself, had almost disappeared. When he was fourteen he
stole a car from a supermarket parking lot. The police chased him and he
panicked and crashed into a tree. That was when he realized he had been
carrying a passenger. A small boy scrambled over the back seat and flung
his arms around his neck. Arthur took him and traveled a century into the
past. In those early days he always went too far. He hadn't learned then
that even an hour's difference was usually enough to ensure his safety.

   He lost the boy. The city was a suburb that hadn't existed a hundred
years before. There were thick woods and swamps and the boy ran away
from him and hid in the trees and he didn't find him until it was too late.
For three days he hunted until finally he saw him running along a low
ridge. He stood below the ridge and shouted. Maybe the boy intended to
come down. He stopped running, stood on the ledge of rock, crying, and
then he sat and tested the stony incline with one foot. He was in a
half-crouch, silhouetted against the horizon, when he disappeared. First
he was a blurry outline and then he was completely gone. Arthur felt the
same thing happening to himself. He looked at his hands and saw the
bones through the skin. He was growing transparent. He wasted no more
time. With as much force as he could muster, he swung his essence away
from the woods and traveled to the present.

  Experiments with rocks and plants taught him that seventy-two hours
was the limit a traveler could remain in the past. After that the traveler
drifted into the channel between time periods: no-time, non-time, an
enigma. He didn't know where the objects actually went. Conceivably they
drifted out of one time period and into the next. He had never again seen
anyone or anything that had disappeared in that manner.

   Another thing which he learned was that the time in his present, just
before he traveled, didn't move forward if he stayed near his point of entry
into the past. The farther he moved from this point, the faster time passed
in his present. For instance, if he traveled on Tuesday at 1:00 P.M. and
stayed in the past for twelve hours, within five hundred yards distance of
his point of entry, he returned to the present on Tuesday at one or two
seconds past 1:00 P.M. If he moved more than five hundred yards after he
traveled, he returned to find that his present had gone ahead. He had
never been able to calculate his movements and never knew what time it
would be when he returned, so he rarely moved far from his entry point.
Once he went half a mile from it and found, when he returned to the
present, that forty-four hours had been lost.

   Now he had a body to dispose of, and he couldn't leave it in the woods
for another twenty-four hours until it disappeared because there was too
great a chance of someone finding it. If that happened, Mr. Justice might
hear of it and go on the hunt for him. At age seventeen he wasn't ready to
take on that kind of challenge. Later, surely, but not just now.

   He traveled backward to the driver's time period, hauled him over his
shoulder, returned to the present, climbed in the car and drove away with
the body. He thought about the future and smiled. His mind was always
reliable, continually opening up interesting vistas. For instance, what
would happen if a man with a certain psi ability mated with an
exceptional woman? The child would very likely have the father's ability.
Might it also have something else? It might. How interesting it would be
to see what kind of offspring he produced. Of course he had to find the
woman, and this would be difficult because so far no one had gotten a rise
out of him. It would be too bad if he never loved. But he wouldn't think
about that. Somewhere was the woman for him.




  Time was a series of corridors with each moment having its own
corridor.

  Or…

  Time was the clocked motion of matter. As such, it became an abstract,
not real and not there, merely a convenience created by minds.

  Or…

   Time was a portrait of whatever existed. Like an oil painting,
time—reality, space, matter—lay sprawling everywhere, and each atom of
pigment represented a minutia of thing, state, being. No change took
place in the portrait for it was a still life, a great gob of paint hurled onto
canvas. Change? Nonexistent, abstract. The atom which lay after the one
before it had a different state of being. Reality was motionless. Everything
on the painting was in a static condition. To comprehend change here,
one had to have senses keen enough to perceive an atom and at the same
time perceive the next atom and the next.

   Perhaps time was more like a cartoon than a painting. The show was
finished if the hand stopped drawing. Each slide died after its showing, or
it was arrested and never moved again. A leg raised and stayed forever
raised unless the next slide came to show it descending: a scattering of
motion, blurred movement, nothing at all unless one happened to be the
owner of the leg.

   To travel in time, one had to walk across the portrait, tramp over the
atoms representing yesterdays. Along the way, such a traveler would pass
his selves or his replicas who had served to bring him to the present. The
replicas were as real or as unreal as he. A sense of space wasn't needed if
one wished to travel over the painting. What was necessary was the
unusual ability to know where today was in relationship to yesterday. The
normal person related tomorrow with today more easily than he did today
with yesterday. What was gone must be let go of, while what was yet to
come still had to be reckoned with. The time traveler first needed a piece
of today in order to orient himself, then he fastened himself to the piece,
and his mind moved, and now his body was in a different position in
reality. The building of a hundred years ago still existed, the scream heard
by someone a month before still rang, the past tide flowed without being
per-ceived. What had gone into stillness was real to the time traveler
because he knew where it was. Not when, but where.




   At one time, Microcom was as busy as the Stock Exchange. Now only an
old man named Tidy Crawford roamed through the building and listened
to the machines that never broke down. He was an on-the-wagon alcoholic
who spent his days polishing the machines. At night he slept on a cot in
the downstairs foyer. Tidy knew Arthur Bingle as a gentleman of means
who rented Microcom from some fabulously wealthy swell. Bingle often
came to use the machines but Tidy didn't know why, nor could he have
cared less. The world had gone to hell in the last five years, really pitched
over the edge into brimstone, so there was no use trying to figure out why
people did anything. Besides, who gave a dang if a civilized fellow came to
diddle with the dolls? At least this fellow was polite. He was soft-spoken
and didn't shriek every word, as most people had a tendency to do
nowadays. Also, he paid wages to have the dolls polished. This was a dang
good thing, since no one else would hire a has-been. In fact, no one was
hiring anyone. Money seemed to be going out of style.

   During the first quarter of the century, and a little more, Tidy had been
in a sodden stupor. When he finally dried out for good, he thought he had
been transported to another world. God, but everything was built up. No
grass anywhere in the whole city; rivers so covered with bridges you could
scarcely see the water; too damn much business, no time for relaxing; not
a speck of hooliganism, which was good, only people didn't seem to
appreciate it, skulked around like shadows were chasing them. Maybe that
wasn't so strange. The cops were tough-looking sons, all over the place
with clubs in their mitts; made a man's head ache to see them.

  Microcom might have sprung out of the ground for all Tidy really knew.
He had been told that it was built as a public service, and people once
used it as they used libraries. The computers, one hundred of them, were
exactly alike, six feet high, two feet across, and every one of them was a
genius that could answer questions on any subject. It was astonishing to
Tidy that the dolls had such big brains. Hell, they were better than
humans.

   "You know," he said to Arthur Bmgle one day, "I can't figure out why
hardly anybody comes in here. People walk up and down the street out
there and I stand by the door watching them and they never come in.
Once in a while someone takes hold of the doorknob and twists it, but they
always change their minds and go away. Now, I know that door isn't
locked. I go out three times a day to get something to eat and I never have
any trouble getting back in."

  "What do you mean, 'hardly anybody'?"

   "Yeah, well, two fellows been coming in lately. Use the dolls. Haven't
said anything to them, since it's none of my business, except that nobody
ever came in before, and I figure since you rent the place you maybe don't
want anyone cluttering it up. It's all for you to say. You never told me one
way or the other."

  "Did you see them at the door before they entered the first time?"

   "They changed their minds after they twisted the knob. Went away and
came back the next day and walked right in. Said, 'How do?' and then they
went off to help themselves to the dolls. Use the same two every day. Knock
those poor babies hard. Curious birds. They have a lot of questions, that's
for sure."

  "The doorknob has an electronic camera in it. It takes a picture of
everyone who approaches within two feet of it."

  "How does it do that?"

  "You would have to go to school in order to understand. Do you want to
do that?"

   "Hell, no. As far as I'm concerned, the world croaked forty years ago. I'm
just a working man. All I care about is these dolls."

  "They must have forged a phony picture."

  "Didn't see any picture," said Tidy.

  "Did they stand one behind the other as they walked to the door?"
  "One stood off to the side."

  "The man who walked to the door wore a small piece of screen, probably
on his shirt front, while the other man held a camera. This second man
made a picture appear on the screen. Of course, the picture was magnified
and was nothing more than the section of scenery behind the first man,
the part which his body blocked from view. The camera in the doorknob
activated, took a picture and relayed it to the computer inside. The
computer decided it had made an error and reversed the camera film to
the previous strip, which was of you entering the last time. This activated
the unlocking mechanism."

  "That's dang interesting, but not a whole lot."

  Arthur Bingle laughed.

  "Let me tell you something," said Tidy. "Those two gents, they aren't
ordinary. One of them is a little Chink, the ugliest fellow I ever saw, while
the other one is just over the hump from being a boy, no more than
twenty-one. Both have something strange about them."

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know. They came in through the door and I almost fell over, like
a mountain had toppled toward me. Only other person ever made that
kind of impression on me was you."

  "Which is why I hired you."

  "Huh?"

  "Please continue."

   "See, they have a lot of aura. That's what I call it. I always could sort of
pick out the weak ones from the strong ones, which is why I hate looking
in mirrors, but it isn't that I look for muscles or anything like that. The
little chink could get clobbered by a girl. No, it isn't that. Say, what are we
talking about? You never said ten words at a time to me before today."

  "Tell me about the young one."

  "He doesn't mind talking. His name is Daniel Jordan and he comes
from something called SPAC, and he's out to nail Justice. See? Didn't I tell
you he was strange? He wants to land something that doesn't exist. Mr.
Justice is a fairytale. The newspapers are written by big liars. They make
up whoppers to keep people from noticing that the world has gone nuts."

  "How often do these two come in?"

  "Every afternoon at two o'clock. Stay three hours, work two dolls, one
apiece, then they leave. If I'm not around they don't look for me to say
good-bye."

  "Do you know for certain that they're after Justice?"

   Tidy nodded his head and looked around for a place to spit, changed his
mind and looked back at the quiet face of Arthur Bingle. "That's the only
thing the young one is interested in. You couldn't get him off the track
with anything but the final kiss-off. He uses oral query, never fools around
with the coder or typing. The dolls don't store oral conversation, so he
either remembers pretty damn good or he's hunting for bits and pieces.
Probably he does both."

  "What if Justice is real? Pretend for a moment that he is."

   "Then those two'll catch the sonofabitch. They're going about it the
right way."

  "Explain."

    "They're working on who he is, not where he is. Figure he's given
himself away a hundred times already. The dolls know everything about
him that was ever made public. See, these two think he's no nonentity,
that he's made his marks all over the place, some recent and some long
before he ever hit the newspapers. He has talents and personalities and
eccentricities and his trail is a mile wide, and the only thing that can put
it together is a machine that never forgets."

  "I imagine they're feds."

  "Oh, sure," said Tidy. "Who else would go all out to nail Justice? The
people? They're so damn miserable they're looking for a savior, and they
wouldn't care if he climbed out of a dung heap."
  "Is that what you think of him?"

   "Haven't really thought it over. If he was real I'd be scared of him.
Wouldn't want to meet him. Expect his aura would knock me down. Not
sure the world can accommodate such different kinds of humans, not that
he's all the way human. Takes another sort who can forget his culture and
murder his fellow man in the same way he eats his breakfast. Don't want
to believe he's real."

   "I'm satisfied with your work here and I want you to continue it, but I
think you're capable of more. If you don't mind, I'd like you to start taking
a walk every day. Move around the area. Two hours every evening should
be enough. You're to look for the strong, not the almost-strong but the
mountains, and if you come across one, be sure and get a good description
for me."

   Tidy's eyes misted over. He hung his head. "I'll do anything you say. All
my whole life nobody else ever believed I could tell how much a person
cared. Are they up and running or are they crawling on their bellies? I can
tell. I know. And I know most people are snakes."

   Bingle went away and Tidy snorted off his momentary self-pity and
began polishing the dolls. He ran a chamois cloth across the top of the
machine his employer preferred to use. Damn strange bird, was Bingle. He
liked to play with his doll and he sure wanted foolish information. What
was the point in finding out how to take over the whole world? In the first
place, that was the ambition of a nut. In the second, it couldn't be done
without an army of at least a million men. In the third, well, why would
anyone want to go to the bother? Poor Bingle. He was kind and quiet and
as nutty as a fruitcake. And therein lay his strength. The ambition of a
psychotic could be awesome. Luckily Bingle was only playing games with
the dolls. Those damn dolls. Maybe they weren't so holy and innocent, at
that. They were a little bit like the apple; use them the wrong way and
Pandora's box flew open.




  "He's a good feeler," said Eric Fortney. "I wish I didn't have to lose him."

  Arthur Bingle sat inside his papier-mach é kingdom, and no expression
passed over his face. He looked bland and guileless and impotent. The
mockup had grown to include the states of New York, New Jersey,
Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Now the tiny buildings and
artificial landscapes took up most of the room.

  "The school has closed down," he said, and gave an idle glance about his
property.

  "We pretty well stripped it," said Eric. "Turner selected a good batch for
us. The rest are gone, one way or another."

  "Then why do you need him any longer?"

   "I don't actually need him, but outsiders wander in and out, and some
of them are top minds and we could make use of them. Of course, most
people are lamebrains. Don't be annoyed. I know Turner's a fed. For five
years he's been watched around the clock without letup. It's a wonder he
isn't crazy. But it didn't matter before and it doesn't matter now. The
agencies are ramming heads. They're accomplishing nothing and they'll
disband any day now."

  "To you all men are fools," said Bingle.

  With a shrug, Eric said, "Not at all. I've thought ahead. They have a few
good men, but what can they do? You don't like questions, I know, but
what about your own feeler? Is he dead?"

   "I want two. I should have used Turner in the beginning and left you to
sift through SPAC with Asa's help. If I'd done that, we might have pinned
Mr. Justice between them. Incidentally, I want an all-clear put on two
men. Nobody is to touch them or interfere with them. A young one named
Daniel Jordan and the Chinese he works with."

   "He's a fed, an All-American, SPAC-nurtured adolescent who isn't quite
right in his head. The Chinese thinks he's Fu Manchu."

   "Be quiet and listen," said Bingle. "Turner and the other will follow the
'where.' Jordan and his friend are going for the 'who.' Let them. They're
helping us. You realize what it means if we get him: everything we want,
everything I've worked for. With everything, there's no nothing, and isn't
that what people fear? Of course. But I don't do what I do because I'm
afraid. You do, though, and it's a weakness. Work on it. Perfect yourself. I
want no flaws."
  "Yes, sir."

  Blinking calm brown eyes, Bingle allowed his hands to touch the spire of
the Brant Building. "Did you ever ask yourself why he opposes us, why he
doesn't throw in with us? Our styles are exactly the same."

  "No, they aren't," Eric blurted and immediately regretted it. Rarely did
he ever see Bingle show emotion. There was emotion present now, and it
was ugly rage. So quickly did it pass to blandness again that Eric couldn't
be certain it had existed.

  "Yes, I've asked myself, but I don't know the answer."

  "Neither do I," said Bingle.

   He's lying, Eric thought to himself. He knows, and so do I. We pretend
that Justice is an egomaniac, that he's fighting us because he has a fat id
and wants more glory than we can give him, but that isn't true. Justice
is the man of tomorrow. He's going to clean out the rats from the nest
because he can't stand rats. To hell with law, it isn't good enough. Wait
around for the law to clean house and everybody will wind up in chains.
Nietzsche botched it, created a deformed hero, and that was because
Nietzsche was human. Justice isn't human. He's more. He's Superman.

  Jesus, no, no, he didn't believe that. It was only his mind rambling.
Bingle was responsible. Bingle scared him. But what was Mr. Justice?

   A few hours later, the two men stood in a room in the east wing of the
Bingle mansion. There were other people in the room. None of the
attention was focused on Turner, who stood wilted and sagging in front of
Teuton.

  "Please, please, no, don't do that to me," Turner kept saying, but if
anyone heard him they gave no sign. He tried to lean forward. Teuton
squeezed. Turner's wrists grated together and he screamed. With one
hand the short man held him fast. Each time Turner tried to move, the
pressure on his wrists grew intolerable.

   The room was large. A male nurse tended a man in a bed. The man had
little flesh on his bones. Though he was tall, he weighed no more than
ninety pounds. His hair was long and stringy, his dark eyes huge and
empty. His gaping mouth dribbled words, but they were meaningless, like
fast-falling water-drops. At a signal from Bingle, the nurse lifted the man
from the bed. The patient's arms flapped and needles yanked free from
flaccid veins.

   "Goddamn," said the nurse and laid his burden down again to reinsert
the needles. Bottles of fluid hung from rails over the bed. The man was
naked. He made no protest as the needles probed for blood. They entered
his arms again. Others stabbed his groin. There were so many needles. He
was placed in a metal chair beside the bed. The words dropped faster from
the helpless mouth, staccato yelps like the sounds a chicken made when
the hatchet descended.

  Feet touched a steel pedal. Smaller needles shot out of the pedal and
entered the soles. Manacles grew from the chair and turned the wandering
arms into throbbing white sticks. The legs were immobilized by other
manacles.

  "How much do you want him to have?" the nurse said to Arthur Bingle.

 "Give him a strong dose. I want to see how he works out with the new
man."

  There was a loud crack and Turner screamed.

  "He pulled too hard, boss," Teuton said to Eric. "His arm broke."

  "Get him in that other chair."

  "You aren't gonna set the bone?"

  "Do as I said."

   Only one other time did Turner scream and that was when the
manacles clamped around his arms. After that he sat quietly enough to
keep the nurse from prodding his neck with a long fingernail. Turner
looked down at his own muscular body, then he stared at the wreck sitting
in the chair across the room. He stared for a long minute because the
wreck looked familiar.

  "Guglielmo?" he said at last. "Is that you, Guglielmo?"

  The man in the other chair drooled. Suddenly his head came up and in
a clear voice, he said, "Mama, I don't want to be born. Get out of that
bed."

  "Can I leave now?" said Teuton. "I got business to take care of."

  "Go ahead," said Eric.

   Turner's chair was a many-splendored contraption. Adrenalin injected
into the bloodstream of the occupant caused a heavy flow of platelets to
rush to the heart. Filtered blood coursed rapidly through the aorta and
flooded the brain. This process wasn't allowed to let up. The brain was
all-important in the experiment and must receive prime nourishment.

  Large amounts of a paralysis drug were injected into a vein. This
deadened the senses. The occupant became a brain imprisoned inside a
chunk of unfeeling matter.

  The mind sought reality or externals. Without the senses as a guide, it
was deaf, dumb and blind. Under such conditions, a living mind took
reality where it found it. For Turner's mind, reality existed nowhere but
inside itself. The needles in the chair quickly saturated his brain with LSD.
The last real sensation he experienced was one of sound. Eric Fortney
spoke to him.

  "Where is Mr. Justice?"

   Love, hate, indifference—all were the same to Turner, were his world,
where no man walked but only emotions lived. Such were open to him and
sometimes they were accompanied by coherent thoughts, in which
instance even these were readable. It wasn't a simple case of, "I love," or "I
am indifferent." Surges of strength were directed by the mind and
Turner's talent enabled him not only to identify the surge but also to
locate its source, after which consequent surges were easily interpreted.

  "I see him," shrieked Guglielmo.

  "I see him," shrieked Turner.

  They told what they saw and this was the way it went:
   Fifth Avenue was deserted and Teuton strode down the middle of it. His
short, powerful legs carried him swiftly along. His mind was occupied with
a woman: one woman—Godiva. Bitches bred bitches and bastards,
everything wrong with the world could be traced back to some woman,
treat them rough because they were responsible. Luckily they were usually
little and weak. Nature was an unrefined hag and had made people like
cats. The tom was randy twenty-four hours a day, and that was a damned
good thing for cats, otherwise there wouldn't be any. Same with people.
Wait around for a woman to give the all-clear and the population growth
would bomb at zero.

   Fifth Avenue was littered with debris. The gutters overflowed with
garbage. Windows in buildings had been used as targets by youths with
BB guns, or dumb cops with real weapons. All the buildings were
occupied, business continued as usual, lunch counters had patrons, so did
department stores. Only out in the open was activity sparse. No one
hastened toward it. All lingered wherever they were, and then when there
was no other recourse, they ran into the streets, ran to an automobile or a
taxi, or they simply ran until they reached home or until they bumped into
a policeman or a hustler or a huckster or a panhandler. It didn't matter
which. Any one of these would have a gun or a bad temper or both.

  Teuton crossed to the sidewalk, prepared to pass an alley entrance, then
came to a sudden halt because of a curious sound that reached him.

  Buildings cut off the sunlight, but he had good vision and saw well
enough to know what was going on. Back in the crumbled bricks, back in
the shade, away from eyes and minds, far from the street, a man was busy
raping.

  Teuton had excellent vision, and he saw. The girl was naked and blood
came from lacerations in her body, not oozings but pourings. Bright red
blood came from a place where there should be none, because she wasn't
old enough to be bleeding from there, nor would she ever be old enough,
not now.

  The cop heard a sound above his own labored grunts and his head shot
up and around. It took him an instant to see the button glinting on the
short man's lapel, then he wasn't worried anymore because the short man
was a pal, a compadre, one of the gang. Not that the cop would have
worried, anyhow. The world was gutless and he had three guns lying right
beside him. It was a good thing everybody in the Army had one of those
fancy buttons.

  Teuton stood above them, looked down. "She's dead."

  "You want some?"

  "Didn't you hear me? I told you she's dead."

  "I'll be done in a minute. You can have it after me."

  Leaning down, Teuton looked closely. Her insides must be ruptured. He
had never seen anything like it in his life. The cop must be banging all the
way up through her peanut uterus.

   "Aw, shit," he said in a very low voice. One meaty hand made a fist. The
fist raised about a foot over the cop's hairy head. The head descended,
rose, descended, rose, on and on. All of a sudden the fist was the thing that
descended.

   It sounded like pressure escaping from a champagne bottle. Teuton
wasn't certain as to what he did in the next few seconds. Maybe someone
else had done it, only of course it had been he, because only he was strong
enough to do such a thing. The cop croaked with his head busted and then
somebody picked up his corpse and used it like a javelin so that it ended
up across the alley with its head and neck rammed into a hole in the brick
wall.

   There were no clothes to cover the kid. Teuton felt like a brute as he
stood over her. Never before had he felt that way. He had never
experienced compassion or sorrow. Now he didn't recognize the emotions.
Maybe they weren't really there.

  It hadn't been a right thing. Lots of wrong things were right because a
man decided in his cradle what was right and wrong for him. Those things
applied to everyone else. No double standard; there wasn't any damned
such thing. You could only respect people wno were like yourself.

   Except that this wasn't right. He was glad he had clobbered that
creature who had pretended to be human. Everybody wanted the best,
right? It was only natural. So okay, but don't be offensive.

  He turned away and was brought up short by surprise. Sitting on an
overturned garbage can, not fifteen feet away, was a genteel-looking man
whose face never came into focus. He wore a gray suit, white shirt, tie and
hat. He had long sideburns and a bit of a mustache. A leg was propped on
a knee. The shoes were shiny. In one hand was a gun.

  Mute Teuton. Astonishment clogged his throat. No one could sneak up
on him, not when he had such keen ears.

  "Go ahead. Shoot."

  "I don't think so." The man's voice was deep and soft.

  "What do you want?"

  "I came on a crusade." The gun waved, stilled. "This can't hurt you."

  "It isn't loaded?"

  "It is, but it won't function here."

  Teuton stared at the gun. "Then why do you have it?"

  "To show you that I can kill you when I decide to." The man glanced at
the body protruding from the cracked wall. "I liked the way you did that. I
wouldn't shoot you for any price. Not today."

  "I don't understand."

  "Go away now. I'll get you yesterday. Not your yesterday. One of mine."




  "I'm not scared. I did it. I wouldn't tell you if I thought I could have
hidden it. Only I know I can't. You'd find out. Either way I'm a dead man."

  Teuton was speaking to his employer.

  "Why didn't you try to run?"

  "It wouldn't have done me any good," said the short man.

  "You know the rules."
   "Yeah. We aren't supposed to kill unless we're backed up by protection.
It was an impulse. I busted his head open. He was screwing a girl. You
know? Imagine doing that? It was an impulse. I never made any mistakes
before."

  "I don't intend to have you executed."

  "What?"

   "You did me a service. I want you to do me more. Be a little impulsive.
Indulge yourself. Every time you see a soldier doing something really
disgusting, I want you to do exactly what you did today."

  "You mean bust his head?"

  "Yes, bust his head. Do you know who that man with the gun was?"

  "No."

   "The feelers are fine. I'm pleased, except for one item. The feelers were
so strong together that they were able to pick up a few of your thoughts.
Forget Godiva. Put her completely out of your mind. Have anyone you
want, but forget that particular woman."

  "She's something, and she doesn't scare me."

  "Forget her. That's an order."




                                    VII


   "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is a recording. Those of you
who are out of bed and trying to open the doors should stop wasting your
time. They will not open until further notice and, besides, you won't want
to miss hearing any part of this record. Everything I say is important to
you.

  "First of all, you must have guessed by now that you are in a hospital.
Look about you. It is a large ward, the sixty-seven beds are occupied, or
they should be if you ladies have decided to behave yourselves and have
left off banging on the doors.

   "All of you were brought here over the past week and have been kept
anesthetized until this morning. No doubt some of you recognize each
other. Be assured that everyone in the ward has practiced the same
profession. The room contains every district attorney in the state of
Pennsylvania. The bed occupant on either side of you is a judge, the same
as yourself.

   "Most of you are young, which makes my task easier. After you have
heard me out, you will be eager to cooperate with me. In a week's time, my
staff will blindfold you and take you from this hospital. You'll be released
on a Pennsylvania street. After that you're on your own.

  "You will continue to prosecute cases as before, with only a few
exceptions, and you'll be notified about those exceptions prior to the
hearings. Once you have received notification, it will be your duty to see
that the case never comes to trial. How you accomplish this doesn't
matter. Your task is to see that the suspect is not indicted. There won't be
many of these exceptions for you to handle.

   "If, in six months' time, you have conducted yourselves in a satisfactory
manner, you will be returned to this hospital and the operations that have
been performed upon you can be corrected. Choose to ignore what I say
and you must face the consequences. I have no compunctions against
killing each and every one of you, either now as you lie there in bed or later
when you've showed me that you can't be trusted.

   "First, a word to each of the ladies. An aging element has been
introduced into your pituitary. Only my special staff knows how to remove
this element without killing you. I want you to cast your mind back to the
last time you saw an old woman, and I do mean old. Remember how her
skin looked? Hideous, wasn't it? Remember her hair? But I don't have to
remind you of these details. A few months from now, your appearance will
be all the reminder you need. Nothing will stop the aging process unless
you do what I say. If you wish to come back to this hospital and be
renewed, you will deport yourself in such a manner that I'll feel you
deserve it.

  "Now, to the men. You know by this time that surgery has been
performed upon you. Leave the bandages alone. Your manhood is no
longer there. They lie safely in storage. They can be replaced, with no
noticeable after-effects, only by my special staff. Whether or not you get
them back is up to you. I think you will do everything in your power to
assure that no damage comes to the contents of the storage locker, which,
incidentally, is nowhere near here, so don't waste your time hunting for it.
Behave, and I guarantee that your own property will be returned to you.

   "In closing, I would like to urge all of you to go to the police at the first
opportunity. I give you one month to get your complaining out of the way.
Anyone who contacts the authorities in regard to this matter after a
month has passed will be deemed incorrigible and cannot return to have
his cure.

  "Good-bye, good luck."




   Every day yellow-haired girls passed by the big front windows on the
first floor of Microcom. In the beginning, Daniel chased them. He hurried
across streets to catch up with them, and most of the time he turned away
after a second or third glance. Legs were too heavy or thighs were too
broad, hair not the exact shade told him he had made another mistake,
but it didn't matter because those few moments of pursuing were essential
to him. For that little while he was happy.

   More and more, he found it necessary to have a look at their faces. It
had been six years and she would have changed a great deal. She would be
taller and heavier, her clothes… he didn't remember what kind she
preferred… usually she had worn jeans and sloppy shirts, but her tastes
must be different now. What would she look like in a long dress, or with
her hair short or pinned up? What did she look like at nineteen?

   He sat behind number three doll and rested his head on a bent arm. A
girl with yellow hair passed the front windows at the bottom of the
stairway. He wasn't interested, but he watched her from the corner of his
eye. She came by every day, at the same time, but he had never chased her
because she couldn't be the one. She was too tall and her clothes were too
expensive.

  The girl stopped in front of the entrance and fumbled for something in
her purse. Her back was turned and Daniel looked away.

  "We waste time, young friend," said Wu, who sat next to him before
number four doll.

  "Don't you ever get tired?"

  "I came tired into the world so I cannot get that way."

  Tidy Crawford came tramping down the aisle. "You shouldn't ought to
put your feet on the dolls. They don't like to get scratched."

  Daniel removed his feet from the panel on the bottom of his machine.
Idly he glanced down at the windows just as the girl turned around.
Suddenly rigid, he watched as she walked to the door and placed a hand
on the knob. She hesitated, drew back, then turned and hurried away.

   He chased her. Down the steps he went, three at a time, and raced
outside. She was nowhere in sight. He checked the two corners on his side
of the street, but the yellow-haired girl had disappeared.

  "Did you see her?" he said when he came back inside.

  "No," said Wu.

  "I saw her," said Tidy. He scowled and ambled on down the aisle.

  "How much would she have changed?" Daniel said to Wu.

  "Sit down. Catch your breath."

  "Would she be so tall? Could she grow that much in six years? Talk,
dammit."

  "For what purpose? To encourage you to hallucinate?"

  "You must have seen her."

  "I told you I didn't."

  Daniel sat down beside his machine. "You tell me plenty of things, and
sometimes I think they're all lies. But I have to agree with you. She was a
mirage. It's just that there was something familiar about her. What's
wrong with me? Why do I do it?"

   Wu sat like a little statue and smiled without moving a muscle of his
face. "You are driven. We all are."

  "Okay. Forget it. Ask me a question."

  "How tall is Mr. Justice?"

  "Six feet, one inch."

  "Weight?"

  "One hundred and seventy-two pounds."

  "Tell me what he does in his spare time."

  "Damn, I want questions I can answer."

  "What does he think of the world and the men who inhabit it? Does he
have nightmares about Utopia? Why does he kill? Is he Satan in disguise?
Can one call him a vigilante? Robin Hood? A maniac? Is Mr. Justice
Superman?"

  "Go to hell," said Daniel. "Why don't you leave me alone? Go back to
your coffin and dream about vampires."

   Wu said, "I have been commissioned to assist you, and I tell you
truthfully, as I have told you many times, that the man who gave me the
commission was the very man whom you seek. He is my lifelong friend."

   "That's a new one. The last time we had a conversation like this, you
said Pala sent you to keep on eye on me. And the time before that, you
said you were Bailey's spy. Your Manchu costume is getting shaggy."

  "Men who wear costumes are trying to project a piece of their
personality. I'll keep mine unprojected, if you don't mind. Now, where
were we? Oh, yes, the just man, the man, Justice. Why do you think he
chose that name for himself?"

  "Ego."

  "Justice is vain?"
  "Of course."

  "He no longer leaves his seal sticking to his victims. Does his vanity
wane at this late date?"

  "Where did you get this recording?" Daniel said to Bailey.

  "Someone mailed it to me. Anonymous."

  "Interesting."

  "Is that all you can say? Do you know that every one of those judges is
now a crook? They're back to normal again and they're breaking their
necks to make sure they don't earn another trip to that hospital. Do you
know what that means?"

  "Justice is lousy in Pennsylvania." Bailey glared at the wall. "I've created
a monster." He looked at Daniel. "No such thing as switching horses in
midstream, eh?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "I believe that, but it doesn't help. That's the monster I'm talking about.
The world is toppling over your head but you can't be bothered to look up.
Where's Turner?"

  "Maybe he's dead."

  "Where's Tom Burgess?"

  "Sniffing out the Ridleys."

   "For all you care, they might have gone fishing." Bailey sat back in his
chair and gripped its rickety arms. The room was part of a shack, the
shack sat in the rear of an alley, the alley was in a slum. Bailey leaned
forward and stared into the eyes of the young man seated on the other side
of the scarred table. The eyes were smoke-colored, weird, the same as the
whole person. This kid had been weird all his life.

   "Let me make some idle conversation for a few minutes. If you have the
time to spare from your computers, I'd like to pass on to you a
state-of-the-union message. Four words. There ain't no union."
  The smoky eyes didn't drift. They stayed motionless, fixed, without
surface.

    Bailey continued. "How about what used to be laughingly known as my
organization? It's gone downhill a bit. From a thousand trusted agents I
now have three and a half: myself, Tom Burgess and, somewhere, Turner.
You're the half, and I don't know if that means you're half on my side or
only half present. The thousand trusted agents are now a thousand
hooligans. One by one they've taken over the spots. It took them about
three months to do it. Oh, I could complain. Let's see, there's Senator
Thurston, only he's a hooligan, too. Then there's the Washington bunch,
except that a funny situation has been boiling there, seems as if they're all
down with laryngitis all of a sudden and nobody gets to talk to them or see
them. Who does that leave? The cops. Everyone knows how much help
they are these days. What they're especially good at is caving in heads; hit
it if it wiggles."

  Bailey ran a palm over his forehead. "Dan, Danny, Daniel, come out of
the woodwork and open your mind. It was a routine, a job. In the
beginning it seemed to be an isolated case, but this isn't the beginning
now. It's so close to being the end that I have nightmares when I close my
eyes."

  "Probably Turner will show up," said Daniel. He stood and walked to
the door. Behind him, Bailey spoke again.

  "Go back to your computers, zombie. When you decide to quit stalling,
remember something of what I've said. Civilization is shot if we can't stop
him. His was the hand that started the snowball rolling. He knew what he
was doing, every step of the way."

  His hand on the knob, Daniel turned. "You sound so sure of yourself."

  "I am; just as I'm certain you can name him right now."




  "I see him," shrieked Turner.

  "I see him," shrieked Guglielmo.

  In nightmare or fancy, Mr. Justice created from the depths of his
subconscious, and that part of his mind was read like a map by two
searching tendrils of free thought; they were free because they were
bodiless.

   In the beginning they had fumbled. In spite of the drugs, it was difficult
for them to forget the body. Especially had it been difficult for Turner.
And then it became easy. His body grew accustomed to hurtling away into
limbo, after which there was only his unencumbered mind that focused
with terrible accuracy, penetrated distance without effort, seized upon the
prey and inhabited his soul as if it were open to occupancy.

  It had been bad timing. The prey slept.

  Said two voices together, "He dreams of a child. It wears a white gown
and upon its head sits a crown. It has no sex because it is not yet born.
There is dark mist all around it. It moves, and wherever it goes, light
breaks forth to scatter the mist."




  Eric Fortney watched Leona from the window. For a brief instant he
wished that he loved her. How simple things would be if he loved this girl.

   She was with Cass again. The boy would never become a Number. He
was too stupid. His I.Q. made his a borderline normal, but this wouldn't
be the deciding factor in regard to his future. Because of his gentleness, he
would never be anything but a chore boy. All his life Cass was destined to
prune gardens, wash cars, shop for groceries, fetch and carry. He hadn't a
tough core. Right now he was lathing Leona's back with suntan lotion. The
pool was built into the balcony and the boy and girl lay on a small stretch
of grass bordering it.

  Eric walked through the glass door and stopped beside them. "Hello,
Leona."

  "Eric. Come and enjoy the sun."

   Cass looked up with a grin. "Hey, boss, the water's fine." He was
nineteen with a body that was sturdy and smooth. His sandy hair always
hung in his eyes. Curly tufts of it hid the tops of his ears. One brown hand
stroked Leona's back while his eyes traced the movements of the man who
stood over them. Something like envy crept into his expression.

  "Arthur will deball you if he sees you," Eric said.

   "You're so rotten crude." Leona sat up and gave her dark head an angry
shake. "He only does what I tell him to. Poor Cass. He never has a minute
to himself."

   The wedding night would be impossible. That was what Eric was
thinking. He tried to imagine how it would go. No doubt he would say
something defensive, such as: "Sorry, old girl, I'm afraid I won't be making
a woman of you. You see, I'm not like other men, can't rise to the situation
at the drop of a hat." She would complain to Arthur, but maybe Arthur
wouldn't care. All he wanted was for his little girl to be looked after.
Wasn't that it? Hadn't he chosen Eric because he trusted him? Surely to
God Arthur wouldn't mind that the bride and groom didn't love each
other.

  Leona lay down on the grass and the boy named Cass piled lotion on her
back and patiently rubbed it in.




  His mouth was dry, terror made him tremble, joy was a coward hiding
behind old rage, all the things that made him human and aware tried to
surface at the same time. He felt jammed inside.

  He stood at the mouth of an alley and looked into the shadows. If there
were an exit back there, she was gone and he had lost her. The coward in
him flickered out like weak flames and old rage grew strong.

  "I'm sick of chasing girls," he called in an unsteady voice.

  The alley was empty. For as far back as he could see, nothing moved.

  "Damn you. I know. I always knew. Bailey was lying. Nobody stole you.
You in a whorehouse? Do you think I believed that? All I believed was that
you left willingly. You went away and I drowned."

  A rustling in the shadows made his heart work too hard.

  His blood rushed so rapidly that he couldn't breathe. Pala. But if he said
the name to himself, thought of it one more time, he would be lost. He'd
end up on his knees on the filthy bricks, probably he'd cry and he had
sworn never to cry again, over her or anything or anyone else. Tears were
human dams. Once they were broken, there were no defenses for the soul.

   "I'm not coming in there. This is it. I'm going to be stronger than you. I
intend to turn around and walk away. It's either that or die, and you aren't
worth that much."

   It wasn't horrifying to discover that his legs refused to obey. One step
forward he went, then the next foot moved. It was uncanny. How many
feet did he have? Two had never covered distance so quickly.

  Stop. His legs obeyed. He hated them and he hated his mind for telling
him that he wasn't sane.

  "I don't care anymore," he said. "I'm not coming in."

   Three more steps into the alley meant that he was incoherent, but the
shadows were an overwhelming lure. Was there a living heart within those
shadows, and if there were, did that heart pound with the same ferocity as
his own?

  If there were an exit in the alley, if she were gone, another piece of
death waited for him. Why go on? Why hurry to one's own dying?

  Split-second timing; the shadows burst open and the living heart
indeed existed, and it was encased in a form that was at once familiar, yet
unfamiliar.

  "I didn't think you would be so tall," she said.

   Somebody's kept girl, else how could she dress in autumn fur? There
was such a thing as autumn fur, for the very rich, for the very evil. Inside
him a young voice cried, Pala, Pala, help me. Everything I think I see is a
lie. I know you. Take away my rage.

  "I did it deliberately," she said, and he was wounded by the calmness of
her voice. How coldly she stood staring at him. "I knew you worked with
the computers. I wanted you to follow me. Look around and see. There's no
other way out of this alley, and I know these slums like I know the back of
my hand."
  He had moved without being aware of it and now he stopped a foot
away from her.

 "I came to ask you something," she said. "An old question. Nothing new.
Will you give it all up and go away with me? Right now? Will you do that?"

  "Pala," he said, and his hands took her shoulders.

  She closed her eyes for a moment. When they opened they were
narrowed and glistening. "God bless you, Daniel, I love you," she said, and
her arms went around his neck. She pulled his head down and her mouth
shattered his with a kiss.

   He knew what he was doing, but he didn't stop. Many times he had
fantasized his meeting with Pala, and this hadn't been the way it was
supposed to go. He was more in need of love than sex; neither could be
sustained without the other. First would come a renewal of love: learning
to know her, talking, touching, understanding, talking, seeing, talking,
talking. There was a need for much talk. Who was she and where did she
stand in relation to his reality? By finding the answer to this question, he
might find himself.

   Now he betrayed reason. His voice was stopped and he couldn't talk,
could think of nothing to say with calmness. While his mind rebelled at
himself, his hands stripped her of her clothing. This was a kind of
communication, and it was the wrong kind. He wished she would hit him.
He loved her and he was lowering her naked body onto the filthy bricks of
an alley. All the promises he had made to her in her absence were
meaningless because he couldn't wait. He wondered if he had been lying to
himself. Maybe revenge had always been his intention: pay her back, mess
it up, make it ugly, choose the worst possible surroundings, make love in a
sewer, show her what he really thought of her.

   Later he hunched in the shadows and cried into his hands. The last
thing he remembered her saying was that she would never ask him to go
away with her, never again ask him to be sane.

  He had awakened with the night breeze chilling him and the bricks
gouging his back. He cursed because he had fallen asleep and then he
reached out to find her. She wasn't there beside him. He was alone. She
was gone. He had received nothing, had given her nothing. She had left
him to finish the drowning process.
   Dawn broke over the skyscrapers and unveiled a thing that had not
existed a day earlier. During the night or the predawn, someone had
strung a huge red banner between two buildings. High above Fifth
Avenue, it flapped in the weak wind. Large white letters on both sides
spelled a message.

  The waking city prepared to go abroad, and eventually the banner was
noticed. A few people cheered as they read the message, though they
couldn't have said why. It was just something to do, like coming into the
world or leaving it.

   One person screamed when he read it. A lackey mentioned the fact of
the banner's existence and then watched in surprise as his master tore
open a window and draped himself on the sill in order to get a clear view
of the sky. The message on the banner said: TO WHOM IT MAY
CONCERN: MR. JUSTICE HAS A DAUGHTER.

   The scream Arthur Bingle gave was heard on every floor of the Brant
Building, the acoustics being poor and Bingle's emotions being utterly
intense.

  Livid and trembling, he sought assistance from his two zombies.

  "Find her. Track her down. Bring her to me. I want to see her. I want to
get my hands on her. I want to kill that bastard's whelp."

  "I see him!"

  "I see him!"

  He was very near. Where? It was impossible to get the zombies to
answer specific questions. They couldn't hear. All they could do was see
with their inner eyes. Bingle wasted no time. Within the hour he had a
hundred men busy picking up every man on the streets.

   The girl and the name didn't fit. At least Eric thought not. Somehow,
"Paula" made him think of dark hair and eyes. Not that it mattered. Most
likely, some fool in an orphanage had stuck the name on her.

  She did a good job on his books, never made mistakes, never asked
questions, never presumed or assumed too much, didn't laugh or smile
and wore a grave expression always. He was bewildered. How did a girl so
young get like that? In all the years he had known her, he had heard her
laugh only a few times. Was she happy or sad? He didn't know. Was she
just dull? Whenever he thought the question, he winced. She wasn't dull,
he knew she wasn't, though others thought so. He had taken her to parties,
only a few, and then he gave that up. She wouldn't talk to people except to
answer direct questions, and no one like that could get along at a party.
She enjoyed riding horses so he took her to a stable, but she wasn't
satisfied to trot around in a corral; she had to be out on open ground
where she galloped so swiftly that he couldn't bear to stay and watch. She
could talk on any subject, though she had to be coaxed. He took her to
plays now and then. These she never commented upon unless he initiated
the conversation. Did she enjoy them? Not very much, otherwise she
would surely have displayed some enthusiasm.

   That was the word he had been searching for: enthusiasm. Paula had
none. Long ago she had gotten her own apartment, and that was the last
time she had really been insistent about anything. No matter what he
suggested, she was agreeable. She refused to argue with him. She had no
other friends. How could anyone be so agreeable without being full of life?
Paula had no life, had no one, expressed no aspirations, seemed to desire
nothing, spoke not a word about the future which appeared to hold no
challenge for her. And what of himself? He had the feeling that if he
disappeared she wouldn't notice—not right away. He was fighting fog.
Paula was the fog. She looked substantial but the realness of her had
either been abandoned along the way or it had never existed. Was she
vain? Not at all. In her apartment was a single mirror, a small one in the
bathroom. Did she dress lavishly? Once he had picked her up to take her
to a party, and he had been forced to wait while she changed from jeans to
a dress. One or the other, she didn't care, and if he was annoyed over her
choice of styles and confessed it, she seemed mildly surprised. What did it
matter what a person wore? People had to wear clothes, but why use them
to enhance the appearance? One was either attractive or one wasn't.
Everybody had eyes with which they saw past the illusions of clothes and
cosmetics.

  He wondered if her attitude would have been different had she been
ugly. At nineteen she was all he had known she would be. The little golden
candle had become a solar flare, the details of which he had long since
ceased to see. She wasn't a pair of eyes, a nose and mouth; she wasn't even
a human body. She was an effect. He saw her as a splash of color that gave
off heat as she drew near. Vivid yellow became warm gold. Skin, hair,
mouth, the whole of her struck him first between the eyes, then in the
throat, then in the stomach. He wanted to cling, yet never had. He had
never kissed her, rarely touched her hand, had yet to feel the texture of her
hair. His little Paula might have been a painting. A talented artist had
created an illusion and the dazzled patron stood and stared and tried to
see the reality behind it.

  Now he sat in a restaurant with her, and he was both happy and
miserable. "Did you ever have psychiatric treatment?"

  "No, did you?"

  He laughed because the question disturbed him. "You're an ungrateful
wretch."

   The restaurant was in a slum. She had wanted to come here. The dregs
of society loitered in corners or hung over the bar rail; they badgered the
bartender and each other. These dregs were unusual. Their clothes were
clean, their jaws shaved, their whined words were pronounced correctly.
The cops present were not so clean or shaven or educated. They lounged
by the entrance and eyed the tall blond man and his girlfriend. The stares
they gave were greedy, but they made no move toward the couple's table.
Occasionally the greedy eyes flicked to another table where five men sat
playing cards. These five were a warning to the cops. The blond man and
his lady were under protection and were to be left alone.

  A tramp leaned over Paula's shoulder and mumbled something.

  "Give him fifty dollars," she said to Eric.

  "So much?"

  "You can afford it."

  The tramp accepted the money and headed for the bar.

  Paula rested her chin in one hand. "Why did you say I was ungrateful?"

  "I retrieved you from a garbage can, remember?"
  "You didn't do it for nothing. You never do anything for nothing."

  "What's wrong with that?"

  "Nothing," she said.

  "You look very beautiful tonight."

   "Yes. Don't you think this silver dress makes a nice contrast to the other
clothes here? Take that man over there by the window. He has a big hole
in his coat. He looks hungry. He's wearing a Mickey Mouse watch. Mine is
diamond-studded. He's wearing sandals. So am I, but mine cost two
hundred dollars. Did you notice the look of desperation on his face? Look
at my face. What do you see?"

  "As usual, it is without a trace of emotion."

  "Isn't that a contrast? Do you notice contrasts as much as I do?"

  "Eat your spaghetti," he said.

 "The cop who runs this place has an unusually good cook for a relative.
We're lucky to have found it."

  "You found it."

  "I have a sixth sense. Like when I crawled into that garbage can six
years ago. I knew you'd find me."

  "You never told me that."

  She laughed.

  "Stop teasing," he said.

  "I'm not."

  "You're half right. I seldom do anything for nothing. I took you out of
that can for nothing but I didn't take care of you for the same reason."

  "Of course not. You're prepping me to be your wife."

  He felt himself growing rigid. "If you knew that all along, why did you
pretend the matter didn't interest you?"

  "You're a good-looking man. Turn your head a fraction toward the light.
A perfect profile. Nature was generous with you."

  "Are you saying you're attracted to me?"

  "I'm saying you're attractive."

  "That's not the same thing."

  Her eyebrows lowered. "No."

  "Damn it, Paula, somewhere inside you is a human being. Won't anyone
ever bring her to the surface?"

  "You've been trying for years."

  He dropped his fork, snatched it up again. "Meaning I've failed."

  "You aren't sure of that. I wonder what you would do with me if you
were?"

  He swore under his breath.

   "You can buy a hundred women. That kind of love isn't out of style yet.
It's still a thriving concern."

  "Are you advising me to peddle myself elsewhere?"

  Heads turned as she laughed.

  "I love you," he said. "And you love me. I know you do."

   She reached across the table and touched his hand. "You've taught me
more than anyone else ever has. Without you I'd never have been certain
what the world was like. I'd have muddled about in confusion and been
utterly useless."

  "When will you marry me?"

  Her hand on his trembled. "It's traditional for the man to ask that
question. In this case, though, it will have to be the other way around. I'm
sorry. You should have found a garbage can with a common, ordinary girl
in it. You'll have to wait for me to do the asking."

   Now it was his turn to tremble. "Don't I stir you at all? Don't I have any
effect on you? You make me feel as if my head is screwed on sideways
while I affect you like a stone."

  "You said it, not I."

   For a long minute he looked at her. "You're changing. Lately I've noticed
a mellowing in you. You're laughing a great deal. You're getting softer.
Maybe that's a good sign. Even your body seems different. It seems fuller.
Is it my imagination or have you gained a little weight? I hope so. You
were too thin. What's wrong? Are you cold?"

  "Yes, I'm cold all of a sudden."




   "Oh, my golly, that one was a giant," said Tidy Crawford. He wiped his
forehead with a big red handkerchief. "I expect he wasn't the biggest one I
ever saw, but I can't be certain since I don't remember when's the last
time I saw a big one that was a stranger. Teach a fella not to take walks.
The world is odd, ain't it? I got a feeling for people, you know. Look at 'em
once and know how persuasive they are. Most people's minds are like fog.
Blow at 'em and they're empty. Anyhow, the world is odd. One day I see
that gal walking by the windows, like Cleopatra floating down the Nile,
then next time I see her she has a wet face and is leaning on a giant. For a
minute I think she's the big one, that's how tough she is, only she's
wishy-washy at that particular moment, so I get a whiff of the man with
her. No, sir, don't ever want to see him again. Humans ain't that tough,
which means he's either inhuman or I'm crazy."

    Again Tidy worked at his face with the handkerchief. "Don't know why a
young fella like you would chase a gal like that yellow-haired statue. She's
the kind to eat out your guts. Did I say something to startle you? It don't
matter. She's gone. That's a funny thing, too, and if you fellas don't mind,
I'll talk about it, and that way I can forget it and sleep nights. Know you
been chasing gals, though can't see why, since there ain't nothing ugly
about you. But that's off the subject. This giant I mentioned, he was one
tough gent, and I ran off not long after I spotted him.
   "He's standing on the streetcorner like he owns it, and I can tell he's
waiting for someone, only he isn't impatient, stands easy and pays no
attention to them varmint cops who are everywhere these days. Next thing
I see is the yellow-hair and I know she's in a hurry even if she doesn't run
or walk fast. She's in a hell of a dither. Her mind is skipping between ideas
of bawling and sticking to her guns, whatever they happen to be. She
passes the man and stops. About three yards beyond him, she stands and
looks at the ground, but all the time she's talking to the man. He's—well,
he ain't mad. He's—hell, I don't know. Upset. Yeah. He doesn't say much,
lets her do most of the talking. Finally he gets tired of listening to her,
holds out his hand and tells her to get over there beside him. She turns
wishy-washy and balks. He speaks some more and she says she
understands. She goes over to him. That's when the funny thing happens.
He takes her in his arms and holds her real close, and the two of them step
right out of this world. I'm not bullshitting you. They went out like candles
in a breeze, there one second and absent the next. What the hell. Know I
won't sleep, though can't recollect there was anything else out of sorts
about that scene. Man loves his kid. Refreshing to know family feeling is
still around in some folks. She was in some kind of a fix and her old man
took her out of it. What more can you ask?"

   Tidy swabbed his face with vigor. To Wu, he said, "Would you mind
telling me what the hell this young fella is bawling about? I mean, don't he
ever do anything else?"




   Arthur Bingle stepped out onto the balcony and stood stock-still. It was
early evening and the wind was brisk and warm. Heat still rose from the
street far below. Within seconds Bingle's face was suffused with red, but
the external temperature wasn't responsible for his color. The sight of the
two figures in the grass beside the swimming pool had done it. That one of
the figures was his daughter he had no doubt, nor was the identity of the
second figure a mystery. He had excellent vision. A delivery boy, a
dumdum, a nothing—with his daughter.

   A half-minute went by during which Bingle stood still and listened to
his heart race. The glittering pool water made flashes of light dance across
the grass. The light bathed Leona's arms as she raised up and took Cass by
the neck, drew him down to her, tasted his mouth, his cheek, his shoulder.
  Without making a sound, Bingle turned and stepped back into the
apartment.




                                  VIII


  The dolls had done away with reference books. These were microfilmed
and thrown away. Rarely did anyone pull a film and study it. The dolls
were there; they could answer oral questions in any language and they also
responded to queries typed on tape and fed into them.

   It may have sounded strange to say that one machine could be more
intelligent than another, but such was the case. Fact was finite while
creative invention knew no bounds. All the dolls contained identical
original knowledge. What had been added upon by the users determined
the individual machine's present state of intellect. A moron, using a doll,
couldn't add to the knowledge. Someone else could.

  Number three doll was the Mr. Justice machine. Daniel had made it so.
Was the machine a detective, a psychologist or a philosopher? Sometimes
Daniel thought it might be a maniac, but if it were, then so was he. How
did it feel to create a mechanical personality or an alter ego? He had
molded the doll's mind until it thought like he did. When he grew excited,
the doll responded faster. When he was lethargic, the machine dropped
back into what he called secondary-thinking responses.

  Primary thinking: the rapid, almost spontaneous process that yielded
the best and the worst results. The human brain was most like a computer
when it utilized this type of thought. Memories were tapped with so much
energy that answers came at astonishing speed.

  Secondary thinking: caution always lay behind this.

  Am I right? Better check the facts. How does X relate with Y? Use your
common sense.

  Primary mind at work: a man ought to be able to fly. Why not?
Exhilaration, desire. Click. Secondary mind suddenly dominates: but a
man has no wings.

    After experimentation, the airplane is born. What would have happened
if that click hadn't sounded? Try it again.

   A man ought to be able to fly. See? Not inward, or not exactly, but it's a
different kind of world you're in now, and it isn't an unfamiliar one,
merely a little strange. A virgin forest in the head. A man can fly; make
him do it. Stay in the swift part of the brain. Don't abandon the
exhilaration, because a happy mind is a kind of idiot, and the behavior of
such is unpredictable, and we don't want predictables here. Keep at it,
don't lose the trend, your man may yet end up flying.

   It wasn't easy. The clicks were nearly automatic. The fire was
responsible. Once burned… did one really own one's mind? How could the
clicks be intercepted? Secondary thought, get lost.

   Mr. Justice is six feet one inch in height, weighs one-seventy pounds,
has dark hair, blue eyes, medium build, prefers casual clothes… where did
I get that last… no, don't stop; go on.

   Mr. Justice prefers casual clothes, which means his body image is such
and such. He's satisfied with the way he looks, no hangups about a big
nose, flapping ears or sunken chest; doesn't substitute clothes for defects,
isn't trying to muffle features, though body image shown to the public is
very important to him. He's a man who uses physical disguises. Why? No,
don't stop; go on.

  Mr. Justice wears disguises so he won't be recognized. Someone knows
him. Everyone knows him. Somebody important mustn't see him.
Importance, importance, the world is a shambles, spies are unimportant,
there is no authority, government is unimportant, the only people who are
making an effort to catch Mr. Justice are Arthur Bingle and myself…

  Witnesses mustn't be able to give an accurate description of him,
because if they did, Arthur Bingle and I would know who he was. We've
seen him before, know him well enough to…who, who, who? Which one is
Mr. Justice?

  Click. Oh, hell. Try again. You're doing great. You hope.

  I know Mr. Justice. He's a mutant with a psi ability. He can visit the
past and return to the present. With a camera he collects evidence against
criminals. If the law won't deal out justice to these criminals, he will.
There is no law now, only mob rule, and Arthur Bingle sits on the throne.
What does Justice think of Bingle? He wants to kill him. He doesn't, so
that means he won't. Bingle is holed up in the Brant Building. He's hiding,
waiting.

   Never mind that. Consider the mind and personality of Justice.
Megalomania doesn't spring from an inferiority complex. The true
megalomaniac has reason to be confident because he has proved himself a
dozen times over. Overconfident? Of course, but he has a great deal more
talent than ordinary people. What is a megalomaniac? First of all, he
thinks he's pretty good. At what? Brains. An I.Q. of 100 wouldn't fit a time
traveler. The brain of Justice is different. He thinks he's pretty good, and
he is; has an I.Q. in the top level. But many people have high I.Q.'s, and
they don't kill in the name of an abstract. They don't know how to travel
through time, either. Is that significant? Is the psi ability waiting at the
top of the intellectual spectrum? Are all men headed for it?

  Click. Well, are we? Digression: why kill in the name of justice? Some
people did that, but they were usually apprehended and dumped in a
padded cell. Did they and Justice have anything in common? Both were
outraged, dedicated to righting wrong… wait… Justice isn't like that,
wouldn't fall for such a line. Wrongs too often can't be righted. Justice
knows that.

   Well, then, revenge? But… yes, but. Dead end. The victims couldn't all
have been known personally, and the desire for revenge requires that
personal sense of loss, doesn't it? Justice might be mad, in which case any
victim could be a close relative because his mind would tell him they were.
But… Justice isn't mad. Hold on. How could a megalomaniac be anything
but mad? Damn, why does he kill? Why does he do what he does? What in
the world does he think he's up to?

   Hello, doll, alter ego, or whatever. Let's continue this conversation. I'll
mumble something to you and you respond. It'll be another weird
discussion. No one but us could understand a word of it. Ready? Fine.

   Religion? Somehow I can't see him on his knees. Rather, I picture him
thumbing his nose at God. Not that he isn't a crusader. Glory and gold are
left, but none of those seem to fit him. The three G's. Down through the
ages they've impelled men to herosim or degradation. What other motives
have I failed to consider? No man does something for nothing. What
compels a brilliant man to make a holocaust of his life? What makes him
continue along his own way while the world crumbles? How can he ignore
the carnage?

  How can you?

  Damn you, you're a machine, how dare you… but, of course, it wasn't
you at all. That question had to come from me. You said it, but I made you
say it.

   Back to the soul of Justice, back to the beginning, to the world of ideas.
Behind every act is an idea. Damn, I'm back to motive again. Well, what is
motive? Reason. What is reason? According to an old philosophy teacher
of mine…

  Hey, what happened to the conversation? Let's get on with it. Where
were we? What's wrong? Why are you dummying up on me? I'm doing it?
You're crazy. Answer my question. But you haven't answered it. I keep
asking you where we left off, you keep refusing to answer, yet you swear
you are answering. How can we get anywhere this way?

  Golden Macklin.

   My God, I haven't thought of him in years. He was my teacher a long
time ago. Is that where we left off? Why didn't you say so, but it's a little
irrelevant, don't you think? Let's run through a few familiar items.

  Justice is hell on wheels with a camera. Did you know that another
name of his is Quo Vadis? Oh, yes, he's worried about directions.
Whithers. He's in good physical condition. How do I know? He's good at
everything. He likes himself. He has to keep one step ahead of me; he
knows I'm after him. It would be easy for him to trap me and kill me but
he won't because it wouldn't be in character. I wonder if he'd kill me to
save himself? What a stupid thought. Of course he would. He isn't a little
Jesus.

   I don't like that trend. We'll try another. Let's make a list of all the men
we know. Okay. Now for the criteria. Physical data eliminates how many?
Fifty. Are you sure? Fifty. Next, his I.Q., and be careful with this one.
Brains can be hidden. But you have backgrounds on most of them, all the
way to kindergarten. How many are eliminated? Fourteen. Okay. Camera
nuts. Cross off some names, and how many do we have left? An even
dozen. Terrific. After we eliminate all of them we'll be right back where we
started, staring at a blank wall. You see, but naturally you do see, we need
a candidate who matches the criteria perfectly. Not one item can be
ignored.

  Personality, and now we're on shaky ground. Needs plenty of discussion.
Can a man pretend to go after money all his life without really caring
about it? I say he can't. Justice isn't after money or he would have cleaned
out a few banks. If we know one of these twelve really loves to make a
green profit, he's automatically eliminated. How many does that leave?
Ten.

   Another item: sharpshooting. Careful, now. Our man is a true dead-eye.
Go ahead, lop off names and tell me how many are left. One. That can't be
right. You've made a mistake. We'll have to do it over again. Don't argue
with me. He isn't Justice. I don't want him to be.




  The man held the girl by the elbow and guided her along the path which
she couldn't see because of the tears streaming from her eyes.

  "I don't know who you are. Where are you taking me? Cass wouldn't be
here. He would never come out here in these woods. Please tell me where
he is."

  "Just a little more walking and you'll see him."

   After a few minutes they paused. "I have to do something now that will
seem strange to you," said the man. "Please don't be alarmed. I'm not
going to hurt you." Reaching out, he drew the girl to him and lifted her
from the ground.

  Immediately she drew back. "Don't."

  "It's all right. We're there."

   The girl looked about and shrank as if in fear. With an instinctive
motion she leaned toward her companion. "Where are we? Why do I feel
so strange all of a sudden? Why did you put your arms around me? It
wasn't necessary. Nothing makes sense anymore."
   "We're in a different place now. I had to bring you here. You have the
right to know what happened. I hope you can bear it."

  "I don't understand."

  "You ought to brace yourself."

   "What does that mean? You said you'd take me to Cass. That's why I got
into your car. Where is he? Who are you?"

  "Stand very still. Don't move or make a sound. Look over there, between
those two big trees. Do you see?"

  Leona looked, saw:

   Cass tried to run but Godiva knocked him to the ground with a long
swipe of her arm. He was naked except for his undershirt which she tore
off with savage yanks. He fought her but it was only a matter of moments
before she had him on his back and pinned to the grass. Laying her body
on top of his, she rammed her hands beneath his buttocks and shoved the
slender tube up inside him. While he screamed she probed for the gland,
found it, prodded it with the tube. Cass erected spontaneously and Godiva
lunged onto him with fierce abandon.




   He lay in a shallow grave. Leona brushed the dirt from his face,
straightened his hair, kissed his mouth.

  "Thank you for bringing me to him," she said to the man who stood
nearby. "Now I'll lay down with him. Will you please cover both of us?
There's plenty of loose dirt. It won't take long."

   "Don't talk like that. You can't stay here. Help me bury him or stand
aside while I do it."

   "Do you know how cold it gets in these woods at night? He was crazy
about the sun and could never stand being cold. You've been very kind, but
please don't bother me any longer. Go away."

  "Get up. You don't know what you're doing. He's dead. We'll bury him
and you'll come away with me."
  Leona handled the corpse with gentleness. "Don't be afraid," she
whispered into the dead ear. "He won't take me away from you. We'll be
together always. I'll never leave you."

  She grasped the body under its arms, clasped the cold form tightly,
breathed on the still face, smothered the white lips with kisses. All of a
sudden she raised her head and gave a shrill scream.

  The man drew in a quick breath and took a backward step. The grave
was empty. Two people had been in the hole at his feet but now there was
no one. Leona had fled, and she had taken her dead lover with her.




   Turner opened his eyes and wished for death. Such an old wish it was.
Every day he did the same thing, woke up and hoped his heart would stop
or his brain would fry, or he hoped the nurse would lose his temper and
break a bottle over his skull.

  Seen through crusted, leaky eyes the room looked like a chamber of
horrors. It would have appeared the same through any eyes. For a change
the nurse was gone. Maybe he had sneaked out to replenish his booze
supply.

  "Guglielmo," said Turner. His voice sounded rusty and weak.

  The Italian was dead. No, he wasn't. A leg twitched, an arm went into
spasm, the mouth opened to eject a stream of spittle.

  Turner's broken elbow was the size of a grapefruit. Four times it had
seemed to want to heal, four times it had started swelling again, and now
deadly colored striations were beginning to creep toward the wrist and
shoulder. The steel band which held the arm fast to the chair was a bloody
bracelet set into the flesh.

  Someone suddenly opened the door and came into the room, and
Turner decided he was mad. It wasn't the nurse nor was it anyone he had
ever seen before. She was so delicate and pretty, and she cried as if she
were a little girl who had found her favorite pet crushed and ruined.

  "I don't want to believe this," said the woman. She cried big tears. To
Guglielmo she whimpered, "Help me not to believe."
   "Don't look at him," said Turner in a croak. "Look at me. I'm
better-looking than he is. He'll send you right out of your mind." He
couldn't be certain but he thought she screamed and kept on screaming.
Such a pretty little thing she was, and it was pathetic the way she hunched
down in her wheelchair and shivered. The blanket across her legs had
fallen away to reveal white, paralyzed limbs.

   "What mind?" she said. "It's like my legs: empty." She continued staring
at Guglielmo. "I've never been allowed in this wing. How funny. The first
time he leaves me alone in the building, I immediately go against his
wishes."

  "I told you not to look at Gugey. He's not human anymore. He thinks
he's a snake. Why don't you come over here to me?"

 She wouldn't look at Turner, kept her face turned to the Italian. "How
much does a snake weigh?"

  "About sixty-five pounds. Come here to me. I need you."

  "Why?"

  "I want to ask you if you can mainline."

  The woman shrank in her chair and cried louder.

  "Shut up. See the needle on the table over there? It's full. He leaves it
where I can see it. That way I don't make too much of a racket. If I scream
he makes me wait. Get the damned thing and then get over here and shoot
me with it."

  The woman shook her head with desperate little jerks.

  "It's hero," said Turner, his tone wheedling. "It'll do me good. I'm
supposed to have it regularly. Be a good girl and get it. A lousy hophead
has to have it."

  "No."

  "Get the hell over here with it. Don't just sit there. Move."

  "Arthur is a good man."
  "Arthur stinks."

  "He doesn't mean any of it. He's sick."

  "So am I." Turner groaned. "As you can see, I'm out of action at the
moment. Get the needle. Damn, turn your head and look at it." When the
woman jerked her head around, Turner said, "Did you know your husband
was a medical genius? He's like Frankenstein. He made Gugey from
another body and he made me from another body. He's a maker. Like God.
He likes it when people worship him. For instance, he waves that needle
under my nose and I want to lick his ass. My reaction pleased him. Isn't
that like God?"

  Her hands dropped to the chair wheels. "I have to do two things. Wait a
second, which two things are they? I'm having trouble unscrambling. Oh,
yes, first I'll set that poor man free and then I'm going to say my prayers."

 "No, first the needle and then set me free. Leave the snake alone. He's a
menace to society."

  "Go to hell." The woman started to wheel her chair toward Guglielmo.

  Turner groaned again, made sobbing sounds. "I'll die, I swear it. Do you
want that to happen?"

   "Very well, if you insist." Wheeling herself to the table a few yards away,
the woman snatched up a piece of rubber tubing. She tied it around her
upper arm and while Turner sat and howled in anger she watched her vein
stand out. When it was good and fat, she jammed in the needle and gave
herself a dose.

  A moment passed. She said, "I don't feel a damned thing."

  "You goddamn hog. Rotten thief."

  "That was my first time."

  "Liar, you did it like a pro."

  "I read a lot."

  It was Turner's moment for weeping and he did it without restraint. "It
serves you right. That dose was too much for a beginner. You're going to
croak."

   "I knew I was going to die as soon as I came in here." She wheeled
herself on over to Guglielmo, stopped and examined the chair
mechanisms, finally yanked the releases that freed the Italian's wrists.
Guglielmo's arms fell and some of his flesh went with the steel bands. He
screeched. His eyes flew open. With a happy cackle he lunged forward and
took the woman's throat in his hands.

  Turner struggled in his chair. "Goddamn you, you're not a snake, you're
a wop," he yelled. "Gugey, look at me. Let her go."

  Guglielmo didn't let her go.

  "Fight him," yelled Turner. "You're stronger than he is."

   She gasped. "I can't". The hands on her throat looked so loose, so lax, so
without strength. "Something's wrong with me. Everything's going to
sleep."

  "It's the hero. Fight it."

  "What for?"

  "So you can get me loose."

  "I don't care about you."

  The Italian screamed. He seemed enraged because he was too weak to
choke the neck he held. His wild eyes flashed around the room and he
grabbed up the empty syringe on the table. Holding it in an underhand
position he began driving the spike into the throat—in, out, in, out, and
eventually blood showed and spurted and spattered his face.

   Turner took a nap. There was nothing to worry about. Gugey's leg bands
were still in place and that miserable snake hadn't enough brains to
unfasten them. Nobody was going to get away today, nobody would get a
beautiful fix, nobody wanted to stay awake when they lived in a chamber
of horrors. The last thing Turner saw before he closed his eyes was the
woman stretched out on the floor. She wasn't dead yet. The spike was
stuck in her carotid and the blood hissed out of her like air from a
punctured tire. It made a tiny shower, a thin spray that rose and hovered
in the air like floating red dust.

  By and by Turner's face began to hurt. He swam out of tortured sleep
and the pain was still there. His head flew back. He heard a loud crack.
Someone was slapping him. From side to side went his head and at the
same time his pain intensified.

   "Goddamn," he screamed, infuriated because he was waking up. He felt
as if he had been doing cold turkey for three days. His guts were running
down his legs, his stomach had already dumped its load onto his chest, he
ejaculated once, twice, three times. He was a draining organism, brainless
and full of agony. His shuddering belly squeezed into a knot of iron.

  "I want a shot," he yelled.

  "I gave you a shot, but not the kind you asked for."

  Voices. No, a single voice. Where it came from, Turner neither knew nor
cared. All he thought of was the fire in his belly.

  "I've been waiting for you to get good and desperate. I believe people
should learn important lessons thoroughly, don't you?"

   Turner was aware of his chair being turned around. Somebody was
strong. Not even the nurse had been able to push that chair.

  "So you can see me better," said the voice. "It might take your mind off
your misery."

  "I want to die."

  The wrists bands fell away and something pressed into his good hand.
He looked down and saw a gun.

  "A way out," said the voice.

  His eyes filling with tears, Turner gripped the gun. "For you."

  "You intend to murder me?"

  Turner hesitated, shook his head. "No, myself."

  "Then turn that thing around. Stick the muzzle against your navel and
pull the trigger."

  "Stand still."

  "I haven't moved. Shoot yourself or give me back the gun."

  "Lean down. I want to see you."

 A face appeared in front of Turner. Covering it was a shiny, flittering
mask.

  "Take it off."

  Fingers grasped the skin at the tops of the cheeks and a layer of the face
seemed to peel away.

  "Not you," said Turner. He wanted to laugh. Instead, he sobbed.

  "You can stay here and die, or you can come with me."

  "To do what?"

  "That's up to you."

  "My arm is killing me."

  "I can fix that like new."

  "I'm a dope fiend."

  "You can fix that."

  "I'm supposed to kill you."

  "Who said so?"

  Turner sagged in the chair. Fresh tears welled in his eyes. He felt limp
and old and useless. "Help me," he whispered.

  "Stand up and put your good arm around my neck. We're taking a trip."
  The junk dealer had a name, but it wasn't important. He ran a Nod
parlor and that was important to a number of people.

   The dealer had received an anonymous letter: "I like children, I even like
fools and drunks, occasionally. God had been lynched by public opinion,
which means there is now no one to take care of those aforementioned. In
my humble manner I shall do what I can. The contents of the carton are
for you and yours."

   Inside the carton rested twelve fine coffins, and so heavy were they that
the delivery crew simply shoved them inside the door at the back of the
Nod joint and refused to handle them further. The coffins had been paid
for by an unnamed sender, so there was no tab to be collected, nor was any
signature required. The crew would not consider taking away the
merchandise and dumping it in the river. It had been delivered to the
correct address, and there the matter ended.

   This left the junk dealer hopping mad and confused beyond good sense.
It might have helped if he had related the number of coffins to the number
of his employees. It would have helped if he had packed his bags and left
the country. What he did was give the massive carton a kick, after which
he shoved the matter out of his mind and proceeded with his plans for the,
night's business. Besides dealing in junk he indulged in thievery. He stole
money, secrets, innocence, anything at all. At eight o'clock he opened for
work by placing a box in the front window of the building. The window
was made of shatterproof plastic and in the box were junk makings, easily
clear to the view of interested passers-by. Beside the box was a sign:
HIGHS—ADMISSION $1.00— UNDER 12 FREE.

  Customers began trickling in and by 9:30 the place was a seething,
buzzing mass of shapes of all sizes, colors and ages. The noise was added
upon by blaring recordings. No neighbor would complain, as the junk
dealer had solid connections with the police.

   Only the very young customers got uncut smack. It was easier for the
dealer to do it that way. Pure stuff knocked the kids into heaven damned
fast and got them out from underfoot. They paid at least seventy-five cents
for their share, otherwise they went out the front door on their asses.
Quickly high, they found an empty space on the mattresses at the back of
the joint, and there they nodded until the ground began to catch up with
them. They didn't have to return to the tables for a second jolt since they
had been given an extra spike when they entered. The next fix put them
back on the clouds, and then at approximately 2:00 A.M. they were
worked over by a strange class of clientele.

   As for the older customers, they roamed and rambled, gabbed and
babbled, fought, bickered, discussed highs and lows and crashes, sought
out sympathetic companions; some watched a porno film which was being
shown in a corner. There was no food served, nor any booze, only pills and
powder. All pockets were systematically picked by ten of the dealer's
employees. Once a person's money had been ripped off, he was allowed a
final jolt of his favorite stuff, and when his high became genuine he was
dumped into the street. The eleventh employee stayed busy cutting bags of
smack. He diluted them with strychnine and sugar.

   By midnight the junk dealer was high and happy. He was a mature
junkie. That is, he kept his own habit under control, never let his tolerance
level climb to the point where a shot became necessary simply to prevent
sickness and brought no desirable rush. Now he wandered through his
establishment and checked the quality of the highs that had been induced
by his merchandise. Was a substantial percentage of the clientele
throwing up into paper bags provided for emergencies? Back to the
eleventh employee went the boss with a word of caution regarding the
strychnine. One thing the dealer wanted was a satisfied customer. On with
the checking. Had any neophytes lied about their tolerance level, or had
any idiots decided to shoot the moon after swiping a little bit too much
extra powder? Pick up the limp baggage and deposit it in the alley four
blocks away, and to hell with salt shots; they hadn't paid for resuscitation
and if they were that dumb it was their tough luck and they would be dead
before dawn.

   If there happened to be a corpse found, a real gone shmoo, already
stiffening, the dealer wasted not a minute of time, hauled the joker's pants
down and plugged his rear with a special-made cork, because when a
hop-head abandoned the world he left the contents of his guts behind, a
quart in every geyser, and the whole damned business was enough to turn
a man toward another line of work. But, then, the dealer was aware that
every human endeavor had its drawbacks.

  At half-past one the situation altered somewhat. Customers began
looking at their watches. Their eyes often strayed toward the entrance,
uneasiness crept into facial expressions, legs began twitching as if in
prepartion for a hasty departure. Conversation grew agitated and no
longer were friendly advances made toward the junk dealer who had
provided the essential escape. The eleven employees were shunned and the
mattresses at the back of the joint were strictly avoided.

  There was the last-minute haggling over purchases made at the tables
by cunning foxes who had remembered to stash a fiver in their socks
before entering. Others who were broke had to be bounced out the door. A
few couples who hadn't been convinced that smack and Cupid meant a dry
run got dressed in a hurry or flew naked.

   By 1:45 the joint was quiet and dragging. Only the dealer, his eleven
workers and the kids were left. And one strange little Oriental, but he
wasn't continually present, only in flashes and during instants, and the
dealer believed that what he saw was a mirage or a spook conjured by
dope. The dealer spied the little man once, twice, then the stranger was
gone only to show up minutes later in another spot, this time in the
company of a tall, slender man. Then they were both gone. It was
bewildering to the dealer. He, like most dopers, was an individual who
never trusted himself; he hesitated to swear that the two intruders were
real, though they looked amply real. Denial was the easiest thing in the
world to commit. Now you saw it, now you didn't, and no matter how
much you knew about dope, there were all those rumors and written
articles describing the bad effects of smack, and who were you to
challenge the word of your betters? You were a creep to begin with or you
wouldn't have taken the first shot. Everyone who knew nothing about dope
said so. Ergo, a creep could never be certain of anything, particularly that
which he observed. Thus, there may have been two odd and unwelcome
visitors in the joint that night, or there may not have been. To be sure,
there wasn't a clear-headed judge present.

   At five minutes before two o'clock the eleventh employee turned up
missing. The dealer was hopping mad about it because he needed the man
to help collect at the door when the new customers showed up.

   In the back of the joint, in the raftered, closed-off section adjoining an
alley, the dealer stood stock-still and stared about him with baffled rage.
The huge carton had been unwrapped and now the coffins were lined up
side by side. Somebody had done a neat job. The eleventh employee? Only
a fried brain would go to the trouble of unpacking unwanted merchandise.
Someone was going to catch hell in the morning.

  The dealer walked alongside the row of coffins and finally headed
toward the door. Passing the last box, he paused, went back and yanked
up the lid. The eleventh employee lay there with his hands folded on his
chest. A dumb place to take a nap. Scared and furious, the dealer grabbed
the man's shirt front and hauled him upright. Something about the utter
laxness of the body and the way the head lolled made the dealer quickly
release his grip. The body plunked down on the satin cushion. O.D.,
obviously. But how could a cutting expert give himself an accidental
overdose? The stupid fool.

  Walking back to the front of his joint, the dealer stood indecisively. The
creeps would be here any minute. His own nerves wre jangling. What a
rotten night. He needed a shot of bliss. As soon as there was time…




   A mile away from the Nod parlor stood the gutted remains of a hospital
for the criminally insane. The occupants had set it on fire after they killed
the attendants. There hadn't been enough food, attention, caution, and
there had also existed the never-ending urge to get out, get away, find the
sources of good and evil and serve, serve, serve.

  Twice a week the former patients emerged from a subway tunnel where
they had taken up residence. They had the entire area all to themselves.
No one ever went there anymore.

   Twice a week they frequented the Nod parlor. It hadn't taken them long
to secure the dealer's permission to come in. All they needed was money;
all they had to remember was to keep the noise down; no screaming or
scuffling was permitted. They had lots of money because frightening
people into turning out their pockets was the simplest of tricks.

   At the moment, the dealer was angry again. For one thing, he was
spotting the two strangers, the Oriental and his tall friend, more
frequently. For another, three more of his employees were missing. That
left seven to collect at the door when the creeps came. Damned creeps,
always trying to cheat. Weird trash. Of late they had taken to wearing long
black cloaks which made them look like a pack of vampires. The thought
made the dealer shiver. Conceivably the creeps could take up sucking
blood. Nothing made them squeamish.

  One machine gun was all the dealer needed, and it was always ready at
hand when the hour of the creeps came around. A man had to be prepared
if he expected to get ahead in the world. The dealer had guts; he was ready
to slice up the creeps any time they decided to get hostile. Only they never
got hostile. Each time they came into the joint, some on all fours, they
looked wild and explosive, but they quieted as soon as they got their first
look at the mattresses in the back.

  The dealer never watched the creeps approach the mattresses. He
hadn't that kind of stomach. Why didn't people keep better track of their
children?

   One old creep did the same thing every time he came to the Nod parlor.
On his belly like a snake, he writhed and wormed his way onto the nearest
mattress and proceeded to look for a dying one. Always there was one near
the brink. The old creep had a good inner sense and knew the difference
between a minor crisis and the pause that came before the headlong
plunge into the final hole. He didn't want a kid who was going to wake up
to daylight. What the old creep did was gather the soon-to-be corpse into
his arms and grieve over it. For hours he would whimper and sob as he
relived some real or imagined sorrow.

  He was the only adult to survive the night.

   No invitations were sent out for the lynching. Or was it a party? Came
three, four, five o'clock in the morning, came the dawn, came a fresh start
for buggered little boys and torpedoed little girls, but nobody else had a
voice to tell about it.

   Sometime during the night the neighbors in the surrounding areas had
grabbed their belongings and fled. Those who possessed ears had taken to
the alleys at frantic and furtive lopes. Strange. There had been no noise
after two in the morning, not a sound, not at the Nod joint. Plenty of
sound had been created elsewhere, but the junk dealer's habitat had
known the silence of the grave once the witching hour arrived. Maybe the
neighbors' ears were like those of dogs. Conditioned by the hazardous
times, they may have developed an extra defense mechanism. Who needed
ordinary hearing to know when the ghost with the scythe was howling
down the street? Anyway, by dawn everybody had been taken care of.

  In the rear of the Nod joint twelve coffins lay side by side. All it had
taken to fill them was some careless junking. Junk was a little pile of
powder. A bit of strychnine, a touch of milk sugar, a miniature hilltop of
Equus and the fourth dimension could be had. There a person could find
no place and no thing. It was the blessed land of High. Too much of either
of two of the ingredients could land a soul in a coffin. The dealer and his
disciples had gone out low; too much of the first ingredient; diabolic
executioner; odd sense of humor.

  The same executioner held a party in an abandoned subway tunnel.
Small but mighty, he borrowed the junk dealer's machine gun and set it
up between a pair of train tracks. Then he waited for the return of the
people who lived there. Upon their arrival, he sliced them six ways to
Sunday, all except one old man whose vice had been to grieve over
suffering children.




                                    IX


  "The Ridleys were potted last week; two in New York, one in Chicago
and the other in Nevada."

   Bailey winced as Burgess said it. His mind had already flashed
backward to the time when he had met and talked with John Rand: a
quietly frantic man living a quietly frantic existence. Now, after having
spent two-thirds of his life trying to escape attention Rand had been
picked off like a sitting duck. That proved something. Maybe if a man
wanted to be anonymous, the thing for him to do was live in the blind spot
of the public eye, like Justice or Arthur Bingle. Those two were everywhere
but no one saw them.

 Bailey felt like screaming. He wanted to overturn the table, break the
man sitting across from him. "If Justice doesn't retire, it will mean you
made a mistake. In any case, you ought to be prosecuted."

  "For what?" Burgess looked and sounded annoyed.

  "You killed four people."

  "Come off it. There's no law anymore. Desperate measures are needed
now."
  "You mean vigilante stuff? We already have that in Justice. He, at least,
seems to know what he's doing."

   They sat in a bar and drank beer. It was the first time in a year that
Bailey had seen or talked with Burgess. The dry little man looked haggard.
His usually natty suit had made way for the uniform of the day, the outfit
of a bum. Cops didn't harass bums. A man down on his luck had no energy
to complain or fight back, and there was no sport in needling a sniveler.
On the other hand, the well-dressed made interesting targets. They could
be depended upon to have money in their pockets or booze in the glove
compartments of their cars or drugs concealed in their underwear.

   No one would have bothered Burgess. He looked his part, even wore the
dead-white pallor and sunken eyes of the near-starving. His eyes slid
around without landing on anything and his hands trembled as they
gripped the beer can. Occasionally one hand went up to scratch a stubbled
chin.

  "You look lousy," said Bailey.

   "So would you if you'd been panhandling for a year. There's no such
thing as a job to be had. The cops make sure their relatives or friends get
them. All across the country I've seen bread lines, only there isn't any
bread and there isn't anything else. I'm surprised so many people are still
alive."

  "It got out of hand."

  Burgess snarled the word. "What?"

  "Bingle botched it. He planned to create a Utopia."

  "How the hell do you know what he planned?"

  "Starve men or kill them and they fade away. Who do you have left? The
people who are loyal to you are those who are afraid not to be, and they
spend their spare time fighting over the carcass. All the cops are Bingle's
dregs. He didn't care what they did at first. The more terror they created
the better he liked it, because it made his job of taking over that much
easier. Now he and the big people ride on clouds while down below sit two
empty-headed monsters: the masses and his police force. Neither gives a
damn about him, and together they represent the major chunk of
humanity. His guts must be curdling."

  "You're wrong," said Burgess. "He knew what he was doing."

  "I think he planned on his Numbers having better control over their
armies. He made a mistake in letting them recruit so many slobs. He'll
have to correct that right away, get rid of the slobs and let in the hungry
humans. Probably he's already busy doing that."

  "Did you ever stop to think that this is the way he wanted it from the
beginning?"

  "What do you mean?" said Bailey.

   "I don't believe in the Utopia idea. I think the situation will go from bad
to worse."

  "How can it get any worse?"

    "Think about it. Everyone is standing around with their fingers up their
asses and saying things will get better. Three-fourths of those people
haven't the vaguest idea of what happened or why, yet they're sure that
whoever did it will get around to pulling all the chestnuts out of the fire. I
call that stupid thinking. What if Bingle likes ugliness? What if he planned
it this way?"

  "Shut up," said Bailey and set down his beer with a thud.

  Burgess smiled. "If I did it, that's how it would be done. To hell with
everything. I'd sit on top and after the fiesta was over I'd still be on top,
and I'd stay there for as long as I lived. And, oh yeah, I'd.make sure I had
an heir to leave it all to. Somebody special. The world isn't the same
anymore. People are different. Evolution is rearing its head and weirdos
are popping up everywhere. Guys like you and me are obsolescent."

  "Don't you hate the idea?"

  "As much as you do. The two of us started out on an equal par as far as
our main objectives were concerned. Justice had to be potted because he
was someone special. The fact that he was killing assholes wasn't our
prime reason for going after him. His talents represented a tomorrow we
wanted to hold off as long as we could. Now other specials are crawling
out of the woodwork. We can't pot them all so what we do is knock out the
big ones wherever we find them. When you look at it that way, it isn't such
a bad life."

   All at once the lights in the bar flickered. They went off and on several
times. A voice said, "Good evening, gentlemen." The lights stayed on. A
bum stood beside the table where the two men sat.

  "Get lost," said Burgess. "Find yourself another booth."

  "You don't want company tonight?" The bum slid a chair under the
table and sat down.

  "No. Go away."

  "I have a message for you, but if you don't want to hear it—" The quiet
voice trailed off.

  "What message?" said Burgess.

   The bum took off his punched-in hat and his shaggy hair fell over his
forehead and ears. It was dark and slightly damp. The eyebrows twitched.
The mouth beneath the thick mustache made a smile. "I was supposed to
tell you that you goofed."

  With a scowl, Burgess said, "What does that mean?"

  The bum turned his smile on Bailey. "The Ridleys."

   Bailey became aware that Burgess's beer can had tipped and that the
contents were dripping off the table onto his knees. "Wait a second," he
said and leaned forward and stared into the bum's face. There was
something familiar about it. "Say that again."

  "The Ridleys."

  With an angry swipe of his hand, Burgess knocked the beer cans from
the table. "What have we to do with them?"

  "You already said that, but I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Last week you took some plane flights. You flew to Chicago and killed
Robert Vine, and then you flew to Las Vegas and killed Paul Reese. You
returned to New York and killed John Rand and Emma Stoker."

  "Get him," muttered Burgess between his teeth. He was glaring at
Bailey. "Get him, get him, don't just sit there."

  The bum spoke. "He can't get me. He's startled out of his wits. Why
don't you get me?"

  "But I didn't goof."

  "None of those four persons was Mr. Justice. Four innocent people are
dead."

  Burgess gave a desperate little shriek. "They were. One of them was
Justice. I wasn't wrong. I knew I was right."

  "You shouldn't have gone off on your own. You should have listened to
your friends. They warned you not to do it, cautioned you to wait. You
ought to have listened to them."

  "Goddamn you, Bailey, why don't you do something?"

  Bailey did nothing but lean on the table and stare intently at the
bearded face.

  "Go ahead and say it," said the bum.

  "Bob Turner."

   Burgess grabbed at the bum's sleeve. "Bob, listen to me. Stop acting like
this. I'm your partner. We've been in this together since the beginning.
Where have you been? We thought you were dead. Don't do this, don't
come in here and look at me as if I'm a criminal."

  Turner pulled his arm free. "Ask me how I know about it, how I know
you murdered four people for no reason."

  "Get him," mumbled Burgess.

   Turner reached into his hat and retrieved a small seal from the inside
lining. Slowly he dropped it in the puddle of beer and they all sat and
watched it float and swirl. Bailey and Burgess were too stunned to see
Turner reach into his pocket. When they looked up he was holding a gun.
  "I have a new employer." Turner stood on his feet. "This is the way he
operates. He makes no exceptions and he makes no mistakes."

  "Bob, Bob, Bob," babbled Burgess.

  The finger snuggled against the trigger. There was a tiny flash of fire.
Heat existed for a second. There was no sound as Burgess died. Turner
dropped the gun in his pocket and looked at Bailey who sat rigidly in his
seat.

   "Watching a friend die is like dying yourself. He was a mean son of a
bitch but I liked him. Good-bye Bailey. I wish you rotten luck."

  Bailey sat and watched the hole between Burgess' eyes flow.




  Eric Fortney sat in his private office and stared at an open ledger lying
on his desk. He didn't want to look anymore but the printed pages held a
morbid kind of attraction.

   Page 4: three names, three addresses, three places of business. Those
establishments had been raided two nights ago by vigilantes.

  Page 7: six names and addresses. A week ago all had been put out of
business. Five were killed, one was tarred and feathered and chased from
the city.

   Page 11: the names of the junior Numbers; forty-eight good brains;
Bingle's officers; powerhouses with private armies of thousands. Since
Thursday morning Fifth Avenue had been called the Appian Way. On
Thursday morning somebody had strung up the Numbers on the
forty-eight lampposts on Fifth Avenue, strung them up by their own
neckties. They hung there still. Bingle's Army was an animal with no head,
a decapitated rooster. Now it was running amok, but not for long. The
world was full of vigilantes, and the decapitated rooster was being felled
on every street corner, in every doorway and alley, in buses and buildings
and airplanes. Even bums were hauling out clubs.

  Eric Fortney laid his head on his arm and rested on the desk. Paula had
done this. Only three people were aware of the information in the books:
himself, Arthur Bingle, and a girl who had become a part of the
association so that she could betray it.

  Arthur had made a mistake. Instead of telling Eric everything about
Leona, Bingle had let his right-hand man stumble about in ignorance.

  Things would be different now if Arthur hadn't taken so many things for
granted. For instance, if Eric had known why he was to become Leona's
husband, he would have gotten rid of Paula that first day when he pulled
her from the garbage can. He never would have let her tangle up his life.
He simply wouldn't have been able to afford keeping her around. Fear
would have forced him to do the safe thing.

   Leona was a botched-up mutant. Instead of just inheriting her father's
ability to travel through time into the past, she also had the latent ability
to travel into the future. But between the two talents lay an obstacle that
prevented her from really moving either way. She was like a reed bending
in the wind, first one way and then the other. If she began to sweep toward
the past, the obstacle or interference gathered her up and swept her in the
opposite direction; then she was brought back again by the same
interference.

  Leona was useless to Arthur, except in that she might produce an heir
who had all the talent and none of the interference. Bingle knew it would
be a matter of chance. But if the child had a father with a keen intellect…
Leona was bright and Eric Fortney was bright. The chances couldn't be
made any better. It was essential that Bingle beat Justice to the punch.
Their talent, magnified in their granchildren, could mean world conquest.

  A man had to do something with his life, and if Bingle wanted to make
the world a clod of mud on his boot heel, Eric didn't care. All Eric wanted
was to be comfortable, live in a fine house, ride in excellent machines, eat
good food and love a superior woman.

   Leona hadn't been fully aware of her crippled talent. Bingle never
discussed it with her. He soon realized that the only time she ever tried to
time travel was when she slept. Awake, her conscious mind avoided the
danger of becoming stuck in a period other than the present.

  Godiva had gotten Cass out of the way, and now Leona was gone and no
one could find her. Bingle was upset about it.

  But Eric didn't care about Leona. So she screamed in her sleep because
her subconscious mind longed to try its wings. Eric knew another who
screamed in her sleep: the rotten little traitor, his little golden candle, a
botched-up mutant sired by old man Justice; had to be; nothing else made
sense; and Justice had been able to dump her into the center of his
enemies because she was so innocent-looking. Her name wasn't Paula; she
had been a student at SPAC, and lived right under their noses until
Justice pulled her out, which would have been proved with a little careful
checking. Eric had contacted the orphanage in Pennsylvania. Paula…
Pala… had never been there; but there was a shelter in Switzerland that
had taken care of a child by that name. Eric's spies had quickly found that
out. Pala had been left at the shelter almost twenty years ago by an
American named Joe Gentry. When she was eleven she was sent to SPAC.

  Eric was thankful that he didn't have to worry about Bingle. Not that
Arthur wasn't distrubed. Arthur would always be disturbed about
something, but he had a one-track mind where business was concerned.
Leona would come back, Pala would be found, Justice would be smeared,
the oyster of the world would be opened, everything had to turn out the
way Arthur planned.

   Eric's thoughts slowed, suddenly halted. Someone had come into his
office. Without raising his head, he said, "Who's that?"

  "Me, boss."

  "Teuton. I have a job for you. The girl, Pala. Find her for me. Bring her
out of hiding."

  "What are you going to do with her?"

  "I'll decide that when I see her."

   Teuton moved around the desk so that Eric could see him. "A man
ought to keep his mind on his work no matter how many dames he's
chasing. You, boss, you never chased the dames. You settled for one, and
that was no good. A girl can be a dangerous asset. It's better to try out the
lot of them. Then, if one turns on you, there're the rest to comfort you."

  "Don't lecture me, you lamebrained mule, just do as you're told."

   "Look at you. You let a single dame get to you and now the whole setup
is sour. Justice sowed the revolution and your little girl opened the door
for his troops."

  "How do you know that?" Eric said wearily.

  "Mr. Bingle knows it. You can't hide anything from him."

  "He has it a little bit twisted. I'll talk to him later. I know how to reason
with him. Right now, I'm interested in finding Pala."

  "Mr. Bingle is interested in the same thing."

  This time Eric's head came up. "Who is he sending after her?"

  "Me."

  "You don't take orders from him."

  Teuton frowned and shrugged.

  Both of Eric's hands came down flat on the desk. A bit hoarsely, he said,
"You're not planning to change horses in midstream?"

  "I never took orders but from one boss, not since the beginning, and I
don't aim to change now."

   Relaxing, Eric sat up, closed the heavy ledger and slipped it into a
drawer. He went over to a wall safe, opened it, removed stacks of bills and
placed them in a briefcase. "The trouble with Arthur is that he doesn't
want to retreat to lick his wounds. He'll always be on top because he
doesn't have to order the Army to get them to do what he wants. Those
lice kill and destroy because they like it. But Arthur should withdraw and
figure out a new strategy. He ought to start looking for some new
Numbers."

  "You going somewhere?" said Teuton.

  "Temporary retreat. I'll come back when you wire me that you've found
the girl."

  "What about your job?"

  "I haven't one now. Arthur doesn't need me to cover up crimes. You
could line up every person in the city and shoot them in broad daylight,
and the only people who would object would be the vigilantes."

  "We need to identify those bums," said Teuton.

   "Find Pala for me and I'll have the name of Justice for you, and I'll have
the names of every vigilante who ever worked for him." Locking the
briefcase, Eric picked up his hat and coat and started toward the door.
"I'll let you know where I am."

   "So long," said Teuton and shot him in the left leg, shot him in the right
leg, in both arms, in both knees. Then the short man went out and quietly
shut the door.




  Turner had been stolen, Guglielmo was softly singing to himself and on
the floor lay Bingle's dead wife. In a rage Bingle beat the Italian with the
metal clasps from the other chair. It didn't take long before the singing
ceased.

   He looked at the woman at his feet and cursed. He had no daughter and
no wife. Now there was nobody for him. No more love. He didn't have to
think about inhibitions any longer.

  "I hate pain," he cried. She had loved him. He never wanted her to do
that because it made him feel responsible for her and that hobbled him.
At first he lusted, then he loved. How could one turn to the other? Why
hadn't he simply lusted and gotten rid of her when it faded? She had
wormed her way behind his left ribs. Like strep throat, she gnawed away
pieces of his pump. Was it normal to regard love as an infection? Why
not? Wasn't he suffering?

  Tears streaking his face, he picked her up and aimlessly roamed
through the apartment. There was no one to kill, no one to blame for her
dying. Except Turner and the man who had taken him away.

  "No matter," mumbled Bingle. "They'll get theirs. It isn't important."

  The woman in his arms wasn't important, either. She was dead because
she had been stupid.

  He could still hear her shy little voice saying, "I love you, Arthur, but
you're not a good man."

   "What's good?" he had replied, and they'd had a philosophical
discussion about mankind's relentless quest. She believed people hunted
for truth out of their desire to be moral. Bingle knew better. Even atheists
were engaged in the search. What can I get away with? That was the
purpose of it all. Find the threshold, barrier, limit, standard; anything this
side of it was permissible. But who drew the line? No one, someone,
everyone?

  Somewhere in his roaming, Bingle dropped the body. He passed it in
the hall and stared down at it with curiosity. The legs were bent in
awkward positions, so he knelt and straightened them. The second time he
passed the body he covered it with a blanket.

   He spoke aloud to his dead love. "In the eyes of the world I'm a no-good
bastard. I see virtue in the end of the human race. No, that isn't exactly
correct. What I really believe is that the end or the continuation of any
species is inconsequential. There is no God and I make my own standards.
If every man believed the same and acted accordingly, the race might have
found a common reasoning ground. It didn't. It was easier to have
someone to blame."

  The tears on Bingle's face flowed freely. "In my own way I, too, am on
the hunt. If I slaughter, will they let me get away with it? Are they that far
gone? Yes, indeed. I say 'die' and they lay down dead. The world deserves
me."

   Onward Bingle wandered through the building. In the west wing, along
the corridor between the guest rooms he walked, and by and by he came
to the final door. He opened it and entered the room.

  "Ah, you stupid, foolish idiots. I warned you both."

   On the bed lay a pair of bodies. The sight was more than enough to
enrage Bingle, as he had depended upon them and intended to use their
strength.

   He wanted them to be alive but they weren't. It was impossible to tell
which had died first. There was Godiva with her long dark hair spreading
above her head like a fan. Her face was of marble whiteness, her eyes
stared, her mouth gaped, and on her neck were raised red weals and black
bruises. Teuton's face lay between her breasts. His spine was crooked. The
two fine arms encircling him had done that. There was no mark on him,
only that noticeable unevenness of backbone. Such a small imperfection it
was, but it had been enough to take him where he had sent Godiva. They
had loved and died and no witness could say which of the two had begun
the struggle or which had ended it.

   Bingle went out of the room and closed the door. He returned to the
kitchen and picked up the newspaper which he had been reading earlier.
He smiled. This was all that was important. Never mind what else had
happened in the building today.

 Again he read the ad. Such bold print. The bastard wasn't pinched for
money.



To whom it may concern:
Mr. Justice will be available Friday the 13th, at
eight P.M., address below.




  Later in the day Bingle prepared for the rendezvous in the backwoods of
West Virginia. Teuton and the Numbers were dead, but the preparations
would not be futile. There was a world full of lice for hire. Probably there
would always be.

   The other ad went unnoticed by Bingle. It was a small one at the bottom
of the page.



I don't want the job. Today I quit.
I'll be at the north corner of the
park at six on Sunday. Will you?




   She was standing beside a baby carriage, and the first thing he did was
look around for the owner of the carriage. There was no one else in the
vicinity. He thought this was alarmingly odd. Baby carriages held babies
and parents didn't wander too far away from them, particularly these
days. In fact, nobody took their babies out anymore.

  His mind was locked in and he couldn't make it function upon another
subject. The baby carriage was very much there, on the curb, and beside it
was a woman. Ergo, the two went together.

   Fresh alarm and shock, and some rage, tipped him off balance. The
baby in the carriage was hers, which meant that she had made love.
Inviolate Pala had done the forbidden. Goddamn her. Somebody had held
her breasts in his two hands, squeezed their softness, weighed, measured,
kissed… wasn't that the worst part of the whole idea, knowing someone
had possessed that part of her body? Maybe he was insane. He felt insane.
She hadn't gotten the baby because someone fondled her breasts, but
somehow the idea of her dropping her pants didn't seem as bad as her
having offered the other. Could it be that he was mammary-oriented?
Were all men?

   The desire to commit murder and suicide took control of him. Suddenly
his mind swept onward to the truth. Oh, Jesus.

  "I wanted to kill you," he said.

  "I could see it in your face. Maybe you thought it required more than
once?"

    He came to a stop just short of her. She wore blue jeans, sneakers and a
checkered flannel shirt. Her hair was in a ponytail. She looked about
fifteen.

  "I ought to be put in jail for defiling the innocent," he said.

  "Then why do you look so happy?"

  He experienced another shock. "I am happy."

  "For the first time in your life," she said and extended a hand.

  He took it. "Is it a nice baby?"

  "I'm satisfied."
  "So am I: with it, with you, with me, with everything." Smiling, she
almost whispered, "Poor Daniel, all you ever wanted to do was live in
peace."

  "We will. I'm out of it now. I don't belong in it. I wasn't sure. I probably
never will be. Until I am sure, I can't do anything about it."

  She looked at him intently. "It's a special kind of baby."

  "Certainly, since it's ours."

  She hesitated, finally said, "Kiss me."

  He did, hugged her close. "Where will we go?"

  "Far and fast."

  "We'll merge with the crowds and never be heard of again."




   Nothing new had been added to the cabin site on Golden Macklin's
property. The place sat and baked in the sun as it had for millennia. Only
birds disturbed the peace of the sky, only rabbits moved up and down the
hills. This was no man's land where once upon a time engineers cursed
and sweated over plans for a road that would sweep from the valley to the
summit of one of the most rugged ridges ever to feel the touch of a
bulldozer. A great deal of dynamite had been needed to blast through the
mountain. The road itself was a corkscrew of hairpin curves, awesome
drops and steep inclines. There was just the one road, and anyone who
wanted to reach the cabin by another route must conquer the ridges on
foot. This was possible but arduous and time-consuming, and the hiker
had to be an experienced climber.

   On Thursday a dozen trucks filled with armed men plowed up the valley
and entered the beginning of the corkscrew road. Two hours later the lead
truck reentered the valley and came to a halt. The driver got out and stood
staring about with a baffled expression. He was at the bottom of the ridge
again and he couldn't understand how it had happened. To his right was
the entrance to the corkscrew, and it should have led to the mountain-top
and Golden Macklin's hideaway. Instead, he had traveled in a circle.
  The nearest phone was twenty miles away. When the driver finally
contacted Arthur Bingle, it was early evening. No, there were no
blueprints of the corkscrew. Someone had destroyed them, long ago. No,
the whereabouts of the original builders were unknown.

  Somewhere along a twenty-mile stretch of the road, a camouflage had
been erected. The drivers hadn't noticed anything unusual the first time
they took the route.

  All but the lead truck were driven onto the grass of the valley. The first
driver took his truck and headed into the corkscrew. He stayed alert, but
he couldn't spot the camouflage. More time had been wasted and they
were still nowhere near their destination. This time the driver had a radio
with him, and he used it to talk to Arthur Bingle.

  At eight o'clock a group of fifty armed men began climbing the ridge.

   At midnight a lone automobile drove into the valley. The driver saw no
trucks, as they had been hidden by brush. The car entered the corkscrew.
Five minutes later a truck followed.

  The truckdriver stayed well behind the car. Somewhere within a
two-mile stretch of the corkscrew, the car disappeared. Obviously the
camouflage was easy to move out of and back into place. The car had been
admitted onto the genuine route while the truck was detoured.

   At two o'clock another automobile entered the valley. A truck followed it
into the corkscrew and stayed close behind. A short time later the
truckdriver rounded a bend and pulled to a halt. An iron fence barred his
way. In the time it took him to get out and shove the fence aside, he lost
sight of the car. He hurried after it, but it was too late. The camouflage
had done its work and he was detoured down to the valley.

  At four o'clock a car attempted to enter the corkscrew. It was stopped
and its occupant was hauled out and questioned. He was just a man who
had come out of curiosity. He wanted to see if Mr. Justice was really up on
that mountain.

  The man was allowed to continue on his journey into the corkscrew.
Two hours later he came out again, detoured by the camouflage.

  Bingle's man reported. Justice was either going to let only a few people
in or only particular people.

  The next car to try the corkscrew carried five of Bingle's men in the
back seat. They got nowhere and simply traversed the detour to the valley.

   At seven in the morning a man named Tidy Crawford drove up. He
complained because he didn't want any passengers. Someone hit him
lightly on the head with a sockful of sand, and he changed his mind. An
hour after the car entered the corkscrew, Crawford slowed to a near-stop
and prepared to take a bad turn. Two men sprang out of the shrubbery,
trained machine guns on the passengers and ordered them from the car.
Crawford was told to drive on. He watched through the rearview mirror as
the group disappeared into the forest. He was the last person to be
admitted to the mountaintop.




   In the clearing beside the cabin were four chairs, three of which formed
a partial circle around the fourth. The center chair and two of the outside
ones were occupied. Several yards beyond the chair, standing at regular
intervals about the clearing, were a dozen men armed with rifles.

   Tidy Crawford stopped his car and got out. He looked at the guns and
stayed. Nobody aimed a weapon at him, though all were looking at him.
He started walking toward the chairs and suddenly flinched as two guards
moved aside and then closed in behind him.

  Tidy's back itched and his throat hungered for an old comforter. He
wished he had stayed with the dolls and not let his inner urges conquer
him. A man could get killed in this place.

  When he was a few feet away from the seated men, he paused and
scratched his jaw. What the hell did he think he was doing here, and why
were they all staring at him?

  The man seated in the central chair spoke. "How do you do, Mr.
Crawford?"

  "How do?"

  "I don't think you know Mr. James Brant."
   The man nearest Tidy nodded. He didn't smile and Tidy studied him in
silence for a moment. Brant looked like a tough customer.

  "I've seen him around," said Tidy. "He made a pile of money selling
coats."

  "And do you know Mr. Bailey?"

 Bailey sat with his chin in his hand and his legs crossed. His eyes were
mere slits and Tidy couldn't tell which way he was looking.

  "I know him. Saw his picture plenty. He's a gang-buster."

   Again the man in the center chair spoke. "I'm glad you could make the
trip. I'm Mr. Justice."

  "Knew that already," said Tidy.

  "Would you please be seated? We've been waiting for you."

  Tidy sat and tried not to look bewildered.

  Justice sat back and seemed to relax. "The twelve men behind us are
here to see that no one jumps the gun. By no one, I mean any of you three.
Each of you will have your say, and each of you will be free to do whatever
you decide to do."

  Tidy Crawford stirred uneasily; he was aware of it when his coat
brushed against the wooden chair arm. The gun in his pocket was very
heavy, as if the thing had suddenly grown in size. He felt the sweat
popping out on him. That weapon he'd brought along was important. He
knew now that he hadn't hauled it up here just to protect himself. But
what was it for? That, he didn't know.

   "I could talk all day," said Justice. "I could spend hours telling you
about myself. It wouldn't be very interesting. You would be bored. It's all
old hat. So why are you here today? I decided to bring you. What are you
supposed to do? The same thing you've been doing all along. You've been
judging me, and now you're going to judge me again. Since the beginning
this day has loomed in my future because I believed it was necessary. I still
believe it. You will judge me and you will sentence me, and neither I nor
the twelve guards will interfere."
  Bailey stood up.

  "Sit down," said Justice, and Bailey did so. "Your turn isn't yet. You'll be
second." Justice looked at Tidy Crawford. "If you don't get a turn, I
apologize. Right now it's time for Mr. Brant to stand up and be counted."

  Jimmy Brant slowly got to his feet.

  "You're your own man," said Justice. "You're free. Pay no attention to
the guns."

  "This is a courtroom?"

  "Consider it as such."

  "Why was I chosen?"

  "Nobody chose you. You volunteered by getting into your car and
driving up the mountain."

   Brant turned his back on Justice and faced Bailey and Tidy Crawford.
Quietly he said, "I passed a hundred cars heading in this direction, yet we
three are all that got in. Do you wonder about that? I do. I think we're here
because we really cared. He knew we cared and he eliminated everybody
else. That ought to make us wonder a hell of a lot. Are there only three
people in the whole country who are qualified to be up here right now?
Oh, don't be mistaken, that's why we made it: three qualified people. That
means this jury is biased. It's too small. We can't do it. There aren't
enough of us."

    Brant turned and stood looking down at Justice. "These two men are
total strangers to me. I know nothing about how they think. If I stay here
I'll be bound by their decision, and I'm damned if I'll be their hatchet man.
If there were more of us and the majority decided to hang you, I'd argue
until I had no voice left. I'd harass and needle and make them consider
every single aspect of the situation, but in the end I would abide by the
final decision. The way it is now, with just the three of us, the whole thing
is meaningless. If we let you go free, or hanged you, it would be irrelevant.
Nothing would be proved or solved. Three people can't represent the
country."

  "You've made your judgment," said Justice. "You are excused."
  His face pale, Jimmy Brant started to walk away.

   "Wait," said Justice. "You're out of it now. If you try to interfere in any
way you'll be stopped by the guards." Turning his gaze on Bailey, Justice
said, "The human race is changing. You can't hold back its progress."

  "Or its descent."

  "Your view is personal."

  "So is everyone's." Bailey slipped a gun from his pocket.

  Justice rested his chin in one hand. "Reason has just walked out on us
and now we confront Creed."

   "Call me anything you like." Bailey stood up. "It's my turn now. I'm not
a groping philosopher and if you were the world's finest promise, it
wouldn't stop me."

  "You intend to execute me?"

  "The law gives me the power."

  "What law? There's no longer a Federal Bureau of Investigation or a
Central Intelligence Agency."

  "There is while I'm still mobile. Why do you think I'm here?"

  "Wait a minute," said Tidy Crawford. "If you shoot him I don't get my
turn."

  Bailey didn't look around. "I know you, Crawford. You soaked up gin so
long your brain is pickled. Stay out of this."

  "Won't. Mr. Brant is Reason and you're Creed. I don't know what I am,
but I'm something."

  "Tell him why you want to execute me," said Justice to Bailey.

  "For the country."

  Tidy shook his head vigorously. "You lie. If you aren't sure, and you
aren't, then what you say is a lie."
  "Would it make me right if I were sure?" said Bailey with a snarl in his
voice.

  "No, but you can't give him an honest judgment if you don't know why
you're giving it."

  "Keep quiet, you old fool."

  Tidy got to his feet. "You're the last of the old law enforcers. Are you
going to shoot him because he murdered, because he's a vigilante who
murdered or because he's a murderer who has different ideas than yours?"

  His face gray with anger, Bailey said through his teeth, "Any one of
those reasons would be sufficient."

  "Don't see how. If you judge him, you become Mr. Justice, the man who
decides and acts. There has to be a reason for your decision, and I don't
mind if it's a personal one, just so it's logical and just. But your prejudices
can't be my logic or what I call just, if you follow me."

  "What are you saying?" said Bailey.

    A gun appeared in Tidy's hand. "I didn't know I was going to sit on a
jury today, only I am. I'm not afraid. Always do the best I can. Hard to
fool. Take it easy on that trigger, Mr. Bailey. I'm only disagreeing with you.
Shoot me and you'll die at the hands of the boys all around us. I intend to
speak my piece. You aren't going to shoot him. I won't let you. What I say
is if there's somebody else wants to judge him, they can go ahead and do
it. But not you."

  "You?" sneered Bailey.

  "Already judged him. He's sure of what he's doing. That's all I know."

  "Is he guilty?" Bailey screamed.

   "I don't know. In a way he is and in a way he isn't. I'm not a sure person
in anything I do, so I won't condemn him or give him a clean bill of goods.
All I'll do is make sure he gets a fair hearing at this time, and I say you
aren't the person to do it."

  "Thank you, Mr. Crawford," said Justice.
  "You shouldn't thank me," Tidy said easily. "You never know when
somebody like me will change his mind."

  "But when you do, you'll be sure."

   Bailey threw his gun on the ground. "You son of a bitch. You ought to be
strung up."

  "Who says so?" said Justice.

  "Every civilized human in the world."

  "For whom you speak? Mr. Crawford understands better than you do."

  "The whole world will sit in judgment of him one day," said Tidy.

  Bailey glared at Justice. "And you'll accept their judgment?"

   "Maybe. Now if you don't mind, we'll get ready for war. The hills are
crawling with the enemy. Of course if you can't make up your minds
whether or not you ought to fight, you can always stand still and get
killed."

  Bailey started to walk away. Suddenly he stopped and looked back.
"This isn't the end of it," he said.

  Justice shook his head. "Of course not. We're old enemies, you and I.
We're people who hate, are intolerant, become outraged, we want to do
and not be spectators. There will never be an end to us. And that's a pity
because as long as we exist it means Utopia hasn't arrived."

  A sneer on his lips, Bailey said, "Utopia?"

  "My sentiments, exactly."




  Arthur Bingle was on the run from a dead cat that seemed to be
everywhere. It hung from the small tree that grew on the balcony outside
the living room, and it dangled from the chandelier in the hallway between
the east and west wings of the Brant Building. The same cat met him as he
hurried to the elevator. It brushed against his legs and clawed him when
he kicked at it. As the elevator hurtled toward the ground, Bingle glanced
up and saw a black-and-white cat inside the small wired section of the
ceiling. A rope around its neck, the animal's dead eyes stared down at
Bingle and transfixed him against the back of the car.

   He rushed into the street. The city, country, world— what had ruined
his reality? There were no gangs abroad, no mobs, no crowds to hide his
running figure. There were, however, several dead cats, in doorways, on
the sidewalk, in the street, and some live ones climbed in and out of
overturned garbage cans.

   Bingle's mind labored as he ran. He had made the same mistake made
by every dictator throughout history. The world simply couldn't be made
to drop dead by instituting chaos because that was man's natural state.
Defense mechanisms hummed like live wires and man managed to
survive. Chaos had been the wrong weapon. Given another chance, Bingle
knew he could do the job. Never mind chaos. Order was the way; learn a
lesson from a wallpaper hanger who once lived: line up the enemy and
shove it into an oven or a gas chamber or a ditch. Christ, how simple.

  Traveling into the past had always been Bingle's way of getting around
threatening obstacles, and he took the familiar route now, got away from
the New York street by skipping backward in time for the space of seven
days. He immediately sped upward to the present again. The past was
saturated with cats.

  Justice was so damned clever. Number 7 was a favorite in man's mind.
No doubt Bingle would find felines in all the combinations of number 7: in
seconds, minutes, hours, days or years. How about number 6?

  Bingle tried it. He traveled six days into the past. The first thing he saw
was a black-and-white cat walking a tightrope strung between two
buildings.

   The enemy knew him, had always known him. How much could you
learn about the habits of a man if you used psychology, philosophy or
voodoo? Justice could anticipate him because Justice had studied him.

  Don't think; travel blindly back to the past and go damned fast.

   The shattered body of a cat lay twitching in the street. Beside it stood a
tiny boy dressed in a sailor suit. Arthur Bingle recognized himself and
went careening toward the present. He materialized on the abandoned
street of New York. Sweat soaked his body and he shuddered. Something
had gone haywire. Instead of just traveling into the past, he had also
changed position in space. He'd never done that before, had never
dreamed he could do it. Oh, God, what power he possessed. Never was
another man born like him. Except Justice.

  "Goddamn you," he screamed. "Look what I can do. You think I'm
nothing but you're wrong."

   His breath coming in fast pants, he made himself think. He had talents
unheard of. They needed developing. But not now. It would be dangerous
to try something new when he was frightened.

   But what should he do? There was nowhere to go and no one to help
him. Wait, Wasn't that a kind of answer to an old question? Did safety,
after all, lay behind someone who was willing to stand between you and
the world? My God, was that the secret of survival? A man with enemies
on all sides of him couldn't stand alone. Who would guard his back?

   He stood still and thought it out. To this was he born? Why not? Who
said he was wrong? Somebody had. He remembered. They said a dozen
rotten apples didn't mean the whole barrel should be thrown away. They
were always talking about evil minorities. All bad things were minorities.
But a bad majority would protect itself with claims like that. Man was a
rational animal. The word "rational" was short for "rationalizing". Damn,
they were all so rotten. Piss ants. Their world was a speck in the spectrum
of substance. If the speck were emptied, who would care? Eternity was a
trek in which every walker dropped out before the end was reached. What
did it matter where you dropped out?

  "I had to exist for a purpose, and mine was to see you all dead," he
yelled at the sky. "I had more guts than the rest of you. Don't judge?
Bullshit. I was judge and jury, and my sentence was three billion graves.
Pffft. How did I arrive at my decision? Simple. DON'T TURN THE OTHER
CHEEK."

  He knew another who followed that rule. One of them was wrong.
Funny. He and Justice had started with the same promise.

  "Where are you?" he yelled. "Show yourself."
  At the end of the block a man appeared. Bingle second-hopped into the
past: two, three, four seconds. The man stayed standing on the corner,
which meant that he was also traveling backward in time. At long last,
Justice was in sight.

  Bingle didn't like the alternate meanings in that last thought. "You have
no proof that you're right," he yelled. "In infinity there are no judges. We
can do anything we want."

  He knew. After the initial decisions were made, it didn't matter who
was right, not to the doers. What mattered was who won. The rightness or
wrongness of things accomplished by doers was the concern of spectators
who forever sat on their asses and made mouth noises.

   With a surge of confidence, Bingle hauled the gun from his shoulder
holster. It was an uncanny experience, seeing the fired bullets pause ten
feet away before they slid to the left in slow motion like small bobsleds
rounding a curve. One after the other the slugs took the arc in stride and
continued on into the distance, none of them drawing near to the man on
the corner. Justice had time-hopped through one or two seconds, and
though both men were standing in the same positions on the street each
occupied a different time zone.

  His finger steadily pumping the trigger, Bingle time-hopped backward
and forward through a period of four seconds. He continued until the gun
was nearly empty. He hadn't found the proper zone. Putting the gun in his
pocket, he raced along the sidewalk toward Justice. Suddenly he stopped.
Justice hadn't taken flight. Instead of moving, Justice stood braced and
waiting.

   Bingle slipped on the curb, cursed, caught his balance, went across the
street as fast as he was able. He had an entire century of time into which
he could escape, and he intended to use that exit, if necessary. If he were
lucky he wouldn't have to.

   Justice still stood on the corner. Bingle kept him in sight while he
looked around. Straight ahead, across another street, was a sporting goods
store. From the corner of his eye, he saw Justice disappear. Not hesitating,
he ran toward the store. Feet pounded the pavement behind him. The gun
was in his hand as he whirled. Again Justice faded. Again Bingle ran.

  Inside the store, he leaped over the counter and crouched down. The
enemy had to come through the door in solid time. Justice couldn't take a
chance on trying anything fancy, like moving through space, not unless he
had the trick down to a science, and Bingle doubted that he had. They
were evenly matched, he and Justice. They ought to have been brothers.

   Bingle laughed. His eye on the entrance, he slowly backed to the rear of
the store. There was a rack of guns on the wall beside him, but they were
empty and he gave them no more than a glance. He couldn't afford to be
loading a weapon as Justice came bursting in on him. Besides, he didn't
want a rifle. He wanted a fishing pole.

   He started to grab a pole that hung on a nail and then his eye lit on the
thing hanging next to it. A grin turned his mouth from a taut slit to a
relaxed bow. The speargun was small and powerful with a hooked arrow
five inches long and a length of cord made of unbreakable nylon. This was
better than a fishing pole.

   The back door beckoned and Bingle headed for it. A stack of small boxes
made him pause. Again he smiled. These were bird rufflers and one of
them might be helpful. An expensive little gadget made exclusively for
hunters who didn't mind paying for their sport, the bird ruffler had an
elastic band that could be wound around a tree branch or bit of brush.
The hunter set the small timer and secreted himself until the powder
inside the box ignited.

  He grabbed a box and ran. Once outside, he was seized by a sense of
exhilaration. He needed a spot relatively open so that he couldn't be
sneaked up on from behind, but it had to be a place with a few barriers.
What about the park? It wasn't far away.

   He wished that he were in better shape. Instead of sitting and admiring
his conquests he ought to have been swimming and lifting weights. But he
was a good runner and speed was an ability a man came into the world
with. Maybe Justice had strong legs, but he had to put one in front of the
other, the same as any man, and Bingle already had the jump on him. The
pursued chose the destination.

   "I'm going to love killing you," he yelled over his shoulder. How much he
loved Justice: the one man in the world who was worth killing. None of the
others had been worthy. Eric Fortney might have been, if it weren't for his
hedonistic streak.
   Justice was like himself. Everybody loved the land of High, but the
trouble with most people was that they thought it came from external
sources. What fools they were. Everything good came from the mind.
Justice and himself—they tripped out with ideas.

   Something moved near his right shoulder. He saw it from the corner of
his eye, sensed a presence, and his High intensified to fever pitch. With a
shriek of pure pleasure he lashed out with his arm, felt solid substance,
fortified his position by lashing once again with the same arm. He felt
powerful; he felt indefatigable. Without wasting motion, he was all over
the shadow. So fast did he move that he didn't even see his opponent until
the man was sprawling backward onto the ground.

  Was this the first time anyone had caught Justice unaware?
Close-quarter combat, and Bingle was a wild man because he loved what
he was doing. His fists were weapons that struck the enemy, almost
independently. Justice was flat on his back with blood oozing from his cut
mouth and with alarm a bright bloom in his expression.

  "My God, you look ordinary," Bingle panted. Slick as grease, he picked
up the speargun that had fallen, extended his arm and with no fear
whatsoever nor with any sense of haste, he shot Justice in the shoulder.

  He stood over his fallen foe and casually examined him. "Mistake
number one," he said. "When you're tracking Arthur Bingle don't make
too many presumptions. In fact, don't make any."

  "I'm making one now. You didn't want to kill me with that shot."

   Bingle kicked the other in the leg. "Collected, I behave brilliantly. I've
fixed you so you can't go anywhere. You're tied to this time zone."

   Justice looked haggard. The lines under his eyes and on his cheeks were
deep. He wore the clothing of a bum. His hair was long and shaggy. The
tip of the spear had gone through his body and penetrated the ground. He
was indeed tied to the present.

  "You could work that spear free," said Bingle. "I'm going to tie you to
the tree behind you. How we get over there is up to you. You can have it
rough or sweet."

  "I take it you're leaving me?"
  "For a few minutes."

   Justice moved and pain flashed across his face. "It's in deep. You'll have
to pull it."

  Closing his hand around the back section of the spear, Bingle gently
pulled and the tip came out of the ground. He stood back and kept a firm
hand on the gun. The nylon cord stretching between him and Justice was
taut.

  "Get up," he said.

   Justice raised to one knee, took a deep breath and stood. The back of
his coat was soaked with blood. He staggered over to the tree and
stumbled to his knees.

  It was a small tree and Bingle had no trouble securing his victim to it.
Justice sat with his back against the trunk and Bingle ran the nylon cord
around the trunk and tied the speargun to Justice's wounded arm. Justice
drew up his knees, then Bingle used a belt to tie the other man's free hand
and feet together.

  "If you think you can time-hop strongly enough to pull those tree roots
with you, I recommend that you give it a try."

  Justice looked up. "I may."

  Bingle laughed and went away. He was gone a long time.

  When he returned, he was driving a truck. He sent the machine hurtling
through the park gates and screeched to a halt beside the tree.

  "You're still here?" he said with a grin.

  Justice gave a grin of his own. "If you aren't careful I'll bleed to death
and then you won't have any fun."

   Bingle untied him and made him walk deeper into the park. At last they
stopped and Justice was again tied to a tree.

   Well away from the tree were eight concrete flowerbeds that formed a
large circle. Bingle left his prisoner and walked back to the truck. He
returned with digging tools and cans of gasoline. First he tore the flowers
from the beds, then scooped out the dirt and dumped in gasoline. When
this was finished, he stood outside the circle and tossed eight burning
matches. The gas ignited with a roar and a fiery ring was created.

  Justice was dragged through two beds into the ring and a shovel was
dropped beside him. With swift movements, Bingle tied the bird ruffler to
Justice's left knee.

  "Dig," he said.

   The flames in the concrete pits blew in the wind and spread until the
circle was complete and there were no clear passages.

  "You've trapped yourself," said Justice. He started to fall and caught his
balance by holding onto a shovel.

  "It won't burn long, just enough to see you in a deep hole with your leg
shattered and your head leaking. You have fifteen minutes before that bird
ruffler goes off. It won't be much of an explosion; in fact it'll make the
most pitiful little pop you ever heard, but that little pop will take out your
knee. I have one bullet remaining in my gun and it's for your head. I left
one can of gasoline for your grave. Doesn't it all sound nice?"

  Justice began to dig.

  Behind him, Bingle smiled. "I'll find the baby in good time. There's no
hurry. The parents will have to be killed, too. I can't take a chance on their
reproducing again, besides which I don't intend leaving any old enemies
around. They'll all go, one by one—everybody who opposed me."

  "Your life style," grunted Justice. "It's just something to do to fill up
your spare time, eh?"

  "More or less, but it certainly isn't boring. Tell me something. Why did
you wait until now to come after me?"

   "First I had to give the good citizens of this country a chance to pot me.
I figured if they were going to do it, they'd do it before I picked you off for
them."

  His face darkening, Bingle said, "You're digging too slowly. Hurry up.
Do it faster."
   Leaning on the shovel and breathing hard, Justice said, "Why should I?
I die if I work and I die if I loaf."

  "Hope and the human breast. You can only see the past. You'll have to
keep digging if you want to stay alive to find out what the future holds for
you." Bingle's voice lowered. "You're a great one for making decisions. I
don't care which out you opt for. Either way you end up in a hole."

  "So will you one day."

  "Shut up and dig."

  Perspiration made Justice's shirt dark with sweat. It leaked down his
neck, glistened on his face. "Don't you have any curiosity about what
humanity will be like ten thousand years from now?"

  "I'm mildly curious about what the abandoned world will be like. I'm
going to empty it. Ten thousand years from now the animals will rule."

  "You think people won't fight you?"

  "I hope they will," said Bingle. His face glowed with rage. "I wish there
were a few more like you. It would make the battle worthwhile. But it
won't be worth a damned. I'll be an exterminator getting rid of bugs."

  Justice glanced over his shoulder. "That makes you a bug."

   "Do you think something better than a bug has the right to judge bugs?
What outsider really knows and understands a species?" Bingle's foot
lashed out and Justice stumbled to his knees. "No more talk. Work."

   The outline of the grave was finished before Justice paused to rest. He
leaned his good arm on the shovel and groaned.

  "Keep digging," said Bingle.

  "I'm bleeding too much. I don't think I'm going to make it."

  "Suit yourself, but it'll be a shame if it doesn't work out the way I
planned. Imagine Superman bleeding to death like a common thug? What
will your fans say?"

  Justice lifted his face and let the hot wind bathe it. "There isn't enough
air. Are you sure you haven't cooked your own goose?"

   "I stopped being nervous about you the moment that spear put you out
of business, so don't try and rattle me. Those flames are already
weakening."

  Staring at the sky for a long moment, Justice said, "There's something
out there."

  "I don't see anything."

  "To my left, straight ahead of you, about thirty feet up."

  "There's nothing. You've rested enough. Get to work."

  Instead of obeying, Justice continued to stare at the sky. All of a sudden
the shovel fell from his hand. "My God. Look."

  A figure dressed in white hovered in the air above the flames. Her long
dark hair accentuating the pallor of her face, Leona drifted without
support. She moved through space and time and came closer to the
highest tongues of fire.

  Arthur Bingle shrieked and shrank until his thighs touched the ground.

   The mouth of Leona was wide open, and her eyes were stark and
staring. Her stiff arms and outstretched palms seemed to plead.

  Was she dead or alive? Bingle didn't know. Was she in limbo, the space
between time channels, or had her mass penetrated into a solid period?
Bingle didn't know that, either.

  Leona suddenly disappeared. She seemed to have dropped behind the
wall of fire. Bingle shrieked again as a hand materialized in the middle of
the flames. The arms came into view, white and untouched, cold-looking
and inhuman. In a moment the rest of the body followed. Slowly Leona
passed through the fire, and it looked as if she would remain untouched by
the holocaust. Then the air in front of her danced and shuddered. The
body jerked as though whatever had been supporting it in the air had
dropped it an inch or two.

  The long skirt of Leona's gown abruptly changed color, turned orange,
caught fire, scorched and shredded. In a second the girl was engulfed in
the fire. One moment, she had been invulnerable in limbo, and in the next
moment she had traveled out of the channels between time and into the
present.

   She didn't stop drifting. In fact she moved with greater speed. Her
burning mass swooped across the clearing and missed the head of Justice
who stood in the grave he had been digging for himself. Just before Leona
arrived at the crouching figure of Arthur Bingle, her arms changed
position. They bent, seemed to make ready. The clawed fingers appeared
to reach out. They slid beneath the shoulders of Bingle. The blossoming
dress front sought Bingle's body, came hard against his chest, clung.

  Together the two flaming figures lifted off the ground. In midair they
hesitated. Bingle's scream was cut off as the hair and flesh of his head
became a torch. All of a sudden the figures flicked from the present and
were gone: two brief lights that had been extinguished.




                              The End