A Scarab in the City of
        Time
      by Marta Randall
I skulk in a forgotten alley while they scurry by outside,
searching for me. Whippety-whip, they dive around corners
with unaccustomed haste, and they have all donned worried
faces for the occasion. Even the robo-cops look worried, and
look well; were there stones in this City they would turn them
all. But they won't find me, not me, no. When their
programmed darkness falls I move from the alley, slyly insert
myself in their streets and avenues, slink through the park to
the City Offices and scrawl "I am a scarab in the City of
Time" over the windows of the mayor's office. I use a spray
of heat-sensitive liquid crystals; my graffito will be pretty
tomorrow as the wind and fake sunlight shift it through the
spectrum. Then I sneak to an outlying residential section
where I've not been before, eluding robo-cops on my way,
and steal food from an unlocked house for my night's meals. I
wouldn't steal from citizens if I could help it, but my
thumbprint isn't registered, isn't legal tender in the City of
Time. So I burgle and the Association of Merchants grows
rich because of me, as locks and bars appear on doors and
windows throughout the City. I'm good for the economy of
the City of Time, I am.
    I'm a sociologist. I'm not supposed to be doing any of this.

   When morning comes they cluster before the City Offices,
gesticulating, muttering, shifting, frightened. I watch them
from a tree in the park, am tempted to mingle with them, sip
the sweet nectar of their dismay. No, no, not yet. I remain
hidden as the mayor appears on the steps of the building,
glares at my beautiful sign. Workers are trying to remove it,
but there's a bonding agent in my paint and the colors shift
mockingly under their clumsy hands. The mayor reassures the
people, calming them with the dignity of her silver hair and
smooth hands, and they begin to disperse. I'm tired. The
pseudo-sun is far too bright today, a faint wind rustles the
leaves around me. When noon comes I slip from my perch,
move under the eaves and edges of bushes to the Repairs
Center, sneak into a storage room and curl down on a pile of
cables to sleep.




   The City is hard on the eyes, from the outside. Its
hemisphere rises from a lush plain, catches the light of the sun
and heaves it back at the resurrected earth. Time has silted soil
high around the City, but it's probable that the City doesn't
know, or care to know. When we returned to colonize Terra
we tried to make contact with the City, sent waves of
everything we could manage at the impervious dome, received