distance. Then the weapon was brought into play, shooting a continuous beam of what seemed almost liquid
blue energy at the complex. The energy struck and seemed to flow over the entirety of the building. There was a crackling sound near them, and Moosic looked over to see tiny fields of electricity dancing around Dawn's time belt. The small red displays blinked on and off erratically. "The time belt!" he almost shouted, in no danger with the din of the attack masking them. "It's shorting out!" Dawn seemed to be in almost a hypnotized state, but she suddenly snapped out of it. She picked up the microphone and dialed the base frequency. "Dawn to Base—we are caught outside and unarmed. Advise!" There was a crackling sound, and then a tinny voice responded, "Use the belt and get out now! It's your only chance. . . ." And then it went dead. She turned and looked at him and seemed almost ready to cry, but she did not.
"Here! Let's open the belt wide so it goes around both of us. It'll be tight, but I think we can manage," she said.
"You mean use it now?"
"While we still can. The base may fall or short out any minute!" He felt guilty about running, but it was clear that once the base fell, the occupying force would scour the island for any survivors. There was literally nothing they could do but take the chance. The belt was never intended for two people and was an extremely tight fit, but they seemed to make it as she'd predicted. More electricity danced, and she had trouble making the adjustments on the belt. Everything blacked out and they were falling, but ever so briefly. Then all exploded again into reality, but this time into darkness.
The belt continued to sputter. They got it off as quickly as possible and it fell to the ground, then lit up the area with a display of dancing sparks.
"Where'd we go?" he asked her.
"Nowhere. There wasn't time. I just tapped the advance for a decade. We're still on the island, ten years in the future of the attack. That should be safe enough. I didn't dare try any long jump. What if the power failed? And if we did make it, we'd be assimilated." He nodded, crediting her with some swift thinking. The belt continued to crackle, then made a single electronic whine which slowly faded and died. They were again in darkness. There were no dancing sparks, no red readouts on the belt.
"Oh, Jesus!" he breathed, half cursing and half praying. "The power's gone out!" She stared down at the blackness. "Or the belt's O.K., but no longer connected to a power source. I—I think they shorted out the base."
And then she cried, long and hard, and he did his best to comfort her, although, truth to tell, he felt like crying, too.
In some ways, the island had not changed at all. In others, the change was dramatic. Where the base had been, there was now simply a large depression of impressive size and squared-off dimensions, but with growth already creeping into it in profusion. Around the area, much of the gardens had gone wild, yet there were still fruit trees and bushes and even vegetables growing. Surveying the place, Ron Moosic sighed and sat on a rock. "Well, in one way it's not so bad. Almost the Garden of Eden, you might say. We won't starve, that's for sure, and the stream is a secure water supply. From the looks of the sun and the jungle I'd say this place has two climates, hot and hotter. Of course, there are no doctors, no dentists, no nails or hammers or saws. Nothing but the clothes on our backs, such as they are."
"These flimsy things aren't going to last long out here," she noted. She kicked off her boots and started to remove her clothes.
"Going natural, huh?"
"You should, too," she told him. "We won't have these forever, so we better get our skin and feet toughened up. We might eventually figure out how to rig lean-tos and maybe even huts, but there's nothing I've seen on this island that can be used to make clothes or shoes. I'll use these, as long as they last, when we explore the island, but not otherwise. There's no use." "You've got a point," he admitted, and stripped as well. They stood up and looked at each other. "You know," he said, "we really are Adam and Eve." He went over to her and hugged her. "You're turning on," she noted softly.
"Oh? I hadn't noticed." He grew suddenly serious. "You know we may be here for the rest of our lives."

"However long they may be," she replied. "I'm mak-ing a personal decision right here and now. I'm not
going to think about time at all. Not now, not unless I have to. There's nothing else except now. There's nobody else but us. There's no place else but here." "That's fair enough," he agreed. "Maybe it all worked out for the best. Maybe this is the place for nightsiders. Let's make the most of it." And, with that, they kissed. It was in many ways a new beginning. After a while, they set out to explore the island and found it relatively large. In the end, Moosic estimated it at being more than forty miles across and perhaps fifty long, the product of two undersea volcanic peaks breaking the surface of the deep ocean. One peak, on whose slopes the base had been built, was extremely old and worn, a low mound now, with even its ancient crater partly caved in and difficult to distinguish. From there the land ran down to a flat, though not level plain that made up the bulk of the island. The product of old lava flows, it had long been overgrown into jungle. There were, however, unspoiled black sand beaches where plain met sea. The other end of the island's peak was by no means a grand mountain, although it surely was if one could have rolled back the ocean to see the whole of it, but it was certainly newer, with a clear cone shape caved in on one side and evidence through its growth of clearly less than ancient flows. Although they could roam some distance, and did, they realized that their permanent home had to be in the re-mains of the old base, for it was only there that a continu-ous and guaranteed supply of edible vegetation was found. One day, Moosic decided, he would try and transplant some of the more valuable edible plants to the beach areas and perhaps the far slopes, but for now the first item of business was setting up a permanent home.
There was something about the passage of time that dimmed their memories and calmed their demons. Dawn had said that there was no assimilation possible in the Safe Zone, but, whether for psychological or physiological reasons, they did not, after a while, think back on or dwell upon the past. It was not that the information wasn't still there, simply that it was filed away as irrelevant. Conversa-tion turned to the practical thoughts that seemed directed at nature and solving the practical problems. As Dawn had predicted, the garments didn't last long, particularly after they began to explore the jungle. Mildew and mold seemed to crumble the boots and the rest, until, within a year, there was nothing left from the past at all, save only the seemingly indestructible but inactive time belt. It took considerable trial and error to turn some of the jungle leaves and vines into crude and primitive shelters, but they finally did so, giving them some shelter against the occasional strong tropical rainstorms that blew across the island. With that problem solved, and with no worries at all about food supplies, other ambitions seemed to fade. They became as children once again, playing games, swimming, making love and just lying around. Moosic developed a substantial beard, which Dawn seemed to like, and their skins toughened and their bodies browned dark. They had some minor injuries and suffered some occa-sional aches, pains, and bruises, but nothing very serious. It began to seem as if they would never get sick, but Dawn finally developed what at first seemed to be a persistent case of nausea.
Both had put on weight, both from the lazy life and from some of the less familiar fruits which seemed particu-larly sugar-laden, but now she began to eat far more heavily. "Ronnie?"
"Yes, Dawn?"
"I haven't had a period in months. You know that?" "I guess so, now that you mention it."
"Ronnie—I'm pretty sure I'm pregnant."
Even though he should have expected it, the news stunned and somewhat unnerved him. He realized sheepishly that he'd been shutting the obvious out of his mind. Now all the worries began. "But how can you have a baby? Here, I mean. Hell, Dawn, I don't know how to deliver a baby." "Well, you're going to have to learn. I sure can't do it myself." Within another month, there was no doubt of the fact, and since there was no way to date conception, they began to prepare early. There really wasn't a whole lot, though, that could be done. Rocks were worked and sharpened to fine cutting edges, and, for the first time, he worked to find a way of making and maintaining a fire. Some coconutlike shells from jungle trees seemed able to resist being heated, and more stone was broken up and used to form a fire pit of sorts. Shells and shell fragments, some of them huge, had always washed up on the beaches after storms, and they proved to be decent water containers.

Still, he was scared to death of actually having to de-liver the baby. She was not much help at that. "I've
never had one before," she told him.
She was in tremendous pain the night the baby came. The labor took all day and went into the night, and he feared that he was going to lose both the baby and her. But, finally, she managed to push it out to where he could get hold of it and pull it all the way. He was prepared to cut the cord and wash the baby off, but not so prepared for it to be all purple at the start and even less prepared for the subsequent delivery of the placenta. Having a baby was a painful and messy business under the best of circumstances, and this was hardly that. But now they had a child, and it quickly gained color and showed a fine set of lungs. They named the boy Joseph, after Moosic's father. It was both the same and not the same after that, for now they had a purpose in their lives and it restored some of the lost ambition. He began to look for a more perma-nent sort of dwelling, and he found it in the mouth of an old lava tube. Dried straw and leaves formed the floor, while huge jungle leaves, held together with the bracing of small tree limbs tied with vines, created a wall that protected them from the elements while affording good ventilation. They made a primitive rope from some of the vines and, using sharpened stones and sticks, managed to create tools to do a utilitarian job. They had progressed from the Garden into the Stone Age.
From that point, Dawn seemed to enter into a state of perpetual pregnancy. After Joseph came Ginny, Sarah, Cathy, and Mark. He wound up having to build a vine and stick fence for a play area, and they found parenting, particularly on this level, a full-time occupation. Then, to their relief, there was a long period with no childen at all. It gave the others time to grow up. There was no real way to tell time now, since they'd not started a calendar until Joseph had been born, but they knew he was ten and that they had been there a very long time now. Dawn remained fat and didn't much care about losing it. Her focus was strictly on the home and on the children now, to the exclusion of all else. Ginny broke her leg once, and while they painfully set it, it never did heal quite right, causing her a bad limp. All of the children had visible scars, and Sarah had almost died from a deep puncture, but, all in all, they had been very lucky.
Moosic found his black beard and hair turning gray, then white, which bothered him a great deal. Despite the fact that he'd always kept himself in reasonable shape and was relatively thin now from all the work, in one sense the Outworlder squad had done him no favors restoring his body. Dawn was perhaps in her early to mid-thirties now— she herself wasn't sure—but he knew he was in his middle fifties, and feeling it. His eyesight was getting poor, although, ironically, it was far better than Dawn's, which had deteriorated into such nearsightedness that anything more than a couple of feet away was a blur. They taught the children as best they could, explaining their origins as much as the parents were able—how do you explain machines to someone who has never worn clothes or even seen anyone wearing them?—and taught them the skills they knew or had learned, and told them stories both real and fanciful. It was on a day perhaps twelve years after they had arrived that it happened. A storm was brewing; Joseph was still out somewhere in the countryside, and Dawn, after all this time pregnant again, was worried about him. Although Moosic calmed her and tried reassuring her that he was a man now and well able to take care of himself, he finally got a little concerned when the wind picked up and the other kids battened down for a blow. He went out to see if Joseph could be found. Near the edge of the jungle, up by the fruit trees, he heard an answering hail to his call. He ran to the boy, intending to give him a scolding, but stopped when he saw what the boy had. It was dirty, and mud-caked, and long forgotten, but it was unmistakable. The time belt, lost for some years.
"What is it, Dad? I found it over there, in the pit. I guess the last storm unburied it." He nodded and took it, then looked at it and shook his head. "It was the way your Mom and I got here, son."
Joseph stared at it in wonder. "How'd it work?" He laughed, and found to his surprise that the clasp still functioned. There wasn't a real sign of wear or even rust on the thing after all these years. "Ha! Maybe I should shock your mother." He put it on around his waist. "You just put it on like this, press one of the buttons, and away you went."
"Wow!" The boy looked closely at the belt. "Hey! That's neat! The funny red things, I mean." "The what?" He looked down and froze in shock. Although he was certain they had not been so a moment before, suddenly the small red indicators were glowing.
He started to take it off, to run with it up to Dawn, when Joseph reached out. "You mean you just

punched something like this?"
He pressed the home key, then let out a sudden, terrified scream that was cut off midway. The wind stopped. The noise stopped. Everything blanked out, and Ron Moosic felt himself falling helplessly.
The sensation, however, did not last long. He expected to arrive somewhere at night, but he suddenly stood in the middle of a brightly lit room that his memory knew well. It was the lounge of the very same Outworlder base he had seen—or thought he'd seen—destroyed. Chung Lind was thumbing through some book or other on one of the couches. He looked up, nodded, and said, "You know something? You look like hell." TRIP POINT
"Moosic, you're a mess," Doc told him. "How long were you downtime, anyway?" "Hard to say," he replied. "Eleven, maybe twelve years." She nodded. "And you aged twenty-five. The only way I can explain the results of these tests is that everything came along gradually and you became inured to it all. You've got kidney problems, four kinds of internal parasites, several ill-healed breaks too far gone for much correction, and that's only for starters. You had eye problems?"
"Some," he admitted. "Not as much as Dawn has." "Well, you probably had slightly better eyes to begin with. The radiation levels are different back here than in the period when humans evolved. It's so minor for a day or so that we don't bother about it, and your body can self-correct to a degree, but you had a dozen years of straight exposure." "The kids—they were born in that environment!" "I wouldn't worry so much about them. They're proba-bly better protected than you, and they're young. What-ever their problems are, we can certainly correct them. I can't say about Dawn, but she's a lot younger than you. I can say, with some certainty, that your vision will con-tinue to deteriorate and you would have been stone-cold blind in another year back there. Here you maybe have three or four years, but I wouldn't worry about it. The cancer will get you first." He swallowed hard. "You mean—that's it? I'm going to die?" She seemed mighty unconcerned about the news.
"Not necessarily. Or, rather, yes and no. It's usually accidental, but, if it's carefully planned and timed, I think we can work it out. It'll take some guts, though, on your part." "What are you talking about?"
"Going past a trip point, of course. Be someone else. Someone younger and healthier." That idea disturbed him almost as much as the medical news. "Be . . . someone else. That's like committing suicide, isn't it?"
She stared at him. "Do I look dead?"
"No, no, of course not, but—O.K., you've all gone through it, but you said yourself it was mostly accidental. It's something else to talk about it cold-bloodedly instead of just letting it happen." "Nevertheless, it's what you'll have to do. It's not so bad. Everyone I ever was is still in here," she told him, pointing to her head. "You don't really lose anything, unless you make the mistake of getting assimilated. That's a close thing with trip points. We're constantly monitored by our computers to make sure we don't make an uninten-tional jump into someplace that could get us." She sighed. "Look, it would have happened to you anyway, you know, if you'd joined us. It was inevitable." "But Dawn and the children . . ."
"Are no problem at all. This is time, remember? Safe Zone time. No assimilation, no trip points. We'll go get them, and before they have had time enough to realize you're gone. There's no rush. None of us have been to the time frame you were in before, so there's no relative time problem. Don't think of them stranded there while you're here. We could do it tomorrow, or next week, or next year, and we'd still get there ten seconds after you left."
He sighed. "You're right, of course. That's not what I'm really worried about, although I admit it's tough not to think of time passing there as it is here. It's really—well, me. No matter what, I might see them again, but they'll never see me."
She had no answer for that.

"Look," he said, "why not go get them now—before? I mean, one last time?"
She shook her head sadly. "I understand, but it's not possible. First of all, it'd be sort of cruel, like facing them one last time so they know you're dying. Swift and clean is best. It hurts, but it's not as prolonged. But even if you did want it anyway . . ." "I do. Very much."
". . . It wouldn't matter," she continued. "Ron, this is hard to say and even harder to explain, but you're caught up in and committed to a loop."
"A what?"
"A loop. It's not your fault—you had no say in it—and it's unfair, but it's the due bill the Outworlders are rendering."
"What do you mean? Due bill for what?"
"Saving your life. Time always takes the shortest method to resolve people like us. If we'd left you as Alfie Jenkins, you would have died, either in prison or at the hands of a fanatic or a mob. I'm afraid you would have been left there if Sandoval hadn't been able to jump back. But he was, and our computer monitored it and monitored the consequences of the actions, particularly the early death of Marx. It ordered us to save you. In so doing, it initiated a loop—a string of effects stemming from that cause. A loop is initiated backwards. The last action comes first. This causes a backwash, as it were. Everything leading to that action is assumed by time to have already occurred. Sav-ing you was the last action of the loop. You are now living the events leading up to that, under our management." "Wait a minute! Slow down! I've been away a long time, and this gets dizzier and dizzier!" "It's easiest to put it this way. Dawn appeared to Alfie and allowed him the means to escape. He did—and so you did, and continued to live. But, you see, Ron—Dawn hasn't gone forward in time and saved Alfie yet. Didn't she tell you?"
He shook his head wonderingly. "No, no. And I think I can see why. No wonder she was so upset that first time we met here. Time is insanity, she said." "No, it's not insanity, it's good mathematics. What it is is extremely complex. As complex as elementary particle physics or the biochemistry of viruses or any other com-plex science. What we're doing was discovered by trial and error. It's all been recorded in the ultimate mathemati-cian, the computer here that is so complex and so ad-vanced it is, in fact, an artificial intelligence of a high order. It's capable of viewing the time stream, seeing any disruption, and postulating the results from that disruption, it's equally capable of looking at those results and seeing how it would be best to minimize or even erase those disruptions. Time is on the Outworlders' side in the con-ventional sense. If things just go the way they naturally would, they will win. So we are the guardians of time. A major disruption has taken place. You were not the cause of that disruption, but you are the key to minimizing or erasing it." "Me? How? And why me?"
"I don't know. I don't want to know. Sometimes it does things, or tells us to do things, that we don't understand at all. Later on, we're able to see how a result was obtained. Sometimes it seems insane that we did it our way, or far chancier to do it our way, than some other, but it always has its reasons and it generally works. It seems easier if a couple of us were just sent forward to that square to neutralize dear Eric and take Sandoval out, but that's not the way this one is being played out. Why you? Because you are a direct participant in the original action. The fewer outside elements introduced, the better the result. Why? Again, I don't know. It just is. And until this is played out and you're a free person again, you must play the hand it deals you."
He considered that. "Why? What if I don't?" "You forget, there are alternatives at our disposal, just not alternatives as good as the one it's using, in its opinion. I told you that Dawn has not yet gone forward to save Alfie Jenkins. If she does not do so, and the computer has real control over that, the loop will be broken. You will die as Alfie Jenkins. None of the rest of this will ever have happened. The children will not exist. You will not exist." He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. So there was no real chance 'at all. None. Because they had control of just one not-yet-taken action, all depended on him being a good boy and doing whatever they ordered. He and his other selves, except Alfie, and his children, his whole experience in the Safe Zone— everything wiped out, like it had never been. And they could leave Dawn in the Safe Zone, as she'd said, for weeks, months, or years. And all they had to do to wipe it all out was not to rescue her at all. Just shut down this complex and move to a better one. That's all. Round and round went time, looping and whirling and doubling back into itself. And yet, in the end, there were no paradoxes, only alternatives. All time, up to the leading edge, was the sum of what had gone before. But it didn't matter what that sum added up to—as long as it all added up. The mathematics gave

order to chaos, but in that mathematics was the master mathematician who gave the orders. Human beings,
given their orders, might be driven insane by the complexity of it all, but they had to obey of die. The exterior of the base looked quite different, because it was. When the attack had come, they'd been ready for it, but the computer had made the decision not to defend but rather to leave. Maintaining the loop had taken prece-dence over the inconvenience of moving the complex. And moving the complex had taken every single ounce of power the computer and its mysterious power source could command, hence the cessation of function in the belt. That was why the impression in the ground ten years after the attack had been so regular. Rubble, or even disintegration, would not have been so neat as to leave that enormous rectangle. The thing had simply moved itself through time and space, to a secondary preselected time and place in the Safe Zone. It was a demonstration of the amount of power that the Outworlders had at their command—and that they were denying Earth. All the belts had, in fact, been repowered within a year of relative time, but by that time he and Dawn had lost theirs, having pretty well tossed it away as a useless reminder of a no longer relevant past. How had the computer been so certain that Joseph or somebody would find it? Or was he thinking too linearly while the computer thought only of wholes? If one event, his salvation in London, had already proceeded its cause, a cause that had not yet occurred; then, perhaps all events in the loop did the same. Was he, then, only acting out a preordained future that had already occurred and could actually be changed only by his failure to follow orders?
And, if so, did the mathematics require much else, or did, in fact, everything done have to be undone? He wasn't sure, but it didn't really matter. Not only was he at the mercy of this crazy computer, but so were a lot of other folks he cared about.
They gave him a couple of weeks with physical therapy and some medical treatment—and lots of rest—just to let him sort it out. It didn't matter to them how long he took; the sequence was as good if initiated late as it was if inititated early. No matter how ill he was, though, he couldn't help but be terribly depressed by what he was being forced to do. For the first time in his life, he had people he loved, and with all the pain and all the problems, the years on the island had been among the happiest in his whole life. That, and they, were now denied him, but still dependent on him. He spent what time he had trying to learn all he could about the Outworlders, their squad, and the war they had fought. He was not sure he liked what he found, and he certainly was less sure of the motivation. Their entire picture of the Earthsiders, as the Outworlders called the masses who remained on the planet, was tremen-dously skewed in the negative, a portrait of a suffering and miserable planet of horror under a regime that made Hitler look like the head of the Boy Scouts. Outworlders, on the other hand, were romantic, democratic, and all things wonderful, the true future of the human race. He doubted if it was that simple, and he found that many of the squad agreed with him about that. The difference be-tween them and himself was that he wanted to know the truth; they considered the truth irrelevant, which, in a way, it was. It wasn't, as Herb explained, that they felt that they were on the side of the good guys against the bad, but rather that they were on one of two bad sides. One of them had to win, and all they could do was their jobs and be thankful that they neither had to live with or pay the consequences of the win. The evidence that the time war was more elaborate was also clear, and it was plain that the Outworlders played the game better. The computer that ran the war was not so much the guardian of "natural" reality as public rela-tions liked it to be, either. The end result of history to the leading edge was littered with improbabilities in the extreme. Clearly, some of those had been tipped in the Outworlders' favor. The best evidence of this was his discovery that, unlike the primitive time suit he'd started out with, the computer could understand enough variables to place a time traveler in a specific place at a specific time and often in a specific role. That meant that members of the squad were not at the mercies of time, but truly its masters. Downtiming the night side was truly a science, not an art, and the mathematics was unthinkably precise. That did, however, give him a little encouragement when he met with Doc for another treatment for his ills.
"If I decided now to go through with this trip-point business, it seems to me that this thing is precise enough to practically make me who I want." "It's not that exact, and there are lots of limitations, but what did you have in mind?" she asked him. "Tell me—can it know if I exist in the present as it's currently constituted?" "We thought of that already. You did exist, even in the revised future, but you didn't live long. You were premature, you know, and it was touch-and-go for a while even on the main line. Conditions are changed

just slightly enough on that level in the new main line that you didn't make it. That's pretty common for a
wave. Of course, it works out. Some others who originally didn't make it are alive be-cause of the wave." He nodded. "But it might be easiest if I made it again, wouldn't it? Is that possible?" She considered it. "It would be very tricky. I don't know if you can ever manipulate things to the degree to be a specific individual, particularly one that was real. Short of our intervening to save the baby, I would say no. And if the baby were saved, you would exist there and so it wouldn't be possible. I'd say forget it. Now, if you wanted to be a security man from Pennsylvania, that we might work out." In other words, they could be exact enough to put him in the time project at the right time and place—but as someone else, and not under the same conditions. He might be any of the security staff. "That's close enough," he told her. "Let's do it and get this show moving. The sooner it's over, the sooner everyone can take up their lives and the sooner I can be out of this madhouse." "I'll get a belt now if you like."
He nodded, but was surprised. "You can do it just like that?" "Well, either the computer knows it already or it's overheard us and is now doing the work. Something as tough as what you want might take it all of half a second to completely predetermine—it's that difficult." She wasn't being funny.
The time belt was pretty much the same as all the others he'd worn, but it had no settings. "This is designed for projects like this," she told him. "The computer simply reads in the requirements directly to the belt, and when you activate, you'll go forward to the spot. Then just take note of your surroundings, find a good spot to stick the belt that you'll remember and will be likely to get to in a pinch, and take it off. The rest is automatic as far as the identity is concerned." "Yeah, but how do I know when I reach this trip point or whatever it is?" "We've done the figuring. You're overage for this, and the process of assimilation really accelerates as you get older. We're going to put you in a year before you first arrived on the main line, to avoid any problems with a potential takeover again. That would be too confusing. May the ninth will be the day you'll wake up, and that's the key. You would be assimilated now in just twelve days. This is the tricky part, which we'll try and help you with. You must use your belt again on May fifteenth. Any time on that day during daylight hours. By nightfall, it'll be too late and we'd have to come and get you. We will if we must, of course."
He nodded. "I see. So I come back to the belt and activate it again and wind up back here?" She nodded. "Try and keep enough presence of mind to do it yourself. Keep thinking of Dawn and the children. Hate Eric, or us, if you must. But if we have to come and get you, all sorts of things might go wrong."
"O.K. I'm ready," he told her. "Farewell, Ron Moosic," she responded. He pressed activate. Michael O'Brien awoke in his own quarters at precisely six A.M. He always had, ever since he'd been in the Marine Corps.
O'Brien had been in the corps all his life, since graduat-ing from high school in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, many years before. He loved it, even though the only time he'd ever been in a combat situation, he'd had the shit blown out of him within three hours. He grabbed the bars atop the bed, pulled himself up and around, and eased effortlessly out into his wheelchair. He was proud to be self-sufficient, and if you wanted to make him mad, you simply had to show pity or try and help him do something he was perfectly capable of doing himself. He was also proud that they didn't just discard good men with good brains and skills anymore, just because they were handicapped in the service of their country. No, with a massive perimeter stretching around half the world, anybody who could do a desk job to free some other for the hot areas was retained. It was only fair, of course, particu-larly for the ones like himself who'd paid the price for being where he was ordered to be.
Sure, he felt depressed sometimes. Here he was, thirty-three years old and pretty good looking, if he did say so himself, with no feeling below the waist. None. And no movement or control, either. It was bad enough to be in diapers again, but much worse to know he'd never again make love to a woman or ever father a child. But he was tough, Irish-tough, and full of life and the will to live. If nothing else, his deeply felt Roman Catholic religion made suicide the immoral way out, but his Marine religion, just as strong, made it the coward's way out. Nope, let the little Reich boys cry in their beer and either end it all or be finished off by their own as useless. He was living proof of the real difference between Americans of all types and

the enemy.
He shaved and gave himself a change and a sponge bath, then pulled on his uniform and got back into the chair. Staff Sergeant O'Brien, ready for duty, sir! Ron Moosic expected the disability joker or something similar. He knew how much time hated these things, and him in particular, it seemed. Still, he liked O'Brien, whose general background and religion matched his own, and he liked the man's spirit and outlook. He didn't as much care for the world that O'Brien inhabited, a world with two great empires, one run from Berlin and the other from Washington, both bristling with nuclear missiles, both higher tech than his own time had been, thanks to a longer war and nearly unremitting ten-sion since, and both less than democratic.
Of course, he still preferred America, which stretched by force from what used to be Canada to Tierra del Fuego. The country itself was heavily rationed and on a permanent wartime footing; the standard of living of the average citizen was well below what he expected, but far better than the lot of the Latin Commonwealths, which were essentially run by American military decree. Still, Presidents ran for election, and so did Congress, and there was still a Consti-tution worded much the way he remembered it. In fact, there were a couple of amendments there that hadn't been there in his time, including a sexual equality one—and, in fact, women as well as men had to serve, and at all levels, including combat. And, of course, the seventy-two states took some getting used to. And yet, oddly, there was still a Wicomico Group, by that name, and it was still run as a cooperative venture between the War Department and the State Security Bureau, the latter having far more sweeping powers, including many inside the country, than the NSA he'd known. It was, in fact, a bit unsettling that his old bosses had become what the NSA's old critics once feared—a sort of electronic secret police.
Private ownership of automobiles was banned, of course, but at 0715 sharp the van pulled up to take him to work a few miles to the south of his apartment complex. It was a special van, outfitted for handicapped people. No wonder those in the service were intensely loyal. The day was pretty much routine. The place looked as secret and as disguised as ever; the entrance was just as tough to get through, and the interior central hall, which he'd last seen in shambles, was remarkably intact. About the only really strong change was that it was a bit drabber, with everybody in some sort of service uniform and every-thing a dull military gray, including his central admissions desk, from which he monitored the entry areas and also dispensed information and clearances through his computer keyboard. The security chief was a cold fish named Sorban, and all of the SSB men and women seemed like the kind of folks who enjoyed robbing widows and kicking little children, but that was routine to O'Brien and he mostly ignored them or even cracked jokes about them as only somebody on the inside would dare. At 1630 he was relieved and rolled back out through what they all called The Gauntlet to the lot where the vans and buses were waiting. All in all, a very routine day, but for Moosic something of a surprise, not that so much was different but that so much was the same. Indeed, Dr. Aaron Silverberg headed the project, although even on O'Brien's level they knew only the general details of what went on below. He wondered if Silverberg was the same sort of fellow as the one he'd known. Certainly he was in the same position, so much would have been the same. It would be interesting, he thought, to see the subtle differences in the familiar.
Back at his apartment complex, he considered his options. He could go over to the club, but he tended to eat too little and drink too much when he did that. Besides, tonight was a dance night. Not that he was inactive. There was a wheelchair basket-ball team he was on that was pretty good, and a local Handicapped Service Organization social club that was nice, but he decided he just wanted to relax this night. He went inside, wheeled into the elevator, and went up to his floor, then down the hall to his door. He put the key in the lock, turned it, and pushed himself in, the door sliding out of the way to accommodate him and his chair. He stopped just inside the door and cursed. He always left a light on so he wouldn't have to fumble—whoever had built this place had done a lot for the handicapped, but hadn't done much for light switches near the door—and yet it was fairly dark in the room. Bulb burnt out, he thought; then he began to tense. It was too dark. He always left the drapes open, and they were closed. The maid, perhaps? But she never had done that before. . . .
The lights came on. Five glistening inhuman creatures stared at him, rifles aimed at his head. In the big stuffed recliner chair sat a man he'd seen before, a blond man with a strong Nordic face, dressed all in black, leaning forward so that he didn't have to sit back on his time belt. "Come, come, Sergeant O'Brien—or should I say Mr. Moosic? Surely that is not the kind of expression used to greet old friends."

UPTIME DOWNBEAT
"Time," said the blond man, "is very, very difficult to handle. Change one major thing, you wind up with the same mess—or one much worse. Change anything else, and it just grabs hold of you and gets you. Or you find out you've shifted something very subtly and wound up causing the nuclear war they narrowly averted. I, by the way, am Eric Benoni." He had no intention of moving with all those guns on him. "You'll pardon me if I don't get up." Eric made a simple hand motion, and the guns went down and the creatures stepped back. "That better? I must say you're looking very . . . sympathetic." "And you're looking much the opposite. In fact, you haven't changed a bit since the last time we met, although that was very, very long ago."
"Very long—hmmm. . . . We are in one of those cross-temporal problems. It probably was very long to you in relative time, but it seems only a short while ago to me—which it was. One of the hazards of this business."
"Mind telling me how you found me so quickly and so easily?" "Oh, it wasn't difficult to anticipate. Admittedly, it takes a week or so relative time for the sensors to deter-mine an anomaly with their random sweeps, but if one knows that someone else is likely to appear in a given time and place, it's child's play to set a permanent scan on it. It was still a bit of luck, but this was the one time and place that both of us knew precisely and which you'd have some likelihood of returning to. Our psychologial profile of you indicated that, if you ever received major injury or reached a critical age point, you would most likely choose this time and place for a trip point." Moosic was not pleased at that. "Am I so easy to read?" "In many ways we all are, Mr. Moosic. Don't take it so hard. Had you tripped in any other time or place, I might never have found you. Even if you'd shown up here after that, I'd merely know an enemy agent was here, not you. But—come. Let us be off. I'm afraid I'm overstaying my welcome in this period even now, and our power is far more limited than yours. Shall we get your belt now?" "I don't think so. It'd lead you right back to the base, which you've already caused to jump around. Even if they could escape again, I doubt if I'd be any good in the ten years it'd take them to get the power back on. No, I think you might as well shoot me now and be done with it." Eric Benoni's manner was such that it was impossible to determine through the cool, aristocratic tone if he was serious or sarcastic, but he at least sounded surprised. "I have no intention of shooting you, Mr. Moosic, unless you make it an imperative. I could, however, use rather un-pleasant means to make you reclaim that belt and give it to me."
Moosic returned a sardonic smile. "So why haven't you? Partly because you've overstayed your welcome in this time frame, I'd say, and are in very close danger of getting assimilated here yourself. Those methods take time. And partly because you know, as I do, that this body couldn't stand very much before it gave put."
"Brave talk. You're going noble on me, and that's unbecoming. However, I will be honest enough to say that you are correct in both assumptions. I can waste no more time here, nor can you stand harsh methods." He turned to one of the gargoyles. "Strap a belt on him!" With those guns trained on him, Moosic couldn't argue with them. He allowed the belt to be strapped to his waist because there was no alternative. "Where are we going? To make me a healthier torture victim?'' he asked the blond man.
"Well, yes and no. If you think I'm going to take the risk on assimilation just to get you in better shape, you are wrong. Too chancy. Come. Activate!" he commanded. The belt must have been voice actuated, because every-thing blacked out and he was falling once more. Ultimately, the world returned, a world of artificial light. It was not any place he'd been to before, but he could guess what it was. There was a delay of sorts on his belt as well, because they were all there just waiting for him to materialize.
He materialized, of course, as the prematurely aged and terminally ill Moosic of the island. There was no mistaking Benoni's shock and surprise at seeing him like this. He sighed. "Well, now it's clear why you required a trip point."
"Failed again," Moosic almost taunted him, feeling pretty good about it despite his desperate situation.

"This body's in at least as bad shape as the other one." He looked around. "Your base in the Safe Zone, I
presume?"
Benoni nodded. "Yes. Exactly so. Founded, I might add, only two decades after those first experiences, as soon as they had the capability. The ultimate retreat and escape for the rich and powerful when and if the bombs are launched. The world's most luxurious, and secure, bomb shelter. Never used for what it was intended, of course, but still here." He sighed. "So what are we to do with you, Mr. Moosic? I suspect we could easily gain the location of the belt from you, but we could hardly force you to go up, retrieve it, and hand it to us. Either your body or your mind would give, and you are a trained security agent." He thought for a moment. "Perhaps a different tack is warranted." "You're going to be my buddy now, right?" "I wouldn't insult you like that. But—consider. Why am I doing this? Money? What use is money to a nightsider? Power? What sort of power am I wielding beyond what I could have by other means?'' "I assume you're a soldier doing your duty as you see it." He nodded. "Exactly! But unlike you, I have had an advantage. I have been on both sides in this terrible conflict."
That piqued Ron Moosic's interest. "Both sides?" "Indeed. In fact, I lived with the Outworlders for some time before getting directly involved. Have you ever seen the Outworlders, sir?"
"Of course not."
"Well, I have. Many of them. We went too far in our quest to colonize, Moosic. Much too far. They are monsters. I've seen creatures with glistening exoskeletons who breathe poisonous gases and glide along in a sea of methane. I've seen tentacled things that can take the oxygen out of rocks and transmute granite. The first generation was already lost, as soon as they accepted what they were. The second had no human origins. We are fighting the third."
Moosic had to admit he was shocked. "Biology went that far that fast?" "Not so fast. Consider it was but sixty-six years be-tween the first powered flight and the first man on the moon. Consider the genetic manipulations and the medical wonders in your own lifetime, and use the same develop-mental scale. In the technological era, a decade is revolutionary; a century is radical." He had to admit he'd never thought of it that way before, but there was truth to what the blond man said. There was, however, a rather compelling counterargument standing not so far away. "Those creatures of yours—they're the humanity you want to save?" Eric looked slightly embarrassed. "A technological revolution, I fear, is not limited to one side. However, these are different in a hundred ways. For one thing, no one was changed into them. They are laboratory created and bred. They save lives. One can make the poor your cannon fodder, as it has always been, or one can artifi-cially raise cannon fodder. An interesting moral choice, is it not?" He had no answer for that.
"So," Eric continued, "it becomes a matter of us ver-sus them. When it was decided by the Outworlders that all remaining humans would be converted into their own kind, a few of us rebelled and planned. We stole a ship and got it to Earth. The story is a true adventure in and of itself, but it is not relevant. We got here and, somehow, avoided being shot down, although we were, of course, captured. They were quite surprised to find us as human as they."
"I've heard about Earth up then. I didn't much like my own time anymore, after what we'd both done to it, but I think I like it better than what I hear of the edge." "Indeed, it is miserable. The Outworlders wish conquest, not elimination, so they do not extinguish life as they could easily do with their present command of space. Instead, they sit up there and hurl rocks at us, some hundreds of kilometers in size. The rocks are broken up by Earth defenses, but they still hit in large chunks. They destroy as surely as nuclear bombs destroy, but without the mess. Of course, they are mostly random, but when you get several a day for years, it tends to leave things pretty ugly."
"If they're so inhuman, what do they want with the Earth?" "Control. So long as Earth exists, it is a potential dagger at their throats, if not now, then in the future. They have plans for the Earth. An adaptive Earth, they call it. A population all changed into monsters, all working for extra-terrestrial overlords. An enslaved Earth populated with practical monsters adapted to various needs. The end of humanity, Mr. Moosic. The end. I'm not going to pretend that the Earth I know is a nice place. Wars make nice places ugly. The cost in human suffering is enormous, on a scale that almost makes the annihilation of the human race by nuclear arms seem preferable. Those old warheads still exist, Moosic. Not in the numbers they used to, but they are still there. Earth has suffered too much to surren-der

to the monsters, to become monsters and make misery permanent."
"You mean that they're willing to wipe out humanity if they lose?" He was aghast at the idea. "Commit racial suicide? But is there no hope for a reconciliation?" "None. But like all things in time, it is a possibility, not a certainty. Earth is losing. It cannot win against the massive power of the Outworlders. It no longer has the power to even move more than a handful of people back into the Safe Zone, let alone the equipment and staff required here to build up this base and increase its power. It's too late. Either Earth wins by changing the equations so that it does win, or humanity is wiped out. Except for the very elite, of course, who will be able to sneak out the back door to here before it blows. There is no way to bring more. Oh, we'll bring a huge number of fertilized eggs and try a new race here, but, even then, if a sufficient human presence is truly established for a civilization back here, the Outworlders will be able to know it and come for it." Moosic sat down on the cold floor, feeling weak and dizzy, not so much from his health as from what he'd been told. It was always true that there were two sides to every story, and this one was a doozy. If both sides were to be believed, there were no good guys at all in this, only tragedy for all humankind, no matter what the result.
If Benoni could be believed, and his words had the very ring of truth in them, then the fate of human civilization, of all humanity, rested with him. That was something he'd never bargained for, something he was not prepared to accept.
"Why Marx?" he asked the blond man. "Why all this stuff in the first place?" "Because we have so little to work with. It was a way, a device, to cause the other side to act. A chance, perhaps, to catch them, to trace them back. Bait." "I really want no part of this. A pox on both your houses." Eric nodded. "I know how you feel. I really do. But understand, you were not originally in the desperation move. All of those antique suits of yours were supposed to be destroyed. The Outworlders were supposed to be the ones tracking our young radicals, not you. But—here you are. The loop was formed around you rather than they, and that puts you center stage. Now you see our moves, and our desperation. Tell me—what reward would you like? You have all of time, you know. Within the minimizing ripple effect, we can make you whatever you want wher-ever and whenever you want to be." But you can't give me back Dawn and the kids, he thought sourly. Neither side is willing to do that.
Aloud he answered, "What I want is not within your power, and the other side denies it to me and holds it over me like a club. I'm going to be frank, Benoni. I don't give a damn who wins or loses your dirty little war. I grew up under the nuclear threat, so I'm really only surprised to find it took so long. You ask me to make a choice, and I refuse. You have no right to ask it, and I have no right to grant or not grant it. I've never seen your Earth, but I think I'd hate it. I'll grant your Outworlder version, so I'm not too thrilled about them, either. But I've never seen or talked to them any more than I have your Earth. I'm being asked to take the facts on faith and to maybe decide the war on that. I can't and I won't. Piss on it and bring out your torture. I'd rather just die now and get it over with." Eric stood up and walked over in front of him, looking down, a curious expression on his face. "I'm not going to kill you. In fact, out of your own mouth you have guaran-teed this. I was going to take you forward to the edge, show you what your loyalty has wrought, but I think not. Your mind-set is not prepared to make the adjustments, to see that an issue of human survival surpasses all else, including the present quality of life, or lack of it." He turned to the gargoyles. "Feed him and make him comfort-able but secure. Keep him in Room 226 until I return."
Moosic found himself being lifted by powerful arms, and shook them off. He preferred to do this on his own as much as possible, and he followed the hulking creatures up a stairway and into a comfortable, motel-like room. In a few minutes, some food was delivered that appeared mostly synthetic, but it did taste something like the meat and vegetables it was supposed to be. The beer he found surprisingly good, although it had been quite a while since he'd sampled any. Then they cleared away the trays, closed and locked the door, and left him alone.
He felt very tired, almost achingly so, and suspected that the beer or food had been drugged in some manner. Well, let them. They could make him talk under the influence, but he knew full well that if they moved him up to the sergeant's time, he would once again become the sergeant and once again be awake and alert. Benoni had been very nervous in that time frame, and Moosic suspected that his captor could ill afford another trip there. Yet, with the multi-shifts of the military compound and the patrols all about, they would have to call up humans to shepherd a drugged and wheelchair-bound man, one known to almost all in the area, out to the fossil cliffs. Nothing else they could learn from him mattered. In fact, nothing really mattered to him anymore. The other side denied him the only people he had ever

loved. This side had less to offer. More, they might have to move fast—the Outworlders could easily
discover him kidnapped and then cut power to the belt, bringing it back to their base and denying Eric the trace to their new headquarters indefinitely. He did not fight sleep nor fear it; he was oddly at peace with himself, although hardly happy. He had been happy; now he was not and could never be again, but he was out of it. He was no longer the pawn in their game, and if he died, well, that was enough. He never did really know if they'd drugged him. The drugs of the future surely were far more dependable, sophisticated, and undetectable than those of his own time. It didn't matter, although the time he spent there was certainly boring. He had no idea how long he was left there, but it seemed far too long almost from the start. At least, he thought more than once, they could have left a couple of books or something.
He had the impression that the human master of this place had gone somewhere, possibly uptime for consulta-tions. It was both easy and difficult to understand Eric Benoni. Easy, in that he'd experienced, if he could be believed, both systems and found them both horrible, but he'd been born a human and wished to die one. Perhaps a case could be made that the Outworlders were not the end of humanity; certainly, no matter how alien they had become, they retained their cultural heritage, their history. No matter that they were monsters, they sprang from the same roots as man and might be mankind transformed, mankind changed, but certainly they were a continuation of the race. Perhaps the Neanderthal, looking at Cro-Magnon, had thought much the same as Eric Benoni.
Yet he was also difficult to know. His polyglot accent was the individually unique signature of the veteran time traveler, his manner bespoke the power and egotism that one with such a profession acquired. Yet he did not ring true, as kin as he might be to the Outworlder agents. He was a true believer with a cause, but he was no fanatic like Sandoval. He simply didn't seem the type to be on the losing end of things, gambling with the past because he had not the resources to be decisive. Comparing the two sides he'd now known, the conclusion was obvious. Eric could do an awful lot of harm and damage, but he was still on the losing side even in this battle. Not being a fanatic, he was miscast in this role. His thoughts returned most often to Dawn and the children. He loved them all so very much, and he missed them terribly. He realized with more sorrow than surprise that be would willingly go back to the island and to that primitive existence, even if it was killing them. They were the happiest years of his life, and he'd trade almost any-thing for them again. And that, of course, was the one reason why, if he ever got the chance, he'd return to the Outworlders. The chance was highly unlikely, but if it came, he knew he'd go. The Earthsiders held his body hostage; the Outworlders held his heart.
Seven meals and two sleeps of indeterminate lengths and Eric was finally back from wherever he'd been. He seemed less confident and some of that aristocratic impassiveness was missing, yet it was clear that he was a man with instructions.
"How have you been? Did they treat you well?" the blond man asked. Moosic shrugged. "It's a comfortable prison, but a dull one. "Well, that is all over now. You see, the time stream keeps moving forward. Events keep happening at the stan-dard pace. It is not that they are running out of patience with me, but that the masters of time are running out of it. Ironic, is it not?"
"From what I can see, it's just inevitable, not ironic. You work for pigs, Benoni. They're going to destroy humanity, not the Outworlders. All but them. They'll come back here and live fat and comfortable while the billions fry."
"I have accepted the fact that it is fruitless to argue philosophy with you. Still, I must have that belt, and quickly. I think maybe we should try a bit of persuasion. You believe you are impervious because I cannot use the primitive methods and I cannot use blackmail. I under-stand that the other side has the ammunition, but you get used to it in this war. I think perhaps we have a weakness." He snapped his fingers, and one of the creatures brought in a time belt. "Put it on," Eric ordered his captive. Moosic shrugged and complied. "You seem pretty sure I won't kill myself," he noted calmly. Eric smiled. "I think you will not, so long as there is a chance of gaining anything personally. No, I think we will give you a choice. The belt is preprogrammed, I should warn you. Once you are uptime, you have only sixty seconds before it is recalled, so get out of it fast. The recall will not kill you, but it is very painful and the age is not one that knows how to kill pain or treat burns very well. I calculate your trip point at six days, and at seven you will be over the edge, more of that time than of this with your memories fading fast. So I will return and find you in five days. Again I will make you an offer. If you refuse, I will return again the next day, after your trip point. Perhaps the new dominant personality with the old knowledge will be

more agreeable. If not, you will remain."
He didn't like this, not a bit. That old smugness was creeping back into Eric's tone and manner, and it made him uncomfortable. He decided to argue, if he could. "If I go past the trip point I won't be me anymore, right? So how can I get the belt?" "It is in the nature of time loops, a rather bizarre mathematics. No matter how far gone you are, if you are not totally assimilated or dead, it will recognize you, even if you cannot recognize yourself." "Unless they found me gone and cut the power." "A remote chance. The date and place are fixed. We can return there only an eye-blink from when we left. That is hardly sufficient time for them to act, I would think." "I could kill myself, or die, wherever you're sending me." "You won't," Eric responded confidently. "Remember what I said—sixty seconds, or else you will endure terrible but nonfatal agony." He paused for a moment, and there was the hint of a self-satisfied smile on his face. "We have gotten to know you very well, nightsider. All of you. Activate!" The speaker and the room winked out, and he was falling once more. . . . The sensation seemed to last an abnormally long time, particularly for the modern belts, but ultimately the world exploded around him once more and was, as expected, very dark. He did not doubt Eric's threat with the belt, and moved to quickly remove and step away from it, but as the forces of time caught him up and caused him to pass out, he managed to think defiantly, O.K., Eric, do your worst! When he awoke, he realized that Eric Benoni had done exactly that. DOIN' THE TRIP POINT SHUFFLE
Eric Benoni may have made a number of mistakes in his life, but this one was going to cost him dearly. That much, at least, she understood. Benoni had calculated the Moosic trip point from the previous length of stay, based on the original calculations. He had forgotten, or overlooked, the fact that the Moosic who journeyed back now, like that professor long forgotten until this moment brought his story back, was overaged.
This knowledge and these memories were in her mind, as were all the memories of Ron Moosic—but that was all there was of Ron Moosic now. It was a marvel that she had those memories, and with it the understanding of them, yet they were not hers, but those of a stranger, someone from another time and place. The knowledge, the memories, seemed both real and unreal to her. Some things, the more subtle things, the feelings and the emo-tions and the sense of actually having lived them, were absent. And yet, she knew, God had chosen her for this moment and for this purpose. She did not understand it, but one did not question miracles. It was clear only that this one had come to her and had grappled with her mind, and in her blind faith she had tamed it. So vital was her holy mission, though, that the Dark One himself had sent his agents to ambush and kill her. She had seen the demons, and with her strange knowledge and memories she had slain one through the grace of God. She stood there, beside the cart, and stared at the slain demon, already smelling of its foulness. She remembered then the other who had been with it, and quickly slipped into the darkness of the rocks and grasses. She looked around but saw nothing, and realized that clouds must have obscured the moon, although it was starlit back to-wards the valley. The mountains were often covered in clouds and mist, particularly at this time of year.
And yet, after giving the cart as wide a berth as possible, she began to make her way back across the trail and towards those mountains and their darkness. She did not, however, feel fear. God had not put her through this to have her fail now.
Briefly she considered going back to the old monastery, but she realized that it would not be possible. The world was not ending any time soon, not for a very long time. The Mother Superior, the whole of the new Order, was, then, at best a terrible error, at worst a Satanic blasphemy. Sooner or later word of it would reach the hierarchy of the Holy Church, and the Inquisition would come for them. God would have mercy on their souls, for they had been pious and sincere. She prayed to the Blessed Virgin for guidance, and as the night wore on, she seemed to sort it out, at least a bit. Her own pitiful memories stretched only to just before coming to this place, and these mountains were the only home, the order the only life, she'd ever personally known. Without the order, she had no place, no reason to exist at all.

But she had those alien memories, that alien knowledge, although it seemed almost to be growing weaker
by the hour, yet she understood that God had given them to her for a reason. They were not hers, but they were real, and so were the terrible things they whispered. The blond Eric was a demon, perhaps the devil himself, surrounded by his minions. The others fought him in all times and places, and thus they surely must be God's chosen instruments.
Satan wished the time belt, for from it he might get the whereabouts of his enemies. She, then, was the anointed one who had to retrieve that belt. How?
God would not have acted thus unless there was a way. The dead demon's belt was gone, of course. She had taken it to travel to purification on the cross in the manner of Our Lord. She understood that all now, and the knowledge that she had been chosen by Him and had been honored by trial on the Sacred Cross gave her a thrill that was beyond measure. How?
The man whose memories she had been given had been real once. Had been here, in fact. The Lord had guided him to this spot, to her, and had then transformed him into a spiritual presence. His whole purpose, then, had been to anoint her, to leave his memories with her. And his time suit.
She grew suddenly very excited and praised God for His revelations and His wisdom, tears of joy coming unbidden to her eyes. The knowledge from Ron Moosic's experience mixed with her own interpretation, and she knew and understood the purpose of it all. He, this man Moosic, could not return for the belt ever. Satan would keep watch over the spot, waiting to trap him if he did. But, said the memories, if someone else came, someone not Moosic but connected to him spiritually, as she was, they might not detect, but that new person could still touch the suit, touch the belt, even use it. Use it to go to those in God's service who had passed through the trials as she had. She was now to become one with them.
It was a high calling, and she felt doubly humble to be so chosen. She hardly felt like a saint, yet she would obey the Lord and gladly give her life in His service. But first she had to find the time suit in the mountain wilds. This was, she realized, one last trial, for her time was limited. The memory of where the suit had been hidden was already very dim, and it would not last much longer. Every moment she felt a little more of that strange set of knowledge and facts in her head fade away. Nothing specific, but she knew that she had little time.
She tripped over something in the darkness and came down hard, the pain shooting through her. It was a sign that she was being foolish, that nothing could be found in this darkness but injury and perhaps death. She must sit, sit and think, as hard as that was with the adrenalin pumping through her. He had had a full moon on a clear night. She, on the other hand, had no moon at all up here, and even if
the clouds parted, as they seemed they might, she'd have less than a sliver. The monastery was above him, perhaps half a mile, she reflected, using his measurements and searching his dim memory, trying to force it forward. The valley was a bowl-shaped affair with no stream visible. Looming above it was a . . . cat's head? She searched for the pictorial, but it was dim. A rounded shape with two small peaks angled off opposite one another, that was all. Satan had caused the clouds, she knew, but even with-out them she'd have a rough time. She knew the surround-ing countryside, though, had chased sheep and goats at least this far. The monastery had always been her point of reference when this had happened, of course, so she under-stood the proper distance required for his vision. From the angle, it would have to be off in that direction, to the southwest. There were three such valleys in that general area that she knew, perhaps others. She would search them all, looking for those two telltale tiny peaks that must have been stones or mountain tops. But she could not do it tonight.
Feeling the bruises from her fall, she got up and probed around for a soft or grassy spot, and prayed herself to sleep.
* * *
She awoke aching and sore, and found that her habit had been torn in numerous places. There was blood

on it, too, in several places, from scratches and small wounds. It didn't matter, and she knew it. What
mattered was that there had been a definite fading in the alien memories, not so much in content but in her ability to use that content. Sleep had been the inevitable thing to do; she'd been tired and injured and could not have accomplished anything in the pitch darkness anyway. Still, time was running out on her and she knew it. Every obstacle was being placed in her way to prevent the doing of God's will. Ignoring her hunger and pain, she paused only long enough for morning prayers and then set off. The day was cloudy and damp, and a mist was falling that made the rocky areas slippery. It took her the better part of two hours to reach the first of the alpine meadows leading to the bowl-shaped valleys, bowls which her alien knowledge said were carved by ancient glaciers, although she rejected that as a Satanic attempt to divert her and question her faith. The world was not that old. Reaching the meadow, she stopped to get her bearings as best she could. There were clouds above and below, but it was amazingly clear in the central part, and she could see the distant winding road. She could even see the cart, although not clearly from this distance, and she saw in that area the tiny moving shapes of many people. Some were undoubtedly nuns from the Order, but others were appar-ently on horseback, either people from the town or, equally possible, members of the local duke's household. It wasn't possible to tell what time it was, but she began to fear, from the sight of the mounted group, that she had passed out for a very long time.
They would find some of the bodies—perhaps the demon's, if its fellow had not carted it back to Hell, and certainly the poor sister who'd died in her place. They would see blood and mount a search for her. Time was now pressing in more ways than one.
She had received an instant education beyond measure, but she was not one to think quickly or accept or under-stand all that she now knew. For a long time she'd been in a situation where thinking at all was suppressed, and, oddly, this gave her a stronger will than perhaps any other would have to accomplish the task God had set for her, for she was single-mindedly devoted to this and no other thing. All the facts, all the memories not relevant to the search were simply suppressed or ignored. She understood her relative position as regarded the monastery and the town below, but until and unless the clouds parted or the sun burnt through them and gave her a glimpse of the monastery and the peaks, she would have to proceed by chance, climbing to the level of the highest of the three valleys, searching it, then descending to the next, then the next, and doing likewise if need be. Her bare feet were cut and bruised by the time she ascended to the upper valley, but what was such pain and discomfort to one who had been crucified in the manner of Our Lord? It certainly didn't take long to realize that the climb had been for nothing; the upper wall of the valley turned inward, blocking any possible view of the monas-tery from within it.
By the time she reached the entrance to the second and then climbed back up to get into it, the sun threatened an appearance. It was well in the west, though, which indi-cated that the hour was growing late. More than once she'd heard the distant shouts of people around her, echo-ing back and forth across the mountainsides, and she knew that they were searching for her even now, and she had to constantly check to see if she were in anyone's line of sight. The second valley looked right, as far as she could tell from the point at which she surmised the position of the monastery to be, but without the mountain landmarks it was difficult to tell. She began a methodical search of the place, praying all the while for divine aid and intervention. The suit had been hidden in a cleft in the rock and con-cealed with brush. There was nothing to do but to make her way along the inner bowl of the valley and examine it bit by tiny bit. The light had definitely changed for the worse by the time she had gone three-quarters of the way around, and she began to fear that she would have to spend yet another night. She was growing weak, although small springs had quenched her thirst, and she wasn't certain how much more she could take of this. She sat down, finally, on a rock to catch her breath and closed her eyes, praying intently to the Blessed Virgin for both the strength and will to continue. The strange memories, while all present, were taking on a strange quality of unreality, and she felt doubt creep into her mind about them. Was she, in fact, now insane? Had the experience on the trail driven her mind to this strangeness, or had Satan corrupted her and caused this to happen? Were these strange memories and voices within her truly from God, or were they in fact demons inhabiting her body? Certainly what much of them whispered to her was sheer blasphemy.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
Jesus. . . .
Trip point. . . . Assimilation. . . . Outworlders. . . . Night side. . . . Holy Mary, Mother of God, Blessed art thou. . . .

Four dirty, naked little children and a fat old woman. . . .
Holy Mary, Mother of God. . . .
There was Joseph, and Ginny, and Sarah, and Cathy, and little Mark, who had never been well. . . . Holy Mary, Mother of Cod! How was she to know the truth? Tears welled up in her eyes, and she felt
totally defeated, miserable, and alone. Finally, she pulled herself together enough to raise her head and look out again at the valley.
The sun was very low in the sky, but not yet beneath the mountains in the west. The clouds had moved off, al-though they were still off below the peaks, beautifully illuminated by the rays of the sun. Over to one side she could make out the village far below, but for only a brief period. It looked like. . . . She turned her head and wiped away the rest of her tears. The monastery was clearly visible at the correct angle. Frowning, she wondered for a moment, the correct angle for what? Then memory returned, single-minded memory, and she turned and looked back and up at the peaks, now briefly revealed. She squinted and tried to block out all the detail, leaving only the dark silhouette of the peaks against the darkening sky. It didn't look quite right, but if you used a little imagination and thought of a bright, moonlit night, those two little peaks over there might almost look like ears. . . . Cat's ears?
She stood up and studied the area again. There were bushes over there, a hundred feet or so back and to her right. She walked cautiously towards them, almost in a trance-like state, unthinking, not daring to believe.
She had passed the spot earlier in the day and had given it a good going-over, but now she dove into the brush and found behind it brush of a different sort, dead and discolored. She pulled it out anxiously, and saw it before too much longer.
So it had not been a dream. And if the suit was real, then the demons were real, and since the demons had tried to prevent her from reaching the suit, that meant. . . . The sun had set below the mountains, although there was still a murky twilight. Clouds were again rolling over the peaks above her, and there was a dank chill in the air. She was weak and had never weighed much, but she managed with her last ounces of strength to pull the heavy suit out and stare at it. The red readout on the display was dim, but there. Power, measured on a bar, read at less than fifty percent. Clearly it was a fight to hold the suit in this time. The suit was huge on her. She was almost standing on its seat to get her head out of the top, and the tremen-dously heavy helmet threatened to slip again and again from her grasp, but she finally got it on and barely remem-bered to switch on internal power to the suit. Cool air came in and filled it from somewhere as she managed to close the seals.
She wiggled to get her small arm into the massive arm and glove of the suit, but she brought it up to the controls and watched the liquid crystal display change as she did so. She needed more knowledge now; she reached back for it.
She cleared the readings to zero and tried activation, but the suit would not comply. With tremendous difficulty she made out the strange characters and understood that they were telling her that there was not enough power.
Not enough to reach—where? The heavenly base, of course. But she had known that. The dateline readouts were zero, but the location indica-tor was not. Again her mysterious knowledge allowed her to guess that the location shown was indeed the suit's home—where, in fact, she wanted to go. But what should the numbers be? And would the suit, in fact, return her to the time chamber if she did get it right, the time chamber now held by a very different power? But, no—the suit was no longer linked to that early cham-ber or it would have ceased to exist It was linked to the forces of heaven, so wonderfully named the Outworld.
Perhaps, she thought, even if she determined the correct setting, it might not be best to proceed there directly. The demons could tell when the Outworld moved in time, and because this suit was now Outworld-powered, they had been able to track its original occupant here. But they could not see or touch the suit, so perhaps it might be best to throw them off, to do it in small jumps here and there. The "Home" control would always give her the right setting when she needed it. They had caught her once, in his maimed body, in that time. They would know it, and be waiting. She reset, and saw the numbers for her present return. So that was how easy it was. He had tried, as she had, to press the "Home" key, and that could not work. But if the controls were simply set by hand to zero, they would take her back, since the suit's logic worked on the basis of that key time as zero and all else plus or minus that time.
So, no—not directly there. Lead them a merry chase fust. God was on her side. Did not the forces of

Hell admit they would lose Armageddon in that future? Did not the Holy Word state that Satan would rule
before the Final Judgment?
Curiously, it was not Moosic's memories but those of Neumann that held some of the key, for he'd had a keen interest in geography. Cautiously, she reduced the num-bers to 385.5, a good, experimental time. She knew little of history, and there was not the information she needed in anyone's memory, but she thought the Holy Land a good bet. Neumann, at least, could get her in the neighborhood. The other memories indicated that the Crusades had liber-ated the area, and, indeed, in her own time it was taught that this liberation was a great thing. There was nothing in anyone's memory to contradict this. It seemed safe, and a very appropriate place, should the forces of Hell follow. Neumann, in one of his attempts to reconcile himself with his faith, had in the process memorized, without really realizing it, the basic latitude and longitude of Jerusalem. Eagerly she punched it in, then pressed "Activate." There was the sensation of falling and the passage of much time, but she did not notice. As soon as all had winked out, she'd passed out from sheer exhaustion. * * *
There were stronger persorialities lurking inside the frag-ile mind of Sister Nobody, as Moosic had termed her, and in her exhaustion and freed from time's constraints, they all rushed in to fill the vacuums created. It was not a conscious thing; all of them had essentially ceased to exist in that sense. It was, rather, a mind trying to create order out of chaos and was, in fact, a natural process when the newly forward personality, after the trip point had been passed, was neither strong nor dominant. The frail young woman who came to in answer to the buzzing alarm in the suit was not the same as the one who had activated it. In a sense, she was a new personality, a composite of all those she held. She was, in a sense, reborn. It was merely an extension of the process by which those humans created by the time-travel effect merged into the master mind, although, in this case, that mind was too weak and too shallow to contain them.
Still, she was in the weak and nearly starved body of the Sister, and hadn't much strength to do more than undo the seals and get out of the terribly large suit. It was night, as expected, and well within the ancient walled city. Few prowled this hour, except for the authorities, and none were in sight. She managed, somehow, to drag the suit back into a narrow alleyway between two huge multiple dwellings of eastern adobe, but that was about it. She spent time studying the street itself, taking particular note of the square not too far down the street. It was, to her eyes, a large and confusing city, but not one that could have this many distinguishing features.
Summoning every ounce of will and strength left in her, and feeling near death, she managed to find a half-burnt stick of charcoal from the alley and make several marks on the building's wall. This was not to say that rain or the owners would not erase them, but it was something, anyway. At least, from the way the place looked, none of the owners ever erased or otherwise cleaned anything. She used the small breathing tube in the suit helmet to help her; she was simply beyond walking to keep a steady air intake. She knew, though, that she might well have to undergo another trip point here, if only to keep her from expiring should she use the suit again. Let's see. . . . Would it be six days, or . . . what? No, that was for Moosic, and he was no more. Just how old was she, anyway? Impossible to tell. How do you know you've reached the trip point? You'll know, they'd assured Moosic, although it might take some will to get to and put on the suit after that. It seemed forever that she sat there, sparingly using the helmet to breathe, but finally the moment came when time was ready for her. She felt the nausea almost as a welcome friend, and soon passed out. Nowhere in her collective mind was the specific fact that the Crusades had indeed more or less liberated Jerusalem, and for quite some time, but had lost it, again and forever, in 1291. After the repeated failures of the Crusades of the fourteenth century, and in the schism in the papacy and Church that had followed, this fact tended to be glossed over to the low and the ignorant. It was 1605 now, and Jerusalem was, as it had been for over three centuries, firmly in the hands of the Ottoman Empire.

Waking up as Ismet had shattered forever any hold Sister Nobody might have had on the new
personality. For the rest, it was simply another shock to get used to in the cruel tricks time played on those who would play with it.
She had been born and raised in Egypt, had come from a good family and been married to an important Ottoman official when she was fourteen. She was his second wife, and thus had no voice in anything. Two years after her marriage they moved to Jerusalem, where her husband became chief of tax administration. He was an important man, and already had two daughters by his first wife, but, of course, he wanted a son most of all. He had hoped that Ismet would provide that son, or many sons, for that was her purpose in life, but in the two years in Egypt and one more in Jerusalem she had borne him nothing. Finally, just after her seventeenth birthday, she had become pregnant, but joy turned to horror when the child, which was indeed a boy, was stillborn.
He blamed her for that, and beat her, but finally his rage cooled. Still, he could not bear to have her around anymore, and so divorced her. She was, in effect, thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem with nothing, including any skills or experience outside her sheltered existence. Such women were easy prey for those who had need of them, such as Mufasta the Procurer, whose street people told him of this and who found her, weeping and alone, and had kindly taken her in. Helpless, alone, feeling aban-doned and dishonored, she was perfect for what he had in mind. She proved to be easy to domesticate, and he soon moved her to his port operation in Tyre, where sailors had money and great lust.
After the first hundred men, she no longer thought of being anything but a woman of pleasure. Now, however, she was back with him in Jerusalem, having had some difficulties with an official of the empire in Tyre over the amount of certain bribes to be paid for doing business. Business was, in fact, not nearly as good there, but he had opium to keep his "harem" girls happy, and as his political contacts there were far more friendly and far less greedy, it balanced out. She had broken easily, and it did not trouble her. She called him "Master" and was grateful to be the property of one who provided for her needs. She was quite good-looking, and her barrenness had proven to her that this was indeed the mission in life Allah had selected for her. Mufasta was not a harsh master, for he was skilled and did not have to be.
She danced near naked for unruly, drunken crowds in the back rooms of places where wine flowed freely and religious laws were not highly regarded, and she laid more than twenty of them in nine days, and it was acceptable to those who inhabited that body with her because it felt good and was new. The decision, however, had to be made, for they had to decide whether to risk all on Sister Nobody's frail and broken body or to take Ismet's far preferable one—but with Ismet as the primary. Ultimately, they decided that there was a great possibil-ity that Ismet could not be convinced to go, so they took charge. In the very early morning she had snuck out of her dingy little room, donned a chador and veil as was neces-sary to travel unescorted, and made her way several blocks to the square. She had made certain that she knew the spot, having had to fetch water and other things at her master's bidding. The mind was very close to control, terribly frightened and confused, but she'd done it. Compared to the last time, the suit was amazingly easy to find and only slightly worse a fit than it had been. It was, however, only Ismet's compliancy and drug-weakened will that allowed her to come this far. The trip point was reached while she was actually in the suit, but before it could be activated. For quite some time she sat there, confused and frightened, but then something inside her fought, reached out and adjusted the numbers she could not quite understand, then pushed a button. The date and location were basically random, but with reality blanking out around her the process of assimilating all of the personalities into her went on. Again the will was not a strong one, and a synthesis occurred, although the new personality was, in fact, less decisive and more prone to fright than the first one had been.
She came out in the water. It was an eerie sensation, literally standing atop an unmoving ocean, but soon she began to sink into it. She realized immediately what "random" meant, and struggled with the controls as she sank, hoping to reactivate before the pressure crushed the suit. The next time, thanks to a bit of luck, she struck land, and knew that this new body, while young and attractive, also would not do, for it was addicted to opium. In 1741, in India, she was a prostitute serving the British soldiers. In 1854 she was a prostitute, this time serving seamen of all nations in Honolulu, in the Kingdom of Hawaii. But one was a navigator who knew quite a bit about latitude and longitude. In 1905 she was a prostitute on the Barbary Coast of San Francisco. She had by now realized that time had found a conve-nient outlet for her and was not going to let her go.

She realized, too, that her power in the suit was waning, and her reserve air supply was so thin there was a
question of whether it would reach. By this point she was three trip points beyond the first, and someone else entirely. Someone, in fact, who did not regard the life time was imposing on her, that of a barren whore, as something to be ashamed of.
Still, she decided to go for the abandoned time belt. There was more chance at a future there than in a past time in the oldest profession, and there seemed no reason not to take a chance on it. She didn't want to risk assimilation in Moosic's present, if only because it would signal to the inevitable watchers that someone was there. The locator on the suit was not, however, designed to go down more than seconds, so where she arrived was not precisely where she wanted to be. It was, however, only two miles north of the plant.
The air gauge said it was empty, and had said so for some time. Not that she could move in that suit, anyway, but that left her with an hour or two, no more, before assimilation would take over. She abandoned the suit with no thought of hiding it. It was useless at this stage. Two miles was two miles, and her current body was quite young—seventeen, in fact—but also not in the best condi-tion for walking or running. The men had liked large breasts, and the penalty for them in her case was to be large in other places as well. She would probably not make the distance in time, and it was too close now to take the chance. There was a small communal housing development nearby, however, and she checked the outside and found a number of possibilities. Cars were out, since, even if she could find one, in this regulated society it wouldn't mean anything. The machines would not run while she was out of phase. She looked around the rear of the complex, which seemed some kind of cheap family housing, and eventually spotted a child's bicycle sitting in one of the yards. It was a bit small for her, but it would certainly do. She feared it might be locked, but found to her relief that it was not. There was, apparently, one advantage to living in a rigidly policed state. It was kind of fun, riding a bike stark naked down a major road, but it still took her some time to reach her destination, and the ups and downs of the road in this seemingly flat country were not easy to overcome. The Calvert Cliffs, known as one of the east's richest fossil beds, were just below the nuclear plant and its secret time project. She turned into the small parking lot for the cliffs and nearly jumped off the bike, running down the small trail a bit to where she, as Moosic, had left the belt, all the while praying it was still there.
It was, and it appeared to be functioning normally. She began to feel a bit dizzy, and worried that phasing might catch up with her before she could activate the belt. She had tripped as Ismet while actually in the suit, and only Ismet's fear of returning and being discovered as having left without permission caused her to activate at all.
It had been, in a sense, lifetimes since she'd used one of the belts, and for a moment she was struck with confusion as to how it worked. Finally, though, she remembered the "Home" button, found it, and pressed it as nausea started to overtake her.
The feeling was replaced almost instantly by one of falling slowly, and she relaxed. The journey, which might have taken many hours in the old suit had it had the power, would not take long with this device. Feeling a bit shaky, she appeared in the lounge area of the Outworlder base. Sitting there were Herb, looking much as he had so many lifetimes before, "Doc" Kahwalini, beautiful as ever, and a small, weasel-like man she barely recalled as Nikita. Doc looked over at her and smiled. "Right on schedule," she said approvingly. THE WORM OUROBOROS
"Do you ever feel rotten about being in this business?" Kahwalini asked Chung Lind as she studied the results of her diagnostic computer's run on the newcomer. "Huh? What do you mean?"
"Never really knowing, I mean. Never really being sure what's wrong and what's right, whether all this means a great deal or nothing, and whether it's our right to do it to the ignorant and unknowing?" Lind shrugged. "Not particularly. Conscience getting to you again, huh? This little operation's a bit smelly, and we're coming up to the rough part, so you want a way out." "That may be it. But I don't want out. There's no place to go, anyway, and certainly no place as interesting as here. No, I just dislike doing this to other people."

"It's not the first time," he pointed out. "And when we mount a major operation it can affect millions, not
just one."
"But you don't see those millions, or feel them. Still, I suppose you're right. Setting fire to the orphanage is worse than setting fire to one orphan."
"You're just down in the dumps, as usual, when this sort of thing comes up. We're soldiers, or cops, or what-ever you want to call it. What's right and wrong isn't our choice. All I know is that we've saved more lives than we've taken, and that's all that counts with me." She sighed and nodded. "I guess that has to be enough. O.K., I'm ready for her. Don't worry—I'm a pro." "I know you are and I'm not worried. Anything?" "Some minor bugs and internal stuff, the product of 1905 or whenever it was. There's a progressive astigmatism that's going to get worse."
"She'll survive."
"I know, I know. O.K., to work."
She left Lind in the lab and proceeded back to the medical examining area. The patient was about five foot four, twenty years old, with medium-length black straight hair and large brown eyes. She had a pudgy face that was somewhat cute, but she was not really pretty in any sense of the word, a fact made worse by the forty extra pounds she carried. Her low contralto had a throaty, rasping quality that sounded either cute or sexy.
Doc sat down in front of her and looked over the chart. Finally, she asked, "How do you feel?" "All right, I guess," the patient responded. "A little tired." "That's mostly from relief of tension, I wouldn't worry about it. I'm going to run you through a decontamination chamber to kill off some of the bugs, but it's no big thing. Actually, I was asking how you feel inside, in your mind."
The young woman thought about it. "I—I don't know. So much has gone on in there, but I guess I never really thought much about it. Never tried to." Doc nodded to herself. "I'd like to run a psych stat on you." "Huh? What's that?"
"It's a medical device, like decontamination and diagnostics. It was developed for this operation, for njghtsiders like us. It'll help us to know what your prob-lems are, and it might help you as well. It doesn't hurt— it's more like getting a good night's sleep, in fact. Would it bother you?" "Should it?"
"Good point. No, it shouldn't, but some people don't like anybody else to know them really closely. Herb, for example, won't take one."
"Doesn't bother me, if it'll help you out. I spent all my time and effort just getting here. Now that I'm here, I don't know what I'm going to do anymore." "Well, that's pretty well assured. O.K., just stretch out here on the examining table." Doc reached up, pressed a button overhead, and a small device that looked something like a giant neon office lamp dropped down. She took it, adjusted it to within a few inches of the patient's form, then sat back down again. "Any questions before we begin?"
"No, I guess not for now. Well, maybe one thing. How come I tripped so much and still could go forward in time? I mean, I thought if you were assimilated that couldn't happen. I never thought about it much at the time, but it just came to me."
"Fair question. It's because you weren't assimilated. The trip point is the halfway marker in assimilation, remember. After that time you become slightly more the new person than the old one. But you're still connected, still a time traveler, a voyeur, so to speak, until full assimilation takes place. Basically, if you can remember enough to ask a question like that one, you're still you as far as the devices and time are concerned, no matter what's going on in your head." The woman nodded. "O.K."
"Any more?"
"Lots, but I guess they can wait. What's this thing gonna do?" "Analyze all the people who make you up. Tell us, maybe, who you are in the here and now." "Sounds fair. Will I remember it?"
"Not consciously, but if you like, you can monitor the recorded results later. Ready?" "I guess so. You're the doctor."
Kahwalini flicked some switches on a small control panel, and the little machine glowed a dull purple and began to move, tracing the contours of the patient's body. "Feels good. Like a massage," the woman commented.

Its back-and-forth scan seemed to penetrate into every bit of her body, and she found herself becoming
relaxed and drifting off.
The doctor became busy now, attaching a spider's nest of probes not only to the head of the sleeper but to various parts of the body as well. Satisfied, she stepped back and triggered the process. "Who are you?"
The question confused her for a few moments, and memory channels opened to pinpoint references. At that point, each of the elements from the various human lives and personalities that made up the sum of her mind were distinct, although interactive, and revealed to the computer analyzer. The human mind, in fact, remained the most complex and amazing organic mechanism known. The human race had existed, and survived, not so much by physical as by mental adaptability: the ability to filter out or suppress; to add, file, and retrieve what was needed; to learn to cope with radical changes. Still, there were individual physiologi-cal limits on a specific brain, and the brain of the subject was not the brain of the others.
The information from all of those people she had been was there, but each trip point had caused the information to be reconfigured and refiled. All relevant data was integrated; all irrelevant data was relegated to those dark and seldom-used areas. Intelligence really was the ability to access those areas; the speed of access and the amount of data that could be combined and retrieved and assem-bled by that intelligence was the measure of how high it was. The dominant, or shell, personality, which the body matched, was that of Megan Clark, b. San Francisco, 1885, but since it was the dominant shell and not an assimilated, or totally integrated, personality it was only partly Megan's. Alfie, Neumann, and Sister Nobody were there, although only as data, not even anymore as memories. The original personality and life, that of Ron Moosic, was also there, as data of course—but, strangely, as an abstract as well. Intellectually, she understood her origins; as a practical matter, Megan could not actually remember being Moosic, or any man. He had the quality of a fantasy personality, someone she might occasionally imagine her-self being, but the imagining was entirely from that per-spective and rather unrealistic. In effect, he had become detached from her, an imaginary or ideal lover rather than as the person she once had been. This process had allowed the later personalities to alter her psyche as his strong will would not have done. The three people she had become were from three different times and cultures, but they were all very traditional ones, and the attitudes instilled had been traditional as well. Add to this the fact that all had been prostitutes from poor backgrounds dominated by powerful males, and the new personality was easier to understand.
In all cases she had been treated like an object in societies that at least winked at prostitution and generally condoned it, thereby leaving no real outlet, no hope of varying the life. To adjust, to survive, all three had ulti-mately accepted it after fighting the idea for a little while. Both Moosic's and Neumann's IQs had been exceptional. Megan's, however, was perhaps average if used to the full. She had, generally, a low sense of self-worth. She needed someone to be over her, to make most of her decisions, to constantly reinforce her weak ego and tell her she was worthwhile. The fact that men would pay money for what pleasures she could give gave her a con-crete sense of security, the only security she had. The fact that someone else got the money was actually better for her; she only felt secure when someone else was providing things.
The key to it was Moosic's surrender, his depression when faced with Eric once more. He had lost hope and, therefore, the will to live. In the absence of any re-placement values from Sister Nobody, the Ismet personal-ity had dominated, and time had complied by providing similar situations. Time had finally killed Ron Moosic.
But, still, there was a spark there. This woman would cope with whatever was thrown at her, with no reserva-tions as to how or why. She was insecure and submissive, but she was a survivor, and her dream was to be swept off her feet by a strong, dominant man. Doc Kahwalini frowned. The subject, she reflected, had come out exactly as planned. The next few days were used to get her settled in and to answer some of her questions. She also spent a little time with some learning machines they had, trying to improve her vocabulary and pronunciation. She knew and under-stood the word "assimilation," for example, but it never seemed to come forward when she needed it, and when it was forced, she constantly mispronounced it. It irritated her, particularly because the word was there.
More unsettling was her almost incidental discovery that she couldn't read or write. Doc was sympathetic. "It happens. It's a skill, and skills are sometimes lost in this process. You can re-learn it—it's back in there, someplace in your mind—but it'll take time. I wouldn't worry about it now, though. Come on

with me now. You've forgotten a lot, and might forget more. It depends on what happens from here on out.
The longer you are the way you are, the more of the past you'll lose and the more of the new 'you' will dominate."
"Where are we going?"
"Outside. I want some fresh fruit."
She stopped. "I thought—I remember, I think, that it's dangerous out there." "Not unless you spend years out in it. You once did, and you're still here." She shook her head. "That's kind of a dream." When the doorway slid back and they stepped out, it was clear that the dream was less so than she'd thought. The groves of trees, the jungle's edge, the distant pound-ing of the surf. . . . Doc turned to her and nodded. "I didn't know any other way to break it to you." "But—this is the old place, isn't it?"
"The old place—yes, I guess it would be." Her mouth dropped, and she shivered slightly in the tropical sun. "Then—this isn't later, it's earlier. Then that belt was set to bring me back before. Oh, Jesus! That means. ..."
"Yes," said Kahwalini softly. "You are Dawn." She stared at herself in the full-length mirror. She should have known, known right from the first time she'd looked at herself, she thought sourly. But, then, Ron had never looked at Dawn in the same way as she looked at herself.
The idea scared her; it also made her mad. For her to be Dawn, then, the computer—the all-seeing, all-knowing damnable computer—had to know it right from the start, when it sent Ron uptime with a belt that homed to this point in time instead of a later one. The damned thing had planned it, planned it all out. It knew in advance all that was going to happen, even the capture by Eric. It knew and did nothing, except to arrange for things to come out right. It was, Doc explained, in the nature of time loops. "The problem is, only the leading edge is new," she explained. "All else was new once, when it was the leading edge, but it's already happened. Back here, near the dawn of time, the computer, anchored both here and on the edge, can monitor what happens and evaluate any changes." "But why is it happening now!" Dawn asked her. "I mean, it's already happened, right?" "No, not exactly. Just remember that any loop, once initiated, is assumed by time to have been completed. The record is there. The computer can then read it, evaluate it, and then accept it, change it, or reverse it, depending on the outcome."
"And what say do I have in this? What if I decide not to go along with this whole thing?" "Then you will still exist, cut off absolutely from the time stream, a total nightside. Ron Moosic will die in the attack, and all links to you will be severed. Dawn will exist only as her least common denominator, devoid of the knowledge, strength, and understanding she—you—still draw from him. As such, you will be no further use to us. We will shift you uptime, where assimilation will be instantaneous." She gulped and sat down. Her fury at being so manipu-lated was tempered somewhat by the idea of fulfilling, living, what had been a fantasy. Still, there was something bizarre in it all, sort of the ultimate in masturbation.
"And if I . . . go through with it?"
"Then we will come for you at the proper time. We know where and when you'll be." "But—it's not fair! All that time, all that. . . . Hey! This can't be real! I can't have children!" "Megan can't, but Megan's a product of 1905. Dawn is a synthesis, a nightsided person." "But it's not fair! I'll lose him forever! And come out old and sick!" "We can fix what goes wrong, either by medicine or through tripping. You know that. As for losing him—well, that's all in the way you look at it, isn't it? You'll have a longer time together than many people have."
"But—I'll know."
"Time and mind have a way of dealing with that. Complete your loop, and give yourself a purpose and a future. We are in the long process of undoing what has been done. It'll save a lot of lives. Isn't that worth it?"
She shook her head in bewilderment. "I don't know. I really don't. But, tell me, how can you people be so cold? What gives you the right to do this?"

Doc couldn't address what she herself doubted, but she could answer the second question. "We have the
machine, the knowledge, and the skill to do it. So does the enemy. That last makes the rest irrelevant.'' Ron Moosic arrived the next day, but she did not see him immediately. She wasn't certain how she was going to handle this, or if she could. As long as he remained out of sight, it was a problem postponed, and she spent time out by the sea and the waterfall, just thinking and trying to sort it out. She almost ran into him the next day in the lounge, but kept out of sight, watching him while remaining unobserved. The man she saw was a shock, the embodiment of the man she saw in her dreams and fantasies, but he neither looked nor acted quite like she expected. Her mind tried to grasp it, tried to remember this moment, but she found it impossi-ble to bring it forward. All of her that was Ron Moosic seemed to recede into a distant haze.
That day they issued her a communicator and a time belt. "Remember," Lind warned, "we're going to be attacked."
She nodded and took it, almost without thinking. On the third day she checked out the lounge and went down there for a few moments, hoping to catch Kahwalini in an off moment. She feared going back to Doc's lair; he was there. Herb was over in a corner playing computerized back-gammon. He looked up and waved to her, then went back to his game.
Almost as soon as she'd sat down, he came in, talking to Doc. She felt petrified, but there was nowhere to hide, so she just sat there and hoped he wouldn't notice. Of course, he did, and came over. "Hi! I finally get the chance to say thanks for saving my life," he said cheerfully, sitting down in a chair opposite hers. "How's that for a good opening line?" She smiled, but was inwardly terrified. This is it! she realized, and in that moment had absolutely no ability to recall anything at all of this time. Her nervousness, and her mind, had blocked it out. What did he mean about saving his life, though? It puzzled her, but then cheered her a bit. She had, hadn't she? And she hadn't done that, yet. There was still time, and perhaps a future, yet to come. She sighed. "I'm sorry for not being a little more hospitable. I'm afraid I've got a load on my mind and a lot of hard decisions to make. I've just had a nasty personal shock." "Try being crucified," he suggested.
The line seemed almost hilarious. "I have. It's not very nice. Not much has been nice lately." He shrugged. "I don't want to intrude on what's none of my business." She gave up. He was so nice and attractive he was turning her on. The longer the discussion, the less she could relate to him other than the same way she would with an attractive stranger. "No, no. Stay, please. I'm still a little new at this myself, and it's pretty hard to get used to. As soon as you've found out everything, you find you don't understand anything at all. This whole business of time is the craziest thing you can think of. . . ."
The conversation went on for some time, and she began to enjoy it and let it flow, concentrating on her lessons in vocabulary and diction to make him take her for a more educated woman than she was, and deferring the compli-cated stuff to Herb, who eventually joined the conversation. She liked Ron, but could not imagine ever being him. It wasn't the way she thought it would be at all. "Um, I see you two have met," Herb was saying. Moosic looked over at her. "I still don't know your name." A little thrill went through her, and she had an urge to say Agnes or Sarah or even Megan, just to throw some-thing of her own into it, but she did not. She would go along, because these people owned her, and that's what they expected her to do.
"When you've nightsided past your trip point, you may as well pick any name," she told him. "I call myself Dawn, because it's a new start and I kind of like the sound of it. I have lots of other names, but they don't mean nothing to me anymore." The moment she said the name, it became hers. It felt right and sounded right. She was Dawn Moosic, destined to be so, and it did not seem bad at all. Over the next few weeks they grew inseparable. Al-though the whole thing continued to trouble her, the fact was that he was simply the most wonderful man she'd ever known, and she wanted him, wanted him desperately. She could hardly wait for an opening, but he was still slightly aloof, slightly hesitant. She took him out to the waterfall, and they talked, and she showed him the belt and how it operated. It seemed so natural, so nice.
Suddenly there came the sound of tremendous explosions, and her heart skipped a beat. He jumped up and began to run back towards the base; she followed right behind. They stopped at the edge of the jungle, which still offered concealment, and both saw immediately that there was no way to get through the attackers to the entrance. The Earthsiders were building, and had

almost completed, their weapon. Ron looked at her in alarm. "We have to do something!"
Until this moment she'd reserved the option of cancel-ing out, of telling him the truth, but now she realized that it had gone too far. It was going to happen, and nothing whatsoever could prevent it now except their capture or deaths, and that she did not intend. "What do you suggest? We can't get through that mob—they'll kill us. We can't get to that weapon, whatever it is. It'd be suicide. And neither of us is armed."
They watched in frustration, enforced observers. "Why don't they defend themselves?" he muttered. "Surely they must have been prepared for this." He paused a moment. "Your time belt! We could use it to go back just a little and warn them!"
She shook her head. "Won't work. Just like any other time, you can't be in two places at once. Besides—they were warned. The computer refused to let them take any action." "Huh? Why!"
"It's part of a nightside time loop. In time, causes can precede events, but the events must be allowed to come about or much worse will happen. God knows, I don't pretend to understand it. I—I just accept what must be now."
He looked at her strangely, then back at the scene, which was getting worse. The device was completed now and powered up, and what was clearly a barrel or projector was aimed directly at the base. The sound of an air horn caused the attack from the gargoyles to be broken off, and they retreated a respectful distance. Then the weapon was brought into play, shooting a continuous beam of what seemed almost liquid blue energy at the complex. The energy struck and seemed to flow over the entirety of the building. There was a crackling sound near them, and Moosic looked over to see tiny fields of electricity dancing around Dawn's time belt. The small red displays blinked on and off erratically. "The time belt!" he almost shouted, in no danger with the din of the attack masking them. "It's shorting out!" For a moment it flashed into her mind, all of it, and she froze, not certain just what to do. He was shouting, and suddenly she made her decision. She wanted him, wanted it, no matter what the final cost. She picked up the microphone and dialed the base frequency. "Dawn to Base—we are caught outside and unarmed. Advise!"
There was a crackling sound, and then a tinny voice responded. "Use the belt and get out now! It's your only chance. . . ." And then it went dead. She turned and looked at him and tears welled up inside her, but refused to come out.
"Here! Let's open the belt wide so it goes around both of us. It'll be tight, but I think we can manage," she said.
"You mean use it now?"
"While we still can. The base may fall or short out any minute!" The belt was never intended for two people and was an extremely tight fit, but they seemed to make it as she'd predicted. More electricity danced, and she had trouble making the adjustments on the belt. Everything blacked out and they were falling, but ever so briefly. Then all exploded again into reality, but this time into darkness.
The belt continued to sputter. They got it off as quickly as possible and it fell to the ground, then lit up the area with a display of dancing sparks.
"Where'd we go?" he asked her.
"Nowhere. There wasn't time. I just tapped the advance for a decade. We're still on the island, ten years in the future of the attack. That should be safe enough. I didn't dare try any long jump. What if the power failed? And if we did make it, we'd be assimilated." He nodded. The belt continued to crackle, then made a single electronic whine which slowly faded and died. They were again in darkness. There were no dancing sparks, no red readouts on the belt. "Oh, Jesus!" he breathed, half cursing and half praying. "The power's gone out!" She stared down at the blackness. "Or the belt's O.K., but no longer connected to a power source. I—I think they shorted out the base."
It was done! Now, suddenly, she felt completely drained, and things seemed to snap inside her mind. She
found herself crying uncontrollably, and he tried to comfort her as best he could, misunderstanding the cause.
Finally, she had cried herself out, and drifted into a strange and very deep sleep. When she awoke, she felt amazingly good, with no sense of trouble and only a sense of adventure. She watched him poking at the remains of the base foundation and checking the growths, and all she could think was, I am his and he is mine.
He saw her lying there, staring at him, then came over. "Well, in one way it's not so bad. Almost the

Garden of Eden, you might say. We won't starve, that's for sure, and the stream is a secure water supply.
From the looks of the sun and the jungle I'd say this place has two climates, hot and hotter. Of course, there are no doctors, no dentists, no nails or hammers or saws. Nothing but the clothes on our backs, such as they are."
He's right, she decided. He is Adam and I am Eve.
"These flimsy things aren't going to last long out here," she noted. She kicked off her boots and started to remove her clothes.
"Going natural, huh?"
"You should, too," she told him. "We won't have these forever, so we better get our skin and feet toughened up. We might figure out how to rig lean-tos and maybe even huts, eventually, but there's nothing I've seen on this island that can be used to make clothes or shoes. I'll use these, as long as they last, when we explore the island, but not otherwise. There's no use." "You've got a point," he admitted and stripped as well. They stood up and looked at each other. "You know," he said, "we really are Adam and Eve." He went over to her and hugged her. "You're turning on," she noted softly.
"Oh? I hadn't noticed." He grew suddenly serious. "You know we may be here for the rest of our lives." "However long they may be," she replied. "I'm mak-ing a personal decision right here and now. I'm not going to think about time at all. Not now, not unless I have to. There's nothing else except now. There's nobody else but us. There's no place else but here." And she meant it. "That's fair enough," he agreed. "Maybe it all worked out for the best. Maybe this is the place for nightsiders. Let's make the most of it." And, with that, they kissed, and the kiss turned into what she had wanted from the start.
He was very, very good. And so was she.
At first, during their explorations of the island, he re-ferred to the past and tried to get her to tell a little about her own, but that soon stopped. She had literally blocked the past from her mind and allowed her emotions full rule. He certainly was falling in love with her, and she wor-shipped him. Her whole life, the center of her universe, was him.
Eventually, of course, the playtime ended, and she grew pregnant. She was delighted, not fearful, of the prospect, since deep down, she knew it would come out all right. About the only thing she hadn't figured on was just how much outright terrible pain was involved in having the kid.
They named him Joseph, after Moosic's father. They didn't roam so much after he was born, but set up housekeeping near the groves. With the birth of Ginny she became, in fact, a prehistoric homebody. She loved him and she loved the children and she loved having his children, no matter what the discomfort. It was, she felt, what she was meant to do. It was a busy time, and it was enough.
As she had Sarah, then Cathy, then Mark, she changed still more, but it was not something she noticed. Ron was getting old and his hair was turning white, but it was a gradual thing and not something either really paid any attention to. For her part, the plentiful fruits, vegetables, and the fish Ron brought from ocean traps caused her to gain more weight, and made her less and less ambitious about going very far from her tiny Eden-like world.
The fat and the fact that over the years her hair had grown in scraggly fashion down past her ass didn't bother her, but her declining vision did. By the time Joseph's voice had lowered and Ginny had experienced her First period, she was effectively blind. Of course, the children were doing much of the work now, such as it was, under their father's supervision, and the home itself was so fixed that she could navigate it and even do some cooking and cleaning without really having to see at all. She knew, though, that Joseph and Ginny were experimenting with each other, and it bothered her, although there seemed little to do or say about it. It was, after all, inevitable.
And then, finally, came the day of the storm when Joseph had not returned, and she'd nagged Ron until he'd gone out to look for the young man. And in a little more time Joseph ran back, screaming and crying, shouting that he'd killed his father.
It took much comforting as the storm blew in and washed by the island. She felt sad in one way that it was over now, for from the depths of her mind came almost instant understanding of the moment, an understanding she could not convey to the children—particularly the guilt-ridden Joseph. "You didn't kill him," she soothed. "You just sent him away to a different place." "Then when will he be back?"

"He—he won't be back."
" 'Cause he's dead!"
"No, because they won't let him come back—again." "Why?"
"I guess you'll have to ask them. They'll come for us soon." "I don't want them here! Not if they took Dad!" The other children nodded in agreement. "That's all right. It's for the best. You'll have to grow up now, kids. I'm afraid it's time." They came for them only two days after the storm let up. Three of them came, anyway—Doc and Chung Lind and Herb, the three who'd been closest to them. The children were hostile, and Doc, in particular, was taken aback by their accusations that the Outworlders had taken their father from them. It was particularly tough because it was true. They used the belts to get back to the new base location. The basic medical problems could be taken care of, includ-ing her two cancerous growths. One of them, benign but still growing, was the reason why she believed herself pregnant once more. In truth, it would have pre-vented any such happening. The Outworlders, it seemed, had a cure for cancer and much else. The children, surprisingly, were in good shape, although Ginny, Sarah, and Mark were decidedly overweight. They all had, to Doc's satisfaction, a natural extra skin layer with mild pigmentation that absorbed and diluted the most harmful radiation. The mutation did not seem natural, and was not. Doc had been unable to treat the adults for such protection, but she had been able to add the genetic instruc-tions on both sides should children develop. The computer, of course, had provided the information and done the actual work.
From a civilization whose builders could fly through sand, stand crushing pressures and horrible heat, and take oxygen from the rocks, such a minor thing was child's play. The children never completely lost their feelings of hostility for the team, but concern for their mother and the wonders of the base soon diverted their minds. Rather quickly they were picking up a modern education, although, so far, it had been next to impossible to get them to wear any clothes at all. Ginny, however, more than appreciated the tiny absorbent material, vaginally inserted, that took away much of the problem of the monthly period. Doc had some pills that did away with the cramps and headaches. Doc could fix almost everything that was wrong with Dawn, but the eyes defeated her. "I'm afraid you'll need a full eye transplant, which is not only tricky but requires a perfect match," she told her. "Either that, or you'll have to trip."
"I don't want to trip—not yet," Dawn responded. "The children are having a tough enough time getting over the loss of their father. And that transplant you talk about sounds like a pretty chancy thing." "It is, unless you went to the edge and had them grow a perfect pair and implant them with their equipment and facilities. The trouble is, not much is left up there that would be tolerable to normal humans. They will have to go, though. There are growths behind them that threaten the brain itself, and it's too risky to use my ray surgery on it."
Even though she had only a sense of light and dark and vague shapes, the prospect of that frightened her. "I—1 don't want to lose them."
"Don't worry. First, we can replace them with inert copies fabricated here. You'll look more normal than the current pair makes you look now. Then we'll use a little device that I looked up in the computer banks. It's being worked on now. It'll allow you some vision, particularly in dim light." That excited her. "You mean I might be able to see the kids? Actually see them as they are now?" "That's about it."
Dawn started to cry softly. "They're what I have—now." The operation was, from Doc's point of view, a simple one, and with her futuristic medical equipment and computer-guided and computer-operated surgical kit, it was not even all that painful. In fact, Dawn had not realized how much pain she'd been living with until it was all done and the relief swept through her. She was already used to being blind, and now, during the healing period, she memorized every inch of the place. She spent most of the time Doc would allow with the children, of course, who were learning at a rapid pace, thanks to the teaching machines and computer-guided instruction. They had the best of both worlds, the most advanced technology together with a whole new wilder-ness to play in and explore

outside.
Members of the team came and went on various mysteri-ous missions, but Doc remained behind, as she did on all but the most extraordinary of occasions. They did not want to risk her outstanding medical skills unless they were needed uptime.
She lost weight, too, and felt better, although she still tipped Doc's scales at better than ninety-seven kilograms— well over two hundred pounds for her five-foot four-inch frame. It was months before the bandages could come off, but still more time before they could try Doc's gadget. The kids approved her new look; even the eyes, they assured her, were big, warm, and natural. Her hair had been cut very short for the operation, and she kept it that way, knowing it was easy to care for. She had been gone almost fourteen years, not the ten or twelve Ron had estimated, and was physically thirty-four. Now, after a lot of skilled work with the best medical technology, she was beginning to look more her own age, and feel it, too.
Finally came the day when they tried out the seeing eye device. It resembled nothing so much as a pair of tight-fitting goggles, but there was a lot of microcircuitry and even a small computer and power pack in it. It took in the scene and transmitters broadcast it in code to the optic nerves, fooling them into believing that they were getting correct information from real eyes. It had its limitations. Because the thing was basically an infrared device, the images transmitted were mostly in black and white, or soft gray-browns and yellows, as Dawn saw it. Images were sharp and clear at night or in a room with muted lighting, but they faded as the light source was raised. In a brightly lit room it was barely adequate; in full daylight, or in the face of a searchlight beam or fire, it was useless and even a little painful. It also had an effective range of about a hundred yards, with little or no peripheral vision. Worse, it could be worn only for a hour or so a day. The power supply was quite limited and, when run down, it caused all sorts of random impulses to be sent to the brain instead. Still, it was sight—real sight. Wearing the goggles, she could see again, could see the kids as they were now for the first time. To Dawn, it was a miracle. Doc seemed almost apologetic about its limitations. "It was developed late in the nineteen-eighties," she told Dawn. "This model was actually in production in a lim-ited way, but very expensive, early in the nineties. Then they came up with the ability to organically grow matched eyes for specific patients, and all work on perfecting this was dropped. A pity. The people who would appreciate it the most were the elderly who couldn't have transplants and those who, for one reason or another, couldn't stand the surgery to begin with. It's even more frustrating be-cause the technology to produce eyes for you better than new is available—up at the edge. But it takes time to grow them, and a lot of equipment and skill. The Earthsiders aren't likely to do it for you, and the Outworlders are more likely to redo the whole you in ways you never even thought of."
She nodded. "It's enough—for now."
"You realize," Doc added, "that the reason they never gave us the capability was because we don't need it. We can regulate a trip point and take a different cure." Dawn sighed. "Yes, I know. And that's what you expect me to do." She paused a moment. "But—if I do, then I won't be their mother anymore. Oh, I'll know, but how do you explain it to them!" "I think," Doc said, "that it's time to call a meeting." Chung Lind, as squad leader, was chairman of the base general committee. Herb, as his exec, was also on it, and Doc, the most permanent of the residents, was included, too. This trio was absolute in their decisions, although, of course, those for whom they worked severely limited their options. The huge Oriental leader was serious, as usual, but so was the usually light and airy Herb. Doc was grim. Dawn didn't have to see them to know that. "Doc has called this committee into session, but it had to be done anyway, as we are running out of option time from the computer and its controllers on the edge," Lind began. "Doc has put this off many times, and we have gone along, but things must come to a head—and soon. Do you understand what this is all about. Dawn?"
She nodded. "I think so. You're going to decide the fate of me and my children." "In a manner of speaking, yes, although the ultimate choice will be yours. I'm afraid it's the same sort of thing we face here all the time. Not a lack of choices, but a lack of good ones. Doc?" "I finally called this meeting, after fighting it for months, because something happened to make me realize that I was being, in my own way, as cruel as the other choices, although I thought of it as kindness. I

wanted to give the kids some adjustment time, and a leg up on joining a very strange world, and, I admit, we
wanted to give you some time as well. I think we all agreed we owed it to you. Now, however, I realize we may have gone too far."
"I appreciate the gesture," Dawn responded, "but what is the crisis? You and I both know that we can fix things uptime now or later."
"In a sense, that's true," Doc agreed, "but relative time moves on when we are in phase, as we are here. The war goes on, and it is increasingly brutal and ugly. Have you ever wondered what most of us are doing here?"
"Many times," she admitted.
"You may have been told, or maybe not, that the Earthside leaders have a fall-back position here in the Safe Zone. When the ultimate defeat comes, they will escape to that base, sealing themselves off by detonating the other fifteen thousand nuclear weapons stockpiled from the old days. They will destroy the Earth and every living thing on it."
"Eric told me that. He gave it as his reason for fighting on their side." "Dawn," Herb put in, "they're in pretty sad shape. The truth is, the Outworlders could win very quickly. They've had the ability to do it for years. The only reason they don't is that cache of nuclear weapons. They are not out to commit genocide on the people of Earth, believe me. But they have to continue the war, at a reduced level, to keep the pressure on. If they stopped, perhaps for as little as a year or two, it's possible that Earth could regroup. They have spaceships with terrible weapons hid-den in nearly impregnable bunkers far underground, but they have no way to launch them without access to surface installations. They are mother ships for hordes of fighters that can be launched only from space. We can keep them down there by incessant attack, but that's it. If we let up, they can launch. They still can't win, but they might just wind up destroying both sides."
She still didn't see where this was going. "So, you see, we're fighting a bloody and terrible holding action. The more destruction and death it spreads, the more terrible it is. The only way we can take them out, though, is to neutralize those nuclear bombs. To locate and deactivate or destroy every one of them. That's our job." "It can be quite subtle," Lind added. "Great caverns used for this purpose can be rendered unusable in earlier centuries, with no disruptions to humans. Even such things as soil and rain balances in certain areas can be altered so that what's there is subjected to corrosion. Trace elements made in future labs can be added to areas so that communi-cations on the firing bands are jumbled. A tiny flaw, subtly introduced in the program used to create the weapons' microprocessors, can backfire on them over time, although it will test out in the short run."
There was enough of Moosic and the Sergeant still in there that she did understand, although the scope of the project was fantastic.
"You see now," Herb said, "that we're in a hell of a fix. We're not cold and immoral beings, sitting back here taking blind orders from a computer which gets its orders from nonhuman things up front. We're trying to save the human race from extinction, here on Earth as well as what it's become out there in space. Time's running out, as crazy as that sounds. There is a level of battle which will cause Earthside to collapse even without the final push, and that's approaching. Because we work in absolute time when we're in phase—relative time is a misnomer, mean-ing that we are related to the edge—a year here for us advances the edge a year as well. Worse, the assassination of Karl Marx accelerated that critical point." "So Eric did them far more harm than good," she commented. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. We think their plan is simple. We think they hope to buy absolute time by tracing us back and knocking this complex out of commission," Lind told her. "But—they already tried that, and it failed!" "They're not so sure it did," Lind told her. "The attack was part of the loop that is still being worked out. They have yet to steal one of our belts, which is why, once the attack was known, we preset the homing key to bring anyone back to the old location. It would match with what they know of the geography around the complex, including what they got from you. We escaped for the same reason that we can't lose up front—we have far more power available to us than they do. It's more efficient, better managed, and doesn't need to be diverted to defense." "The trouble is," Herb added, "we still have years to work on the project. The number of weapons is just plain enormous, and we must make certain we neutralize as many as possible, in all the countries that had and made them. And, even with all the power we have, we are about at the maximum number of people for unrestricted and pinpoint time travel, particularly with the gear we must occasionally move. We need the time, but we have less than we need under optimum requirements. At least we need that much, to do what

we can."
She was more practical than that. "What's this have to do with me?" "First, we must undo the loop that made you. Karl Marx must not die in Trier. Ideally, however, Neumann must still escape to erase any chance of things going wrong. That will be tricky. To create Neumann, Alfie must be rescued. Loops are best undone in the reverse order that they were done, and very carefully. We want to create no more loops and ripples." "Why not just prevent the killing of Marx in London, then?" she wanted to know. "I mean, that's a ripple." "But it's a ripple in our favor," Lind told her. "It has no major effects, but as a martyrdom it makes Earthside's job of changing the past as Moosic knew it even harder. You'll have to trust us on that one, but that's why Eric and the rest had to go back to Trier. Their ripple had worked against them, so they had to undo it and tilt the scale the other way." She sighed. "I never really understood it all before, and I'm having more trouble now." "Time is a complex science. We still don't completely understand all of the things that pop up from dealing with and changing it," Doc said sympathetically. "Just when even we think we have it cold, some wild card comes up and smacks us in the face, telling us that we aren't so smart after all." She shook her head in confusion. She really didn't want to hear anything more, except what it all had to do with her and the kids—now. "So? You're telling me I'm no longer welcome? That we're in the way?" "In a sense," Herb replied, "but don't take that unkindly. You are one of the innocents who always gets caught up in somebody else's war. We need you, of course, to help undo the loops and reconcile the facts. We expect Trier to be holy hell, because they'll expect it and have some unknown defenses set up for us. Worse, only four of us are able to make the trip at all, for reasons you probably understand." That much she did. The rest probably would wind up in far corners of the world, or be instantly assimilated. "Go on."
"If Trier is successfully reversed, then you must go and free Alfie. That is as much for your sake as anything, but it helps the symmetry, or so the computer says." She sighed. "And once all that is done? What then?" "Then," said Lind, "we will attempt to prevent the very attack that got you into this. In the process, if we are lucky and it all works just right, we have a chance of trapping Eric Benoni." That was the one prospect she found attractive in it all, but she had a nervous thought. "But—if it's prevented, then what happens to me? None of this will have happened. You once told me I'd be a little nothing if it all didn't work out, Doc. Were you lying to me?" "No," she responded, "not really. If the loop had been broken instead of reconciled, yes. But we are putting things back, more or less, the way they were. If the loop is completed, then it happened. There's just no sign of memory, except ours, to say it did. You will exist because it did happen. And so will the kids." She didn't know quite what to believe, or whom. She'd been used and lied to so damned often it was hard to believe anything. She was, however, always practical. There was really nothing she could do about it anyway, and they were calling the shots. "And after that? What happens to me and the kids?" The three squad members exchanged glances. Finally, Doc spoke. "It's for the sake of the children I'm pressing this now, Dawn. You see, Ginny is pregnant—by Joseph." Even though she'd feared such a thing, the news shocked and stunned her. "It's no good, Dawn, don't you see?" Doc continued, feeling awful as she said what she had to say. "This is no place and no life for them. Any of them." Dawn's gut reaction was frustration that her fake eyes, so realistic in all other respects, could not cry. "But where will they go?"
"Uptime," Doc told her. "It's the only way for them to gain the knowledge, the culture, everything that they'll need. They're virgins to time travel, really, so it will be fairly easy to establish them as important people, maybe educated people, not the kind of random jumpers like you became." "It's a matter of figuring out in advance the spot time will most conveniently put you, and putting you there at exactly the right spot in space and time," Herb explained. "And leave them there, with no chance to make a mark?" She was almost hysterical at the idea. "No!" Doc responded firmly. "Not unless they choose it. Once they have enough lives, enough experience, to make intelligent choices for themselves, they can choose any one of the ones they've been to live as or they can go all the way forward to the leading edge as only edge and nightside people can. Considering the circumstances, there is no other choice." "Just drop us back at the island! Just go away and leave us alone! You said they were adapted!" "But you aren't," Doc reminded her. "And what kind of a life would that be? You said yourself that in assimila-tion they'd have no chance to make a mark, and that's true. But what kind of a life would you

condemn them to? You're in no condition to go back, to give them any guidance. They'd become incestuous
primitives, children with no future. If we did what you say, it would be better, in my opinion, if they had never lived at all!"
There. It was said, and it was hard, but there it was. Dawn took several minutes to get hold of herself, to try to control her emotions. Finally, she managed, "And me? Where do I fit in all this?"
"Your bond to the kids is strong. Stronger, I think, than their bond to you, as bad as that sounds," Doc replied. "You have the same choices, although, in the case of the assimilation, they're more limited. You've established a pattern which time finds easiest to continue. So you can come back here and go to the edge with them, or you can pick a person and place and return there." She swallowed. "What you're telling me is that I can be a whore in any time and place I want." Doc was grim. "Yes. Except on the edge." "I wouldn't be permitted to stay—human—up there, isn't that right?" "Most likely not," Lind confirmed. "They just no longer have the facilities for it. I can't tell you whether it's good or bad becoming one of them, and that's honest. I have trouble even imagining what they're like, let alone being one, even though I've been hundreds of human beings. But I like to think that a side, any side, in a war that tries to save as many lives as possible has to be better than one that's going to blow up its own people in a snit at losing."
There was silence for a while. Finally, Doc asked gently, "What do you say, Dawn? Do we close off the loop?"
"Can I . . . talk this over with the children before answering?" Lind looked at Doc and then at Herb. No words were exchanged, but their thoughts were easy for him to read. There was no reason to put it off any longer, for the longer it was put off, the harder it would ever be to get the job done—and people were needlessly suffering. They didn't like the situation any more than Dawn did, and they didn't like the choices, either, choices that, eventually, they them-selves might have to face, for the war, inevitably, would end. "We'll give you forty-eight hours," Lind told her. "Time is running out." RIDING THE LOOP
She had her showdown with Ginny, and it only told her that Doc had been right, as usual. "You shouldn't have the baby."
"Why? What's wrong with what I did? You and Daddy did it all the time!" "But that was different!"
"How!"
How, indeed, did you explain such things to one raised as Ginny had been? They went around and around with it, but got nowhere. Finally, Dawn gave up, recognizing defeat. Doc and the others would have to deal with it, by force if necessary, but probably just by giving them the uptime experience they desperately needed.
They, all the children, even young Mark, would have to make their own decisions on their futures. She could not and would not do it for them.
Finally, during a walk outside, she told them she had to leave them. "Like Daddy?" little Sarah asked worriedly. "No, not like Daddy. I have to work for them now. I have to pay them back for all they've done for us." And to us, she added silently.
"I don't like them," Joseph said flatly. "They took Dad away." "No, no! You must never think like that! Your father was a fighter in their fight, just like I was. Fighters sometimes don't come back. Let them show you what uptime is like and what it's like to live in it. Then maybe you'll understand."
"Are you not gonna come back, too, Mommie?" Cathy asked. "I hope I am," she told them sincerely, "but I don't know. There are some very bad people on the other side and they've done some very bad things. I have to try and stop them, try to undo some of the bad they've done. I—your father and I—sort of accidentally helped the bad things happen. I have to put it right."

"Why?" asked Mark.
"Well, if you know something bad's going to happen, and you can do something about it and don't, then you're just as bad as the ones who did it. You let it happen when it didn't have to." That more or less went over. At least she and Ron had taught some moral lessons, although she was beginning to see where they'd fallen down on the job in some respects. It was tough to leave them, but she really had no choice. Not only did the moral lesson make sense, but, disregard-ing the morals of the thing, she really had no choice. In every sense of the word, they held her and the children hostage.
The plan that was worked out was both direct and clever, although they knew that there would have to be elements of improvisation. As Lind had warned, they would expect an attempt at reversal and would have some nasty surprise waiting.
She was both surprised and delighted to find that Herb could go, but the other three were team members she knew only slightly, despite the long time at the base. Nikita she knew slightly; the small, weasel-like man was not the friendly type, but he had been civil to both her and the kids. Lucia was a tough but tiny woman who looked like a born gymnast. Her dark brown skin and wooly hair be-spoke a central African origin, but, of course, it was difficult to determine anyone's true origins around here. The fourth member was Faouma, whose name sounded vaguely Arabic but who was an enormous, Nordic-looking woman, fully six-three or better. She had a hard, perma-nently mean and nasty expression, and was all business.
"This has been mapped out so that each of you knows your part in the plot. The important thing is to do your assignment. Only when it's over should you move to cover someone else. Dawn, Lucia, and I have specific things to do; Faouma and Nikita will assist as needed. Dawn? You understand the weapon?" She nodded. "I've test-fired it, but with the kind of spray it gives I couldn't miss even without the goggles." "Good. Remember your time schedules. It's critical. Jump only to save your own life before we're all out of there. Understand?"
"We're ready," responded Faouma. "Let's do it." Just in case, all belts were set to return to an individu-ally specified date when none of them had been in the Safe Zone in the old time and location. To return to where they were supposed to be, they would have to perform an extra setting, known only to them, on the time and location board before pressing home. There was a certain order to it, because of relative time. Dawn and Nikita had to go first, for her initial action was crucial to the rest. Although they might miss Dawn in the scan, in the time it would take them to do their job and work down to the square, they might well be spotted by the opposition, which might then adjust its game plan.
Dawn and Nikita stood there, and on Herb's count pressed their time controllers. Both "fell" uptime. Dawn had half expected to become Neumann when they started with this, a personality and existence she barely remembered at all, but no longer. Neumann was Ron; she was Dawn, a nightsider. The same person could not exist in the same time period at the same time, but at this stage they were two different people entirely.
As soon as she felt solid ground and the sensations of time travel had ceased, she pulled down her goggles. At night, in this darkened position along the road, she had better vision than Nikita. She had started her watch with the others, but now could read it. It read 01:43. Nikita faded into the neighborhood, giving her backup and cover. She checked the weapon, very much like a rifle, although weighing only ounces and feeling like a child's toy. All the settings had been perfect, but everything would be for nothing if they had made one mistake and if Marx was not, in fact, taking this route to his assignation in the square. If not, they would have to jump back no later than 01:50 and a new plan would have to be improvised. She crouched there in the darkness, watching the road and trying to avoid the occasional oil lamps and torch lighting that smudged her vision. She checked her watch. 01:46. She began to worry that he wouldn't come.
The worst part was, the place did not look or feel familiar. She was only vaguely aware of who Karl Marx was, and couldn't even remember the name of the town they were in, although she'd studied its street maps with Herb. She had, she realized, come even farther than she thought down the road to individuality, and, oddly, it pleased her.
01:48 on the watch did not.
Suddenly, far off, she heard the sound of someone walking, heels hitting the brick walk. She tensed, ready to do the job. She was going to save a man's life, she knew, even if she no longer recalled or understood who or what he'd been.
The strange footsteps grew closer, and she could clearly see now that it was a young man with a beard,

dressed in a funny, old-fashioned suit. She expected, when she saw him, to know him instantly, but found
that he looked no more familiar than the photo Herb had shown them. Still, if Herb's photos were right, this was indeed Karl Marx.
He was walking very slowly, almost hesitatingly, and his manner seemed to indicate a great deal of indecision. Clearly, Marx was uncertain as to whether or not this was a smart thing to do. He stopped near her, and she froze, fearing that he'd seen her. But the stop was to suppress a yawn as best he could, rub his eyes a bit, then continue on.
She let him get about five yards beyond her position, then rose silently and, raising the rifle, pulled the trigger.
There was a feeling in the rifle like a vibrator had been turned on for a brief moment, and her vision was momen-tarily wiped out by a sparkling ray of light. She heard a man cry out softly, once, and then the sound of a body falling.
Nikita was by her in an instant. "Just fine," he whispered. "He's out for a half-hour, won't know what hit him, and he'll think he tripped and fell. You all right?" She nodded. "Knocked out my glasses for a minute. It's coming back now." "O.K. Help me roll him over into the grass here, so anybody coming by won't see him right away." They did it, although the man was quite heavy. Marx, she was relieved to see, was breathing, but in his tumble to the pavement he'd struck his head, and there was an ugly, if superficial, gash on his right forehead. "You want to keep safety watch here instead of me?" the little man asked her. "It's O.K. if you do. I don't mind."
"No, we'll go as planned," she told him. "I'll be all right." And, with that, she left him and went on down the walk toward the town.
It was an eerie wait, back in the shadows of an alleyway looking on the square. All was silence, and there was no movement except for those shadows and the noise of the multiple fountains pouring into the catch basin. In the stillness they sounded like huge waterfalls, the noise caught by the buildings and echoed back again and again.
It was a short wait compared to London, but it seemed forever in the stillness. When the church clock struck the three-quarter hour, Moosic tensed, checked his pistol for the hundredth time, and began to look for signs of another, either Sandoval or Marx. At approximately 1:50 the police-man patrolling the area walked into the square, panicking him for a moment. The cop checked all the doors facing the square, looked around, and finally made his way from the square and down a side street, but not before the clock chimed two. The minutes now crept back as the patrolman's footsteps receded and finally died away in the distance, but there was still no sign of anyone else in the square. Then, quite suddenly, he heard the clicking of shoes on cobblestone. Someone was coming down the same street the policeman had used to leave, coming towards the square. He tensed, praying that Marx had decided not to come after all, and waited until the oncoming figure strode into the square. He strained to catch a glimpse of the newcomer, and saw him at last, in the glow of a street lamp. It was certainly no one he'd ever seen before. He was tall, thin, and at least in middle age, with a long and unkempt black beard and a broad-brimmed hat that con-cealed much of the rest of his features. He was dressed in the seedy clothes of one who was used to sleeping in his only suit. He didn't seem armed, and he certainly didn't have the time suit with him, if indeed he were Sandoval and not just some bum avoiding the policeman.
Moosic stood up and was about ready to go out and confront the man, when there was a sudden noise behind him. He felt a pistol at the back of his head, and quietly the man's voice whispered, "I think you better remain where you are and not make a sound. Put the gun down, nice and quiet, on the ground. No false moves, my friend! At this range I could hardly miss." He did as instructed, then slowly got up as the pistol was pulled away. He turned, and saw his captor. The man was tall, lean, and dressed entirely in black, in a uniform rather similar to the one his mysterious woman in London was wearing. But this was no ordinary-looking chubby woman; this man was extremely muscular, with a strong face like a Nordic god's, his pure blond hair neatly cut in a military trim. Behind him lurked two large black shapes that looked somehow inhuman, but whose features were impossible to determine in the near total darkness of the alley. One thing was clear, though—from the blinking little lights—all three wore belts similar to the one the woman had worn. This, then, was the true enemy. Knowing it was hopeless, he turned again to watch the scene in the square. More footsteps now, and the seedy-looking man leaning on the lamppost stiffened, then stepped back into a doorway for a moment. In another minute, Moosic saw Marx walk nervously into the square from his right and look around. He appeared alone and unarmed.

The twin personalities inside the Neumann body con-verged in an emotional rage. He glanced back
briefly at the mysterious blond man, and noted with the professional's eye that his captor was looking less at him than at the scene in the square. The time agent was larger and more powerful than Neumann, but if he could just idly get one step back, just one step, that might not mean a thing. Pretending to watch what was going on in the square, he measured the distance and moves out of the comer of his eye. Quickly he lunged around, his knee coming up and hitting the blond man squarely in the balls. The man in black cursed in pain and doubled over, dropping his strange-looking pistol. Quickly Moosic rolled, picked up his own pistol, and was out of the alley and to his right. "Heir Marx! It's a trap! Drop to the ground!" he shouted. Marx was about ten feet from Sandoval, and at the noise and yell he froze and turned to look back in utter confusion. Sandoval reached into his pants and pulled out a gun, while behind Moosic, in the alley, two strange figures ran out into the light. Two figures out of nightmare. They seemed to be almost like living statues, black all over, although they seemed to wear nothing except the time belts, their skin or whatever it was that was glistening like polished black metal. Their features were gargoyle-like, the stuff of nightmares in any age. Both had auto-matic rifles in their hands. They had, however, overrun Moosic, who unhesitat-ingly brought up the pistol and fired at them. The strange pistol seemed to chirp rather than explode, but a tiny ball of light leaped from it and struck one of the creatures in the back. There was a scream, and the thing collapsed in pain. At the same moment, a dark figure came up behind Sandoval. "Don't move or you're a dead man," Dawn said, rifle trained on him, this time with the setting on lethal charge. The man froze, then slowly turned, looking for an opening.
At the same time, the remaining gargoyle turned to fire at Neumann, but the other man in the square, whom they'd all taken to be Marx, turned and fired a bright blue ray that enveloped the creature. The thing's body shimmered, and then vanished, leaving only a scorch mark on the ground and an acrid, burning odor.
Taking advantage of the confusion, Sandoval turned to look directly at his captor. "Vas ist. . . ." he began, confused, and she stopped him. She did not remember him consciously, but something came from deep inside her.
"Moosic," she responded, and fired. He flared as had the creature, again blinding her. She smelled him,
though, and dropped to the ground just in case there was any more danger. Back in the alley, Eric Benoni started to take aim at the figure who had pretended to be Marx, but some sixth sense warned him and, instead, he quickly pressed his "Home" key and vanished. Herb, dressed in period clothes and with a false set of whiskers, ran to the alley, but he only met Faouma there. "Missed the bastard by a hair," she grunted and cursed. Herb gave her a sharp look. "Neumann's already on the run. Let's collect our own and get the hell out of here. This was much too easy."
Holger Neumann was in a state of panic and con-fusion, but he at least had seen the job done. All he wanted now was out, out and home—but would they let him? The ancient city had become now a nightmarish place, a surreal horror whose shadows reached out and threatened him at every turn. Behind, and possibly from above him, he thought he heard the sounds of pursuit.
The central square of Trier looked eerie and threatening in the early morning hours, lit only by a few huge candles in the street lights, their flickering casting ever-changing and monstrous shadows on the cobblestones and the sides of the now dark buildings. Moosic gave the square a professional going-over be-tween midnight and one, noting the rounds of the local policeman. He wanted no repetition of the debacle in London. This time there would be one target and one target only, and that target would be taken out as soon as positively identified. That should not be too difficult, he thought, if he could shoot straight. He already knew the policeman, and he knew Marx, so anyone else likely to be here at two almost had to be his quarry. The hotel door was locked, of course, at this time of night, but he'd made certain he had a key, telling the proprietor earlier that he had a very late party. He fumbled in panic with the key, finally got it in and shut the door behind him. He almost ran up the stairs until he realized that he hadn't his room key, went back quickly and got it from behind the desk, then bounded up the stairs not caring whom he awakened. He unlocked the door and went immediately to the steamer trunk, where he'd locked the suit. Fumbling for yet

another key in the darkness, he dropped it twice and had to calm himself down before he could find it again
and fit it in the large brass lock.
A scratching sound caused him to turn towards the window, and in a split second he saw the horrible face of the second gargoyle framed in it, gun coming up. He picked up his own and fired, and the thing was gone. He didn't know if he'd hit it or not. He kicked off his shoes and got into the suit, which fit his new frame rather well. Placing the gun so he could easily pick it up again, he put on the helmet as he heard noises and shouting both in the hall and outside. The noise had apparently roused half the town. He got the helmet on and sealed it, then adjusted the small pentometers for across-the-board zeroes, then pressed "Activate."
Inside the helmet, a little message flashed saying, "Insufficient power." He cursed. The dials still said ninety-five percent power reserve. That should be more than enough to get back home! He tried again, and again the little words flashed inside the suit. He reached up to adjust them again, and at that moment another, perhaps the same, grinning black monstrosity showed in the window. He spun the damned controls and activated. The creature got off a shot, but where its target had been, there was suddenly nothing at all but an empty room. Behind, there were loud yells and curses and some-body shouted, "Break the door down!" Satisfied that the proper result had been obtained, Lucia ducked back from the window and pulled off the grotesque mask she had been wearing, then moved swiftly along the ledge and around a corner, out of sight of those breaking into the room. There, before this had even started, she'd anchored her line, and now she slid down it to the street level, gave a yank, and it fell out, then neatly reeled itself into a device in her hands which she had clipped to the belt.
"All in, all in," she heard Herb's tinny voice on the belt communicator, which should have been the signal for her to jump back to home, but she did not. Like Herb, she felt it had been too easy. Back in the square, Herb and Faouma ran to assist Dawn, who got up unsteadily. She could see again, although it was still somewhat dim. In the distance, they could hear footsteps running towards the square, and in a few of the upper floors of buildings facing it, lights were burning now. Herb gestured to a dark street nearby. "Back in there, quick! We'll jump as soon as we're able!" The two women followed him without another word. They got about a block from the square when a woman's voice they had not heard before said, in the accented manner of time travelers and in English, "Freeze! Just where you are!" They stopped, and all three fingered their guns nervously, looking for a chance. "There are savants on all sides of you," the woman warned. "You will drop your weapons and raise your hands—now!"
"She's right," Dawn whispered. "I can see two of them just ahead on either side." They dropped their weapons.
It was too dark for normal sight in the tiny street, but Dawn's special vision made her out. Medium build, dark hair; good build, but an ugly face. It was one she'd never seen before. The mystery woman did, however, wear a time belt.
"Now, just unhitch your belts and let them drop; then kick them away from you," the woman instructed. "Remember—the savants will shoot at the first sign of trouble." "Let 'em shoot, then," Herb told her. "That way you don't get the belts." Faouma seemed in agreement. All Dawn could think of was that she would never see the kids again. "Groak! Stun beam!" the woman ordered, and there was a loud flash of rays. Dawn, like the other two,
braced for it, but when it didn't come, she just dropped to the street anyway. The ray, of course, had blinded her again. Shots crackled in the air, and she felt half her body burn and then go numb. Herb practically fell over her, but both he and Faouma had wasted no time in dropping, rolling, and coming up with their weapons. Rays crackled all over the tiny street, and there were sounds of stirring from inside the buildings. Suddenly, it was over, and Lucia from one side and Nikita from the other ran to them. "You all right?" Lucia asked Herb, but he was lying on his side, fumbling with his belt. "Everybody—jump now! Home! Don't wait! Lucia— punch out anybody who can't do it themselves, dead or alive!"
Somebody ran to Dawn, punched in a set of numbers, and pressed the "Home" key. She was falling downtime.

"The plot all along," Chung Lind commented, "was the capture of the squad's belts, that's clear. And in
spite of knowing we were set up, we almost fell into that trap." "My fault," Herb said flatly. "I just got overconfident, that's all. They must have been on the rooftops around the square all the time. As soon as we picked an exit route, they moved to seal off the far end of that street. It was a clever setup, I got to admit. If Nicky and Lucia had obeyed orders and jumped, we'd all be happy little citizens of Prussia right now." "Or dead," Faouma added. "It was doubly lucky that they were all set to stun instead of kill." "Not so much luck there," Lind responded. "They could have their cake and eat it, too. Get the belts, keep the scan on tight, then come back and pick you all up in your Trier identities and take you forward on their belts. In any case, they couldn't risk a killing beam for fear of destroying those belts. It was close." "You'll never know how close," Nicky told them. "There were two of us and four of them. When the woman gave the orders to stun, I told Lucia on the per-sonal band we'd better move in. We just figured that they'd stun the squad, so they couldn't bring their own weapons back up on us. We just did a wide spray and prayed for the best."
Chung Lind sighed. "Well, enough recriminations. His-tory is composed of a series of lucky breaks, and this one was ours. The point is, they have the capacity to stage this again and again. The next time might be different. The only way to be secure is to turn the tables on them." "You got a line on who that woman was?" Herb asked them all. Everybody shrugged or shook their heads. "Never seen or heard of her before. They've let Benoni run a one-man show up to now," Nicky said.
"I don't like it," Lind told them. "Up to now, we've been pretty secure, believing that they didn't have suffi-cient power to mount two simultaneous teams or the exper-tise to handle them. Well, now we know we were wrong. Makes me worry what else we don't know." Lind's attention turned now to Dawn. "Are you O.K.?" She nodded. "I think so. I thought we were gone for sure there, though. Half of me couldn't move. It was like I had nothing below my stomach at all." "Partial stun effect," Herb told her. "We all got it. Faouma was out cold. It wears off, though—like it did with our friend Marx."
She looked at Lind. "It's O.K., then?"
He nodded. "The loop's closed. Marx will live and do his major work. I admit the irony that we just accomplished something which, in the long run, will strengthen the enemy and prolong the war, but it was necessary. We've bought several years of absolute time to continue our work, and time is pretty much back on its original mainline track. Everybody relax and get some rest. We've got a lot of work to do yet, and I want you all fresh and ready to go."
Dawn sought out Doc and asked about the children, whom she didn't see. "They're uptime, under guidance," the physician told her. "Don't worry about them. They're safe and secure."
"I—I may not even know them when they're through this. It worries me." "You and I know it's the only way. Get some rest now, and we'll close that second loop tomorrow." "Uh—Doc?"
"Yes?"
"I'm worried. I—I don't know, I just am. Killing that man back there—I wanted to do it, and I don't really understand why."
Kahwalini sighed and sat down beside her. "Long ago I told you that none of the people I've been are dead. They're all still here, locked in my mind, a part of me in some way or another. We forget it, because we no longer feel it. They're not separate anymore, and maybe it's only small parts of them, but they're there. You didn't know him, but a little bit of Ron did, a little bit of hate born of what he'd seen that man do. Now it's over. Mission accomplished. Now you can sleep." But she couldn't sleep. It wasn't the killing anymore, not really. She could understand at least the basics of what Doc told her, and accepted it. No, it was lying there in the permanent darkness, feeling very alone. Ron was gone, and would never be back. Any last remnants of him had been purged by the killing of Sandoval. She didn't have to have it proved to her—she felt it. He, through her, had finally done his job, and there was no more reason for him to exist except as a memory in her mind. Doc, however, for all her wisdom and genius, couldn't really understand the basic problem now. Maybe Kahwalini had been somebody like her once upon a time, but, if so, it was a long time ago. Doc was strong, and smart— somebody who made things happen. She, Dawn, was not, and could never be. The world was made up of survivors and victims, she thought glumly. She wasn't a victim—at least, she

didn't think she was, in the sense of personality—but survivors survived in different ways. Doc, Herb, Lind,
Nicky, Lucia, Faouma—they survived by being tough, by being leaders. Ron had been a leader-type, and that's what had made him strong.
She wasn't really strong, she knew, no matter what she'd just gone through. She'd done it because she had to, but she did have to have it forced on her. She survived through others, and that wasn't all that bad. She survived to be a companion, a lover, to Ron. She survived for the sake of the children. She wanted to keep surviving.
Now Ron was gone, and the children were being lost to her. She couldn't do anything more for them. When Alfie escaped, then they would try to prevent it from hap-pening at all. Supposedly, they had a better chance of doing that because of what they were doing now, but she really didn't try to understand it anymore.
Win or lose, the next few days would be the end of what purpose she still had, what need she could fill. No matter what happened, she would be alone then, and she couldn't stand to be alone. . . . Rescuing Alfie was not as simple as it had first appeared. To start with, she had to get down to that bridge where the time suit was anchored and haul it up, and she had to do it all herself. Not one of the squad could afford to travel in this particular time frame, which was one reason why Eric had chosen it for his test.
The suit was incredibly heavy, and large even for her. Still, she remembered all the instructions, first removing the huge, bulky power pack from the rear backpack and carrying it back and letting it drop into the Thames. Time was crucial now, for once the suit's residual power was exhausted, a matter of only a few minutes, it would cease to exist.
Quickly she snapped in the new power pack, a small and light plant similar to the ones used on the belts with framing and contacts made so that it would fit into the power pack bracket in the suit and provide the necessary juice.
It worked fine, and, as a side effect, it made the suit far lighter, although no less bulky. She wondered how she could both be somebody entirely different yet re-cognized as the same person by the suit, but while she'd had many explanations, she knew she'd never get it straight. Because she was not in phase, she was not subject to assimilation and its limitations. First she reset the suit controls the way they'd instructed her, then carefully drew it to her, using an extender device to wrap around the suit, connected on both sides to her time belt. In a sense, it was an extra belt just for the suit, but controlled and managed by her belt's microprocessor. She activated the belt, and almost instantaneously was inside a grim and drab little room. There were bars on the windows and on the heavy oak door, which was locked from the outside. A single gas lamp, turned down to dim, lit the room, which smelled of death and dying. In a corner was a small bed, and in it a very battered and bruised figure, so tiny and helpless. Alfie was asleep.
Quietly she detached the suit, fearful of alerting the hall wardens not far away, and brought it over to the still figure. Although feeling pressed for time, her heart went out to the kid, and she laid everything out, ready to go, before awakening him. Almost as an afterthought, she pushed the goggles up, so that he wouldn't be faced with some strange-looking monster. She'd been blind so long it didn't really matter, and it was simple from here on out.
"Wake up," she said in a hushed tone, shaking him gently. He stirred, moaned a little, then said, " 'Ho're you? Some kind of prison nurse?"
"No," she whispered, "and keep your voice down. Time is very short, and the amount of power required to allow me to be here without assimilation is enormous." He was in great pain, but much of the morphia had worn off, allowing the Moosic personality a little latitude. He mustered all his will to force himself forward, reminding himself that Sandoval had done it. "You—you are from the future." It was a statement, not a question. "In a way, yes. I've brought you something you need desperately, but you'll have to move fast. Can you make it out of bed?"
"Oi . . . think so." He tried and, with her help, got to a shaky standing position. It was then that he saw it, there on the floor. "The toime suit!" he breathed. He sat back on the bed and she helped him into it. It was enormous for the body of Alfie Jenkins, far too large to be practical, and he said so.

"Don't worry. Once you punch out, it'll be O.K., and both Alfie and Ron will live. Understand?"
He nodded dully.
"The power pack is on full-charge now—I did it before coming here. And I've set it for the correct time and place. There is still a chance of catching Sandoval." "But 'istory—it's already changed."
"Very little. Marx would have died in a few years anyway, and all his important work was done. He was killed by a boy in the pay of anti-Communists, a boy who then escaped from gaol. That's all the change. Now—helmet on. Check the pouch when you arrive. And remember—Sandoval's power is nearly gone. He's landed a hundred miles from his goal. You can beat him there. Now—seal and go!" "But wait! Just 'ho are you?"
But the seal snapped in place and he was in silence, although nearly swimming in the suit. If he stood up, he knew he'd sink below and out of the helmet, so he didn't try. The mysterious woman reached out and touched the suit activation switches.
Tiny Alfie, almost smothered in the enormous suit, faded out. Almost immediately her hands went to her own belt, and she pressed the "Home" key. Now there was only one thing left to do. THE TWISTED CIRCLE
"In many ways, this is the most important operation of this team," said Chung Lind, looking over maps and diagrams on a huge table. "It may also be nothing at all. Still, a chance at Eric, perhaps at their whole operation, is worth the risk."
A number of them had studied all the material and made suggestions one way or the other, but the truth was, they were severely handicapped, as they were in almost any operation directly against the other side. That was why it was so surprising that Earthside had been able to commit everything to the Trier operation. True, they had the savants, which Ron had called gargoyles, but they needed a smart human boss to do almost anything. Those humans suffered from the same limitations as the ones on the team. When you spent too much time in any period, you gave up some of your freedom of action forever. In point of fact, only three Outworlders had any margin of safety in the time frame, and one of those was Dawn. When such a situation developed, there was nothing to do but actually hire people in the frame to do most of the work. A cover, some sort of excuse, could always be manufactured, and, of course, the date of the actual action they were trying to prevent, and the specifics of it, were a matter of record. And so a team of excellent American detectives had been hired and extremely well financed. Some were tracking down one or another members of the radical party, but the main focus was on the one on the inside, Dr. Karen Cline. At some point she had to make contact either with the radicals or with the Earthsiders directly. If not, they would have to stop it in the parking lot, and that would be pretty damned bloody. Cline's activities had been perfectly normal and almost robotically regular and precise until just six days before the operation. Since then, regular purchases had nearly stopped, and her routine was varied occasionally by trips to a travel agency, a car rental company in Washington, and other such odd behavior. The agents shadowing her had pro-blems keeping out of sight of the government agents regularly assigned to follow and check on her, but those agents didn't seem unduly alarmed. Apparently, she had a vacation coming in late May, and had indicated she was going to take it. Outworlder agents, who already knew something was going on, had the advantage here, and one slick operative noted that Cline's only charge card was an infrequently used American Express card, but she had not used it either at the rental agency or the travel agency, paying by check instead. Why not? She had arranged to rent a small van, but for later pickup. That van, it was realized, could carry the radical team and its equipment. Agents were put on the car rental agency to see just who picked up that van and where it went.
Chung Lind was particularly irritated that he had to go through all this the hard way, but there really was no other way to do it. A monitor by the master computer specifi-cally on Cline, however, had picked up one thing of vital importance.
Cline, as of six days before the incident, was not totally in phase with the time frame. "That explains the last of it," Doc noted. "The only reason we didn't see it before was that she was a highly educated woman, a Ph.D., in a very important project." Dawn frowned. "You mean she's one of them!"

"Most likely the woman heading the second team in Trier," Doc replied. "If you get rid of the surface, it
fits. She's a loner, both parents dead, no romantic entangle-ments and, as far as can be seen, no interest in them. She's a competent technician, but has no imagination or genius. They managed to fit her into the most perfect slot imaginable."
Lind sighed. "So we're dealing with a smart, extra-competent Earthside agent. She won't have to get into direct contact with them, though. She's done all she can to set things up; now all she has to do is settle back and wait for it to happen. Eric probably arranged for the team to be recruited and he'll bring the elements together, probably in a period identity of his own." The date for the attack was Monday, May 14. On Saturday, May 12, John Bettancourt picked up the van and drove it south to the county seat of Prince Frederick, Maryland, not much of a drive from the plant, and checked into a motel under the name of Donald Hartman. He did not leave it again until the next morning, so tapping his calls was impossible, but, after eating breakfast, he drove a few miles north and turned off onto a road leading to a small summer cottage right on Chesapeake Bay. The cot-tage, rented by a young couple named Freeman, clearly had other visitors as well. "That's it, then," Lind sighed. "There is no sign any-one left before dark, so that's when and where we'll hit them. It was an ideal location for them, and it makes an ideal location for us. Almost no locals in the area, few cops—quiet. Doc, I hate to ask it of you, but it's all yours now. Be careful." Kahwalini nodded and turned to Dawn. "Come. Let's go back and talk this over." They went back to her office.
"Dawn," Doc said carefully, "now is the time to think a little about not only this but what comes next. Louis is already uptime with the agents, as Jerry Brune, a laid-off steelworker. I'll be going up just before the raid, to handle the stakeout on Cline's apartment. If she gets spooked, we hope she'll make for her belt, and that will turn the tables."
"You think Eric is in that house, as somebody else?" She nodded. "We think so. We've accounted for all four radicals, and there is a fifth person in the house, a middle-aged man with one leg who walks on crutches but never comes outside. We think that's Eric." "So I'm not really needed."
"Except as an observer, somebody there at the start who should be there at the end, no. I was thinking, though, that for better or worse this would be an ideal place for you to go trip. No use putting it off, and you're more use to everyone, including yourself, in one whole piece." There was really no reason not to, but she resisted the idea. "You know what I'll become there." Doc nodded. "It's too set a pattern to really change. Why does it bother you now?" "Because I was out of it for so long. I've been a person now for a long time, and now you want me to go back to being . . . merchandise."
"I don't want it. But it's that, over which we have at least some control, or one of the others, or the edge. That's it. What can it do except give you a new and better body?" And a new mind, she thought sourly. "You said you could control it. What do you mean?"
"I mean we can at least select as optimal a situation as events allow. You can be young and attractive. There will be tradeoffs, but it won't be Hell." "I guess the Almighty computer has already run it through." She nodded. "It isn't possible to get specifics, because you've had too many wild card jumps, but we do our best. That'll mean putting you away from the action, to start; so we'll insert you early. Once you're inserted, we'll know who and where you are. One of us, either Louis or I, will get you before it all blows open and bring you down, so keep your belt where you can grab it in a hurry. If we catch anybody, we'll bring them back here. Even if we don't, I'll have to stay around a couple of days to cover up the situation and pay off the agents. You trip at approxi-mately seventeen days, four hours. We're going to insert to trip you on the fourteenth, so it'll be over by then. Then we can come back here and talk about what happens next."
"I wish I could see the children one last time." "I wish so, too, but it's not working out. At least, after, you'll have two good eyes to see them." Yeah, she thought—but will they still be my children?
Probably not, she knew, even if they were now. She felt suddenly very old, very used up. There was no more use righting, because the decisions really had already been made. "O.K.," she said, "let's get the belt and do it."
"Now?" Even Doc was surprised by that.
"Now—or never. If I have to think about it, I'll go nuts, and if I start dwelling on it, I might commit suicide. Let's go. Let's get it over and done with."

"All right," Doc said, went out for a moment and then came back with a belt. She handed it to Dawn, who
put it on. "Now, a few things you should know in advance and remember. First, the 'Home' key is keyed to the old location, as before. Use plus eighteen hundred for the period, use one hundred eighty for the latitude and three hundred sixty for the longitude. If you forget, I'll remind you." "I won't forget. I don't think so, anyway. Anything else?" "You'll come out in Washington, so don't panic. As I say, we'll make sure you're picked up in time. There are more choices in D.C. than in the southern Maryland sticks. Also, it's less likely for the enemy to pick you up if you're outside the area. They'll be concentrating there, and so we all are coming out elsewhere and getting down the hard way. And don't worry so much. You have my personal promise—you haven't run out of choices yet;"
"O.K., Doc. Here goes." She pressed the activation button and fell uptime. The circle was becoming completed.
Her name was Holly Feathers, and she was seventeen years old, but while most girls her age were preparing to graduate from high school and going on heavy dates, Holly was a very experienced seventeen. She'd been born last in a three-child family, the first two of which were boys. Her dad used to be a steelworker in Pittsburgh, but he'd lost his job both to the cuts in the industry and to heavy drinking, and after that they just sort of drifted around, with him going from one part of the country to another in search of work, hauling them along because he'd long ago lost the house and run the bank account dry. All this was while she was very small, so she had no memory of the better times in the past. All she knew was that they seemed to be constantly moving around, almost living in an antique Chevy, her old man grabbing a job here, a job there, but never the kind you could hold for a while. Her mother just seemed to tune out the world, doing a lot of Bible reading and pretending like nothing else was wrong. Often, after she'd grown into womanhood, her father would get drunk and take her off somewhere and undress her and, well, do things. When she didn't want to, he would often beat her or slap her around. Her brothers were wild, and no protection at all. One of them wound up doing five to twenty in Kansas or somewhere for robbery.
She had some schooling, but because of the situation and the constant moving around, it hadn't done much good. Oh, she could write her name in a childish block-print way, and get through a basic menu or maybe Dr. Seuss, but that was about all. She had no real skills, either, and except for helping out on some picking jobs in harvest seasons, she'd never really done much of anything. What she was was pretty, almost classically so, even dressed in worn-out sandals, dirty tee shin, and over-patched jeans. At five foot two with big green eyes and long reddish-brown hair, a nearly perfect figure with an almost impossibly narrow waist, olive skin, and a big, wide, but sensuous mouth, she was, as her father said, "something else."
When she was fifteen, she got pregnant—and got a bad whipping from her father, as if it was her fault instead of his. Panicky, he'd taken her to a back alley abortionist who almost killed her. When she wound up hemorrhaging and got rushed to an emergency room, they determined that the fetus was gone all right, but it was no longer possible after they repaired the damage for her to have children ever again. To her surprise, her mother visited her in the hospital, looking ancient and terrible. She gave her some money, more money than she thought they had. "Take it and go," her mother told her. "He's already scarred you, child. Don't make me bury you."
So she found her shirt and jeans and dirty, worn sandals, the first two cleaned by the hospital, and she sneaked out of the place, got down to the bus station, and bought a ticket to Washington, not because it was anyplace she knew but because it was the nearest big city to West Virginia she knew on the destination list. Once in the dirty, midtown bus terminal, though, she found she had no place to go and nothing more to do, and money that wouldn't last long.
She found no end of young men in and around the bus station willing to help her out, but soft-spoken Johnny Wenzel seemed the nicest and the least frightening. He bought her meals, took her to his very nice apartment, got her some clothes, and never tried to take advantage of her—not then. But, eventually, he got around to the subject of her future plans. She had always wanted to be a dancer—not some cheap dancer, but one like on the television specials— but she had no training and no way to get it. That's when he told her how she could get the money for her future. She didn't really like the idea, but he was pretty blunt, if nice. She had no education in a town where a high school diploma was needed to collect garbage. It was quickly clear that her reading and writing skills

were on the level of a first or second grader at best, and unemploy-ment was high and demand even for the
most menial of jobs was low. She really had nothing marketable except her body, he pointed out, and she knew he was right.
He introduced her to some of his other "girls," many of whom had stories similar to hers. They weren't living high on the hog, but they had nice clothes and shared a small block of apartments that weren't in the slums. All of them, of course, had plans to be something more someday— singers, dancers, actresses, all that. For now, they had a decent place to live, decent clothes, steady good food, and a percentage of their income in a savings account which Johnny managed for them. They assured her that it was easy, that Johnny wasn't like those other pimps who beat and brutalized their girls, and that as long as she made her quota, she would never have to worry about the basics. Slowly, she was broken into the business, and she picked it up really fast—the makeup, jewelry, the "uniform," usually very skimpy and very revealing, and the tech-niques of the bed itself. Once she started in earnest, she became insatiable, something psychiatrists might explain from her background but something she barely understood at all. She worked the streets, mostly, getting a whole range of men, and was soon turning two tricks a night, three or four on the weekends. By seventeen she had the look and the moves down so pat that she never even thought of them anymore, and she seemed to be always turned on. To the other girls it was just a job, just a routine, but to her it was life itself. Even Wenzel was impressed, and started lining her up with high-powered clients. The merging of Holly and Dawn was dramatic. How much of Holly's near nymphomania was Holly's own psyche and how much was Dawn's desperate need to cure her depression and loneliness, it was impossible to say, but the more Dawn stopped thinking and let the Holly part of her take over, the easier it was for her. Holly was not very bright, but she was supercharged with emotion and a desperate need to be loved. If self-worth had to be mea-sured in dollars, well, so be it. It was better than many girls ever had, and it was concrete.
It was getting dark on Saturday, May 12, and she was almost ready for work. It was a warm night, so she had on very short shorts over pantyhose, an overly small halter top, some nice perfume, and some little gold earrings and a matching bracelet and necklace. She was just putting on the sandals whose extra high heels gave exaggera-tion to her walk when Johnny came in, kissed her, and told her how beautiful she was. Then he added, "Easy work this time, but I'd grab jeans and a blouse and your toothbrush." She looked puzzled. "Why? 'Specially, why the toothbrush?" She had a pleasing high soprano, although with a trace of a lisp, but she'd gotten so used to using her lower sexy voice that she did it automatically now.
"Big bucks client, but he wants you for the weekend, back Monday morning." That was unusual. "Must be really big bucks. Should I pack a case?" She did not hesitate to go along with the assignment, even though she'd never had a long-term gig before. "Yeah, maybe a little one. He's a lonely lawyer with a summer cottage who wants to get away for the weekend."
A little alarm went off in her mind, and for the first time she realized what date it was. "Be a minute, O.K.? I think I know the guy."
She didn't, at least not when she got into the big black car. He was middle-aged and flabby, with graying hair and a small gray-white beard. She slid in beside him with her usual "Hi!" and threw the case in the back seat, and only when she scooted over close to him did she see from the key ring that the car was obviously rented, as she suspected it might be. She had the belt in the case. He nodded and pulled away, leaving Johnny to count his money. As they headed through traffic towards the D.C. beltway, he said, "You know who I am." His voice was thin, reedy, and not very pleasant. She had backed off from him by now. "I guess so. Louis?" "No. Doc."
It was a shock. Even though both Ron and Sandoval had gone female, she just never thought of it working both ways. "Doc?"
"Don't get funny. I needed some money and a good cover, and this is the best. I've been here before, for a few days, so I knew what it was going to be like." She couldn't get over the change. There was no trace of the gentleness and femininity of the Kahwalini she had known.' He was a little wimp of a guy and he stayed that way. "So this is it, huh?"
"Tomorrow is it, anyway. I must say you don't seem to be suffering." She chuckled. "I had enough sufferin' in my lives. This is dif rent. I ain't got no worries, and I don't got to think much. Seems like every time I had to think lately, it's been b'tween drownin' or hangin'."

Doc said nothing to that.
She'd changed into a tight white tee shirt that left nothing to the imagination and jeans so tight they seemed painted on and were held up provocatively only by her hips, but that was her only change. The immediate excitement had given way quickly to boredom—her attention span was no longer very great and the complexity of her thoughts was very low—and she felt horny, even for Doc. All she could do was drown herself in the radio and go along for the ride. Finally, she asked, "Doc? How much did you pay for the weekend?" "A grand. That guy is a stickup artist." A grand, she thought. Now that was moving up. .. .
Thirty armed men staked out and surrounded the tiny beach cottage, all armed to the teeth, some with futuristic weapons imported at the last moment for the occasion. They were facing such weapons, they knew, and the game was capture if possible, kill if necessary. All of them thought they were working for an interna-tional anti-terrorist organization founded and financed by a right-wing billionaire. They didn't question the weapons or the information on who and what they were facing.
There was an uneasy moment when Stillman drove out in the van earlier in the day on Sunday, but he'd merely been tracing the route. He did, however, stop and make one telephone call at a booth. By no coincidence, Karen Cline picked up a phone in a Texaco station about the same time. The conversation was brief.
Stillman and Bettancourt had timed and retimed their route in different vehicles until they almost had clocks in their heads. They knew, though, that there was no margin for error. Their special weaponry and gadgets, along with the passwords they had just received from Cline, would be needed to get through a security system that was among the toughest in the world. Louis, now a big, beefy black man with a thick, white moustache and balding head, listened to those shadowing Stillman. It was nearly dark, and he made his decision. "As soon as you get a stretch with no cars or people, take the man out. I repeat, take the man out. Cancel him if you have to. Without him they can't get past the front door, but Cline'll go to work tomorrow as usual."
More than two miles south of the plant, Clarence Still-man swerved to miss a car that suddenly pulled out from a side road. The car kept coming, ramming into the side of the van. Before Stillman could recover, two men popped up on both sides of the truck and one grabbed him. He roared and rolled, breaking loose, but the door wouldn't open and the other man pointed a strange-looking device like a rifle at him and fired. There was a bluish glow, and he slumped down. Gasoline was poured inside, and the van was set afire. The two men jumped into the other car, which had backed off, and it roared away before the gas tank exploded on the van. Their own car was in lousy shape, but they were able to dump it in the lot of an auto repair company before it gave up the ghost. Holly/Dawn heard this over the communications system, and knew that these men were getting ready to go in. Doc was supervising the Cline stakeout, but if all went well, Cline would not know of this. Whoever she was, she would go to work and wait for the attack that never came. The men moved in. All vehicles were covered, and then they moved silently up to the house itself. On Louis' signal, and with no warning to the occupants, they tossed in concussion grenades in every window and then black-clad shapes crashed through doors and windows. To say that the occupants were surprised was an understatement. Rays and conventional weapons went off all through the house. She could only sit back in Doc's car, parked well out on the road, and imagine what was going on in there.
The house was secured in less than forty seconds. Louis was immediately inside with a small device, checking each and every one of the limp forms. Bettancourt was dead, having begun firing blindly. Sandoval had tried to jump out the second story window in the back, and he made it. His neck was broken. The mysterious man with one leg had been stunned to unconsciousness, while the terrified Austin-Venneman was in so much shock that she couldn't even surrender. Louis went first to the mysterious one-legged man and took a reading; then he frowned. "Nothin'!" he snarled. "This ain't Eric, it's just their set-up man!"
Back along the road, the passenger's door opened in her car and a dark figure got in. She turned, expecting to see one of the others or maybe Louis, and gasped. "Don't panic," said Eric Benoni calmly. "Can you drive?"

She shook her head, suddenly too fearful to speak.
"All right, then I will. Don't yell or make any foolish moves, please. I really don't intend any harm, but such beauty can be so easily . . . marked." He slid back out the door and walked around in back of the car to the driver's side. She was frozen in panic, unable to do a thing. He got in, looked down and saw that the keys were in the ignition, then started the car and drove off a little ways before turning on the headlights. "Damned uncomfortable, driving with the belt. One cannot lean back and relax."
"W-what do you want with me?" she asked him, edg-ing as far away from him as she could. She wished she had the nerve to open the door and jump, but she knew she didn't. She felt suddenly cold and started shivering, al-though it was a warm night. Her head felt funny. He noticed her discomfort. "It will pass. Thanks to your friends, all of you that still was partly Moosic, and Alfie, and Neumann, has gone. Your friends just saw to that. You won't miss it. It will just make you more . . . passive, more gentle, more dependent, and, come your trip point, no brighter than the girl you now are. There—it's passed already."
She did feel different, somehow. On the one hand, she was terrified of him; on the other, she actually wanted him. "Wh—where are we goin'?" she managed at last. "You tell me. Where is the belt?"
She didn't answer, and he pulled the car over by the side of the road, turned, and pulled her violently to him. He had a knife in his hand, and his face was absolutely cold, his eyes terrifying to look into, although she could not avoid his gaze.
"I will ask once more. Then I will put a mark on that pretty face of yours. Not deep, but it will leave a perma-nent scar. Then, if you still don't cooperate, we will start on other parts of your anatomy." She felt totally helpless. "No, please—all right! It's in my bag in the back seat of the car." He let go of her and flung her back. "Get it. Take it out, turn it off, and hand it to me." She didn't hesitate to do what he said. He grabbed the belt and a look of satisfied triumph came over him. "There—see? I can be a nice fellow when folks are nice to me. At least I salvage something out of this miserable debacle of an operation."
She stared at him. "Who are you?" Eric smiled. "Do you know what Benoni means? No? It's a Hebrew name, very seldom used, that means 'son of my sorrow.' I chose it because it was appropriate. A better way is to turn the tables a bit. I think I know who you are, or were. Was your name once Dawn?" She nodded nervously.
He grinned and spread his hands. "Behold thy unfaith-ful son, Joseph." Her jaw dropped, and her mind reeled, unable to accept it. "It really is, you know, Mother. And that girl playing Karen Cline is Ginny." "That ain't possible!" she protested.
"In this crazy universe? Let me tell you what happened to us, Mother. They kept us back there in that Safe Zone of theirs for five years. Five lousy years, undergoing dozens of lives, growing very old very fast, while you never came back. And then, finally, they tired of us when we didn't do their bidding, become their version of the savants, doing things just so, and they ordered us to the edge. Well, we went, of course, but not without a plan. We no sooner caught sight of the monstrosities that we were supposed to join than we acted. Two of us, Ginny and I, were in time. The other three are up there now, probably monsters. "We kept the belts on the edge and simply changed the location on arrival. They were delighted to see us, since they had lost much of the knowledge of time travel and were afraid to try it. We were delighted to show them. They cut the power to our belts, of course, but we were there and we were in charge." He put the car back in gear and continued on down the road. "Them and their plans. The Outworlders killed our father, turned our mother into a common whore, and meant to turn us into monsters. Compared to that, Earthside was downright refreshing." She shook her head. "But—you caused all of it. I borned you, and you made Ron into Dawn and Dawn into me. You're lyin'. You're just torturin' me for fun." "No, Mother, you're thinking wrong. You're thinking that because I couldn't have existed without the rest, I couldn't have caused it. But, you see, it all did happen. It really did. History is simply the evidence we leave. Time doesn't undo anything, it just cleans it up so there's no trace left that it happened. Everything Ron, and you, lived through happened, and since it was made not to happen after it happened, we exist, but we exist with no roots. We are nightsiders. Unpeople, no more real in the historical sense than the savants are in the human sense. And since we, even now, are in the past—only the edge is real—this is merely acting out what was, not what is. There really isn't any free choice in the downtime—we choose as we

must." He chuckled. "You don't understand a word of this, do you?"
"No, and I ain't sure I want to. But if what you say is true, then why I never came back is because you stole my belt and took me away."
It was his turn to be surprised and a little shocked. For the first time, a trace of doubt came over Eric Benoni's face—self-doubt. Finally, he sighed. "You're right, of course. But what if you had ? You would simply wind up on the edge with the monsters just like we did. Being made over into a monster but with all the memories, all the knowledge. I'm saving you from that." She looked out at the dark night. "Where are we goin"?" "Not much further. My time is running out in this frame. A pity, for I wish I could find a way to save Ginny." There was a small dirt turnout that overlooked the bay on the left, and he pulled into it and stopped. He turned off the ignition and removed and pocketed the keys. Then he got out, and after a moment she did, too. There was a warm breeze blowing, and off in the distance could be seen the lights of big ships in the center channel.
"Joseph—if you are Joseph—why? You can't win. They'll just blow up the world." "Why? You stand there, like that, and ask why? As for losing, well, one side always claims it is the ultimate victor, doesn't it? Particularly when it wants you on its side. They lie, or tell half-truths, just as we must sometime. It's another part of war. But I've seen both sides, and I know death is preferable to what they offer." He paused a moment. "Good-bye, Mother. Remain here tonight and with your looks you're sure to get a ride and almost anything else you want." He pressed his "Home" stud and vanished into the night. She stood there, looking out at the bay, not really thinking, just crying in the wind. Finally she went back to the car, got in, locked all the doors, curled up, and continued crying in the damp and the dark. Finally, she felt all cried out and just sat there for a while, not really thinking at all, yet the thoughts came anyway. Who are you?
I—I don't know.
Why don't you know?
'Cause I've downtimed the night side once too much.
Who were you?
I—I was a small child of the streets, and a nun, and a crucified rebel slave, and countless whores,
but mostly I was Ron and Dawn.
But Ron and Dawn were lovers. They were two, not one. Were you truly both of them, or perhaps
neither one?
Something seemed to snap inside her. All this shit—it was crazy. It didn't make no sense at all. It was stupid, like dreams were stupid when you stopped to think on them a little. She suddenly sat up in the car. "Oh my god!" she said aloud. She'd seen it in others, but never thought about it in herself. Crazy. Around the bend. Looped. She'd seen it before, in Gloria, among others. Girls who just got sick and tired of this kind of life and knew they'd never be anything else. She thought maybe it happened when you got real old, like Gloria—she was almost forty. Not to her. But it had. It must be. Jesus! She'd really flipped out, and gone to live in cuckoo-land for a while. No use figuring out how she really came to be down here in this car. She looked in the back seat and saw her overnight case, then crawled in back, opened it, and pulled out her makeup case. Switching on the overhead light, she opened the case and looked at the face in the little round mirror. That's who I am, she told herself. I'm Holly. I never been nobody else but Holly and I ain't ever
gonna be nobody else neither.
She wiped away the remnants of the tears and made herself presentable once more. When she was satisfied, she packed up the case, unlocked the car door, and got out, taking it with her. It was still quite dark, but she began to walk up the road. There wasn't any traffic this time of night, but if a car didn't come along, she'd eventu-ally reach a phone, she was sure—or maybe wait until morning. She no longer felt tired, just anxious to get back to town and pick up her life. A very old Volkswagen came rattling down the road going in the opposite direction, and she paid it no heed. The driver, however, spotted her in his headlights and slowed, then made a U-turn and came back up to her. She grew suddenly frightened, aware of just how much in the middle of nowhere she was and just how alone and unpro-tected she was as well. The VW pulled in just ahead of her, and the right door opened. She approached it nervously, knowing there really was no place to run and just hoping this was someone who was just trying to be helpful—or on the make. She bent down and looked in at the driver. "Get in, Holly," said Doc.
"No! You're not real! You're part of the dream!" She backed away from the car gingerly.

"I won't hurt you, Holly, but I'm afraid I must insist. Don't worry. If nothing else, I'll take you as far as the
bus station in Waldorf."
"I—I don't trust you!"
"You shouldn't. But you don't have any choice. Now— get in! I have other appointments before this is over, and, as funny as it sounds, I don't have the time for foolishness." Holly sighed. "What the hell," she muttered, and pushed her case into the cramped back seat and slid into the front passenger side.
As soon as she closed the door, Doc was off into the night. A QUESTION OF HUMANITY
"It wasn't a dream, you know," Doc said at last. "It all really happened." She sobered a moment. "I know. I just don't want it to have." "Understandable. I assume Eric got your belt?" She nodded.
"That's no catastrophe. He's about to use it to go back to the old home setting, then attack the base. That'll cause us to move and you to jump forward, and the loop will be complete." "Is it true what he said? About him bein' Joseph and all?" He was startled. "I hadn't heard that." He thought for a long while. "Well, it would make everything else have some sense out of human actions, although it raises a bunch of those wild cards in time I told you about. If it's true, then we have a couple of laws to unlearn and a couple of new ones to discover, but that's par for the course in something this complicated. You get used to it. Or he might have been lying, and our laws are correct. Only— pardon me—time will tell."
"I ain't sure I want to know. I only understood a little of what he was sayin' anyways." Doc nodded but said nothing for a while. Finally, he asked, "Are you hungry? There's a Howard Johnson's up here that's open all night."
"I thought you said you was in a hurry." "No, I said I didn't have the time to fool around back there. I'm on a schedule, and this is part of it." They pulled into the parking lot, then went into the restaurant, which was mostly deserted. The few there obvi-ously drew conclusions from the sight of the young sexpot and the older professional man there at this time of night, but they were pretty worldly and served this sort of duo quite often. Doc ate heartily, but Holly just sipped her coffee and picked at her eggs. Finally, she asked, "What now, Doc? What's next?" It was said with weary resignation, not true curiosity. "I know what you're thinking. You've tripped. O.K., you've tripped before. I must have tripped a thousand times. It's no big deal anymore."
"Maybe not for you. You'll still Doc, no matter what. You got brains and a real job. I guess I had brains once, but it's all gone now. I can't even remember what he looked like, you know that? Every time I do this, I know a little less and think a little slower. I think that's what gets me most. It ain't not knowin' what I once knew so much as bein' real slow about what I still know now." She picked up a card on the table. "Clam . . . back . . . every . . . Friday," she read, pronouncing each word carefully and individually as if separated. "All . . . you . . . can . . . eat . . . just. . . . Oh, hell, you see? I can't read no better or faster'n that, and them's simple words. I can't cook or sew or nothin', 'cept some mendin'. How's that for somebody who went through all that college?"
"Nothing is permanent. Surely you understand that now if nothing else. What's forgotten can be relearned."
"C'mon, Doc! Don't kid me! Every single time I get a little dumber. I ain't got much left, Doc. I'm near retarded now. I'm too damn scared to do it again." "I think you underestimate yourself." He finished his coffee and looked out the window. "It's getting light out now. Looks like a nice day." He looked at his watch. "Let's go." They drove several places in the area, with Doc stop-ping now and then to talk to various people and make some phone calls. She fell asleep for a while and paid no attention to the activities, nor did she feel any curiosity about what was going on.
Doc shook her awake. She stirred uneasily, then opened her eyes and looked out the windshield. They were in some kind of public parking area, with another area slightly below them and fenced off. She looked to one side and saw the huge cooling towers of a nuclear power plant. She yawned, stretched as well as she could, and asked, "What're we doin' here?"

"Waiting. Not much longer now, I hope. Ah! There!"
A small blue car pulled into the lower lot and drove to a marked section. A woman dressed in whites got out, locked the door, and began to walk toward a lower entrance to the building. It was one of literally dozens of cars pulling in while others pulled out, but Doc drew Holly's attention to that one in particular. "Recognize her?"
"Nope. Not from this distance, anyways. I guess I should get glasses, but it don't seem worth the bother." "Dr. Karen Cline."
She sat up. "Huh? That her? You mean she's still comin' in to work and all?" Doc nodded. "It means success. Cline, or whoever she really is, is going in with full knowledge that there is going to be a terrorist raid today and that the facility is going to be taken over. We achieved complete surprise."
"You mean she don't know her friends got knocked off last night?" "No. Eric couldn't risk contacting her, and nobody else dared, not this close to the operation, anyway." "So what'll happen to her?"
"Nothing. It'll be a normal, uneventful day. She'll know something went wrong but won't dare try to con-tact her friends, for all the good it'd do her. She'll finish her shift and go home and make a time jump—she thinks. Only it won't be there." "Her belt?"
"Her apartment. In about ten minutes a blaze will start in the apartment under hers and it will be impossible to control. Every fire department within twenty miles will be needed to contain it. The place will burn to the ground, although hopefully with no loss of life. Cove's a pretty isolated little village. The right help just won't be able to get there in time." "And you figure she has the belt in the apartment?" "We figure. It still might not get the belt, but she won't dare go near it because she'll know we'll be watching and she'll hear about the shootout with the radicals. She'll have no choice but to keep doing what she's doing and hope she's picked up. She won't be, because we'll be on her every second. She'll be assimilated. Why?"
"Eric said she was Ginny."
"Indeed? Well, is that so bad a future? A career woman? A Ph.D.? An aide to valuable research? Isn't that better than almost anything we might have expected for her otherwise?" "I—I guess so." She paused. "Why're we still here? Ain't we gonna go to her place to make sure?" "In good time. Here—I'll stick this lousy radio on and get some music." They waited in silence for some time, and Holly began to drift off once more, but Doc suddenly switched off the music and she came awake as he started the car. They went down to the second parking area, which had a gate with a magnetic card pass required to raise it. Doc reached into a pocket, pulled out a card, and stuck it in. The gate went up, and they rolled into the lower lot and parked as close as possible to the door.
Almost immediately, a second car pulled in and after driving up and down the rows it parked very near them. A man got out and looked around at the setting, then locked his door. Holly stared at him, and her jaw dropped. "I see you still really do remember what he looks like," Doc said gently. "But—that's Ron!"
"Indeed, it is. Ronald Moosic, on his way to discover the secret of this installation and be given the tour. He's to be the new director of security. And because he will have a quiet and peaceful day, week, and month, he'll take over smoothly and do a fine job, and he'll never go downtime himself." She sank back into the seat, feeling totally lost and confused. She watched the tall, handsome, confident man enjoy the new day before going into the hidden installation. Finally, she said, in a voice so small it could hardly be heard and a tone almost tragically plaintive, "But—I started out as him. I know I did. Then I got turned into Dawn and all the others and finally I come to be me. But if he don't go back, he don't become all them people. They never lived. It all never happened. But I'm still here!"
"Yes."
She turned and looked squarely at Doc. "Then how am I here? Can you tell me that, Doc? How's Eric and Ginny and all the rest here when he never went back to father 'em or bear 'em?" "It all happened. Every bit of it happened, and is recorded back in time in our master computer and in our own memories. The unmaking of it also happened, Holly. That's why you're here. As to who and what you are, though—you're a nightsider, just like me and the others. We're the leftovers from this mess. All those

people that you were lived, and lived their lives out. Time has rippled them into existence, even as it has
rippled all records, all signs, all memories of what happened out of the main time line. Ron was gone, swallowed in time, but now he lives again and will live out his life. That's a plus, isn't it?" "I—I guess so. But if he's still here, and he's him, then I'm just what I am. Holly, nothin' more." Doc started the car, put it in gear, and drove out of the parking lot and back up onto the road and accelerated north toward Cove.
"You're nothing less than Holly," Doc said at last. "Right now you are the accumulated record of this whole thing. They're all still there, inside you, somewhere. And you're not as dumb as you think you are, either. You've followed my entire conversation this distance after the trip point." They made the drive to Cove in a few minutes, but saw the location long before they hit the town limits sign. A huge column of thick, black smoke rose from the horizon, and more than once they pulled over so one or another volunteer fire department could pass. State police prevented them from driving into the town itself, but it was small enough that they could tell that the incendiary had done its work with the team's usual precision. Doc backtracked to the junction and went over to the main highway, then headed north. "Where to now, Doc?"
"Not far. There's a turnoff up here with a van parked in it which has the time belts. This part of it is now finished."
There were several men and women already at the turnoff, and a number of cars were parked around. Holly knew that most of these were members of the team she might recog-nize in other circumstances. Doc got two of the small time belts from the back of the van and put one on, handing the other to Holly. She shook her head and didn't take it.
"No, Doc. You said it yourself. It's done. Finished. Ron's here and alive, and I ain't nobody but Holly, the best damn fuck in the east. I ain't got no place and no time else to go, Doc. I belong here." "There's still the kids."
Holly laughed sourly. "And what kind of Mama would I make now, huh? I don't look or act like her—'cause I ain't her. I'm a fucking ignorant whore. Doc!" Talking by the others had stopped at this scene, and all attention was on them. Doc looked around for support. A big man beckoned him, and he went over and they briefly conferred; then Doc returned, still holding the belt.
"You know what happens to nightsiders, don't you Holly?" he pressed, yet maintained a calm tone. "They make no mark and die young. You know what happens to young whores who don't die young? They get old, and some new little chickie becomes the favorite. They get bought and sold by their pimps and wind up washed-up addicts wallowing in filth. You know that. You've seen it. You want that kind of life?" She sighed. "You know I don't. But if I die young, all the better. I won't go that route, believe me. I'll kill myself first."
"So that's your future, huh? A decade or two of whor-ing until one day you're just so foul and so sick of yourself that you slit your wrists or jump off a roof or something? Unless one of the pimps or Johns kills you first."
"Stop it! Damn your fucking soul! Stop it! There ain't no choice!" "Yes, there is. You got one chance, but you have to take it now. Every hour, every day, brings you closer to what you think you now are." He held up the belt once again. "This is your way out. Take it. Use it now. Go where it sends you and listen to the other side of your life. I swear to you that, while I've preset it, it's a free and clear belt and it won't be taken from you without your permission. Just listen, for Christ's sake! For your own sake!"
She was more Holly than any or all of the others she had been, but even Holly wanted a way out, if she could only believe in it. She hesitated, then took the belt and strapped it around her slender waist. "Where will this take me?"
"To your future," Doc responded.
Hesitantly, her thumb went down to trigger the belt. It was probably going to be more misery and more lies, she thought, but Doc was right, as usual. When the known was unbearable, choose the unknown. She pressed the stud and was suddenly falling into time. The place was familiar. The same rock-like plastic walls, the same furniture, pretty much the same as when Ron Moosic had first seen it so many lifetimes ago. The only difference was that there seemed no

one about; the com-puter complex far back in time was deserted.
Or was it? She stared, once again cursing her near-sightedness, and focused on a high-backed chair across the room. It was turned away from her, but there was the unmistakable smell of cigarette smoke in the air and it seemed to be coming from that direction. "Hey! Anybody here?" she called out, her voice echoing. A man got up from the chair and came over to her, smiling. He was middle-aged, with a deep tan, and had bushy contrasting white hair and a thick white moustache. He was rather handsome for one his age, and in obviously good physical condition. He wore casual clothing—a plaid work shirt, a pair of new-looking jeans, and boots. He towered over her.
"Pardon me, but I hadn't more than a rough estimate of when you would arrive," he said in a deep, rich baritone. His accent was some British one, but it had a slight additional sound of some Latin intonation. "My name is Ramon Cruz."
She just stared at him, not knowing what to say or do next. "Are we . . . alone here?" He chuckled. "Oh, yes—quite alone, except for the omnipresent computer, I'm afraid. Come. Sit down over here and get comfortable. Remove the belt if you like—I will not try to take it from you, I swear." There was something in his tone and manner that made her want to trust him. Against her better instincts, she removed the belt and put it on the floor, then sank tiredly into a chair. He looked suddenly concerned. "Please forgive me! You are very tired, I can see. Would you prefer to go back to one of the rooms and get a good sleep? I can wait." She didn't want to go to sleep in this place, at least not until she knew the score. "That's O.K. I'll live." He sat back in another chair, facing her, and took a cigarette from a pack. "Do you mind if I smoke?" "Naw. In fact, I'll take one myself." She wasn't hooked on them, but she smoked occasionally. He offered her one, then lit it for her in courtly fashion. "Now—what's this all about?" "Your welfare—and closing the last little bit of the noose on our targets." "I figured it was more their game than any feelin' for me. What's left to do?" "Undo a terrible thing we have done to people who simply didn't deserve it. That is the easiest way to put it. Think of the permanently nightsided. You are one such. When the cause of the condition is closed, the ones who are left, the leftover flotsam and jetsam from the ship-wreck we prevented from happening, are thorns in the side of time. It wants to be rid of them. It often manages to do so gently, as in the case of your Dr. Cline, but if it's up on the edge, there's not as much leeway. You don't assimilate on the edge any more than you do back here. Eliminate the cause of the nightsider on the edge and time will arrange to eliminate him from future consideration."
"You mean he dies?"
"Usually. But consistently. I think, if indeed you are not too tired, that I might explain the last that you do not know."
"You might say who you are, for a start." He looked apologetic. "Ah! I'm so sorry! I am gener-ally called Father Ramon, although I am actually an archbishop—without portfolio from Rome, I fear." "You're a priest?"
"Yes. Does that bother you?"
"Yeah. It means I can't even get a good fuck—and boy, do I need one now! Sorry, Father—but I am what I am and I ain't Catholic anyway."
He shrugged. "A few of your lives were, including your origin, if I recall correctly. It does not matter. My branch of the Church is a bit more liberal and less orthodox than the one you know, in any case. You see, my church is on Mars."
She was suddenly wide awake. "Huh?"
"You understood me correctly. Mars."
"But—that's nuts! I know for a fact that them Outworlders are monsters—horrors." "That's quite true, in a physical sense and from our vantage point as what we call 'human beings,' but it is only physical. Inside, they are humans, and so am I and so are you. Even outside, some have great grace and beauty, and can do many things that you and I cannot, as well as everything you or I can do." "You couldn't live on Mars," she said skeptically. "Hell, I may have forgot more'n I can ever learn, but I know there ain't no air up there."
"Not enough air, and not in the right mixture, but, nevertheless, it is true. I am a Martian. I was born and raised there."
"You downtimed," she guessed. "You tripped over before comin' back here." He grinned. "See? You aren't so dumb as you think you are. It is true that this is not my natural form,

although I am a priest—and I'm fated to be a priest, no matter when in time I stop. I am certain I don't have
to explain that to you."
"You can say that again."
"So, Holly, tell me—am I human or not?"
"You are now."
"So, tell me, Holly, what makes a human being? Is a human being this physical flesh or what is inside the head?"
She shook her head in irritation. "I don't know. I ain't smart enough no more to figure that one out." "Well, I have seen the future of the human race. I have seen both futures of the human race. I have seen the Earth sink into a horror of misery and degradation, a humanity enslaved whose very souls are captive from birth to the dictatorial whims of a government elite, its resources depleted, its air fouled almost beyond redemption. The Earth of the future is death. The elite live over three hundred years, on average, in technological comfort. The slaving billions of the future have an average lifespan of less than thirty years—worse than in your own time by far, and live in a wasteland of medieval primitiveness. There's no power, no unspoiled vegetation, and few animals, ex-cept on the elite's preserves, where even human beings are hunted for sport. I can prove this. I have many pictures of this future Earth, or you could be taken there to a far corner to see for yourself.'' She sighed. "I believe you. So the shits will inherit the Earth. What else is new?" "We are," he replied softly. "Listen, my ancestors came to the New World and found great civilizations there. We did not try to integrate them into our society—we destroyed theirs. A priest of the Catholic Church burned the entire master royal library of the Mayan people in the Yucatan, and others of the Church and the Spanish state destroyed much of what was left. We destroyed their culture and reduced those proud people to slavery, and we were proud of it. They had a different culture, a different religion, and they looked and dressed wrong by European standards. They were, therefore, not human to my ancestors, but subhumans, intelligent but not ever equals. "When this old world began to run out of its exploitable resources, the fuels and minerals that made civilization good for everyone, they had to go out to the planets to find more, and find them they did. The trouble was, they were in places Earth humans could not live without expensive and extensive life support. Mars had much value beneath its rusty soil; many of the asteroids and moons of Jupiter and Saturn had even more. To change those places to the type on which humans could live and work easily would take a fortune—and centuries. Earth did not have cen-turies, and the amounts it needed from its planetary sisters was far too great and too expensive to be economically feasible. The only solution they had to this was to make humans into creatures that could live in such places as easily as men could live on Earth. Not easily—but at least as easily as men lived in the Antarctic cold and the desert wastes of the Sahara. Do you follow me so far?"
She nodded. "I think so. They got a bunch of people and changed them into monsters." "Not exactly. There was no shortage of volunteers. Skilled technicians and scientists were lured by the challenge and the romance of it. Workers were drawn from the poor and the dispossessed who saw a chance for becoming some-thing great. It was a new frontier, and it was tamed, in a way, by such a breed. Scientists, romantics, and both losers and criminals—the same mix that colonized the Americas. And like the colonists of the Americas, they were taken for granted, used, and abused by an Earth grown fat and dependent on their labors. Cultures which had no trouble destroying the Mayas or oppressing the American colonists found even less of a moral problem with the Outworlders. They did not look human at all, but in many cases like strange beasts. They gave the Earth what it craved in abundance, and the Earth accepted magnanimously. But they were human here—inside their bodies"— he tapped his chest—"and they found themselves re-garded as animals and treated as property." "And they're gettin' even."
"Perhaps. Being human, I'm afraid that's a part of it. But they will not be the new Mayans. Earth was totally dependent on them. When individual employees of a key mining company staged a major strike, they were ruth-lessly rounded up and put to death by the Earth authorities. That began a massive revolt that swept through the solar system like a fire. Earth was ill prepared and ignorant of history. The Outworlders were too angry to be afraid, and so, at great cost, they seized control of the most vital thing in the whole system—the transportation network. The sup-plies stopped, and Earth was strangled. Within weeks things began to break down. Within months they were in a crisis state. Within a year they were reduced to a horrible situation, with mass starvation and the collapse of the energy which was never very cheap and was now very dear. Most humans had taken such things for granted. They didn't know how to work the land without machines, nor could a non-mechanized civilization feed, clothe, and house its people. Governments

by necessity were forced to act brutally and ruthlessly. What was left, in the end, was a terrible, crushing
military dictatorship which created a min-iature of their old world, in which they alone got the resources and comforts that were left from the masses who slaved for them or died." "Seems to me it'd be easier to make a deal." "That's what we thought, but the collapse was so swift and sudden, the military authorities so absolute and doctrinaire, and nations which had hated each other for centuries merged their ruling classes out of common need. They are sixteenth-century Spain faced with a Mayan re-volt in which the Mayans have superior arms and position and all the resources. They will not deal with the subhumans, even though they need them, and their own fears and terrors and prejudices see only a domination by inhuman monsters. They see themselves as saving humanity, and will fight to the death for that ideal. And it is a terrible tragedy, for the inhuman monsters they so horribly fear are their own children." His face and tone took on a distant look. "See me. Am I not a human being? Yes, I am that—and more. I am the future. I am the way man broke with his follies and his wastefulness and spread to other worlds. I am the path to human survival, for through me humanity will continue to grow, spread, and thrive, to explore and experiment and wonder about the next hill, the next ocean, the next star. And if my skin is white, or black, or yellow, or a chitinous exoskeleton; if I breathe oxygen or methane—I am still a human being. I have seen the currents of air rushing down the great valleys of Mars, and I have stood upon the shores of great sand seas and watched a thousand colors reflect the pale sunlight. While my brothers grovel in the filth of ancient Earth, I have the freedom of the stars and know the wonders of God firsthand." She was impressed in spite of her tiredness and confusion, but Doc had been right. She had followed it all, and still had thinking doubts.
"Eric said you would destroy the human race." "We can't destroy it without destroying ourselves. Our fight is for many things, but it is not to destroy. One day, God willing, we will go to the stars and sow our seed, perhaps meet other of God's creations. We wish to save the people of Earth. Their own rulers wish to destroy what they cannot control, not us. We could have destroyed all life on Earth years ago. We are a rescue mission, a liberation movement, and a vision of man's future. For my part, I have a more personal motive. I am a priest of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, yet I am denied ever visit-ing Rome as myself, ever seeing the great dome of St. Peter's or the wonders of the Sistine Chapel, if, indeed, they still exist in my time. I wish to walk the streets of Campeche on the Gulf Coast of the Yucatan, where my great-grandfather was born and generations of my family before that. I cannot be denied the present or my future, but I am still robbed of my past which is my birthright."
"Why are you telling me all this? What is your fight to me now?" "Because we are the cause of your problems, and you are the solution to the last of ours. We have been buying time, as you might remember. Time to make certain that when Earth's last defenses collapse, they will not destroy this world which is my parent and my birthright and all its people. Earth was so weak it was difficult not to win. Our computers examined the time lines and came up with the pattern which has proven invaluable in staving off that collapse. We bore in on the children, but particularly Joseph and Ginny, after you were gone. We filled them with fear and showed them horrors as the Outworlders' legacy, while concealing that which was good, beautiful, and even great. We convinced them that we were the greater evil, and then allowed them to escape below." She sat up and stared at him. "You allowed them to escape?'' "I'm afraid so. Joseph, as Eric, reopened the time project, and created quite a mess for us to straighten out. The edge continued on, and his and his sister's efforts greatly lengthened the war. All but a few of the great stockpiled weapons of planetary destruction have now been neutralized. Depending en the skill of our extraordinary team, it may soon be over. Then we will come down and liberate the Earth, not as conquerors but as children return-ing to aid their elderly and infirm parents. The leadership will pack up and escape to their rear time base, while giving the commands to destroy the Earth after they leave. They will go. It is too difficult to stop them. But the Earth will survive and they will not know it." She did not feel like Dawn, and she certainly didn't feel like anyone's mother, and so it was a great 'surprise to her that she felt sudden anger well up inside her at what he now said. "You deceived my children and turned them to evil? My Joseph and Ginny?'' She half rose from her chair in anger, and only a steady gaze from his sad, dark eyes stopped her from going any further. "Yes. Two lives dirtied so that millions, perhaps billions, may live. It is a sad choice of war. Our Lord went to the cross to save even more."
"Yeah, but he could get up and go again stronger than ever!" "And so may you and those children. Get some rest here, relax, get your mind and heart clearly in order.

When you are ready, we can rejoin the children not long after you left. When the time comes for final
victory, you will all go forward to join the future—human, if you wish, helping in the massive job of rebuilding the Earth, or the other kind of human, going out to explore and learn and claim the stars." She stared at him, and wanted very much to believe him, but she just wasn't sure. And, of course, there was another problem. "You're forgetting who and what I am now." "What are you? Nothing that Mary Magdalene was not at one time. She chose correctly and achieved greatness and eternal salvation."
"But—them kids! They won't take me as their mom! And I sure as hell don't feel like no mom!" "You are still very much their mother, and that love and bond is still within you. You have just proven that. The rest is cosmetic, and that is a trivial matter. Have I not just been saying that this is at the heart of that great and terrible war? If you knew what a Martian human looked like, you would not worry. Physical adjustments as minor as yours, using our biology or the old-time method meticu-lously controlled by the computer, are too minor to even mention." She had to grant him that, and for the first time felt some real hope. "But if I go through this last thing, if I close this last loop, then Eric won't ever have existed. Won't that screw up the plan?" "Ron Moosic exists, and so do you. Eric will be cut off, a leftover at the edge of time. Remember, all that has happened so far actually happened. We wipe out only the record, not the event. What will happen to him, only time can tell, if you'll pardon me." She felt suddenly very weary and very old, more accept-ing his proposition than understanding, let alone em-bracing, it. What was truth and what was lies? Who was real and who was just downtiming the night side?
Only time will tell, she thought, drifting off in the chair. If they let it.
EPILOGUE LEADING EDGE, MAIN TIME LINE
It literally looked like Hell in the Party's headquarters; half the place seemed to be on fire. Actually, dozens of frantic aides were rushing about pulling and destroying files, computer records, and all the basic control ma-chinery that had managed Earth for so long a time from this tiny spot. Of particular import were all materials in any medium referring to time travel, the time project, or the master computer far downtime. These were the lucky ones—the one hundred men and women who would be allowed to go back. There might have been more, but there were only one hundred time belts available and the prehistoric complex could comfortably house and provide for no more than a few hundred anyway. A dozen were the Central Committee, of course, and that was to be regretted, but no project like this could go through to completion unless they were included, even if they were far older than would be useful. The rest were family, close associates, trusted aides, and their families. Most of the complex of several thousand thought they were going, too, and awaited the transfer of the first hundred with nervous anticipation. The belts were then to be homed back to the time control complex and be used again, and again, a hundred at a time, until all were safe. They didn't know how limited the facilities were downtime, and never suspected for a second that those belts would never return.
Nor did they know that Chairman Shumb had already read in what were known as the Armageddon Codes into the master computers worldwide that would explode within an hour of the Chairman's own farewell with such mon-strous force that they might well shake Earth's orbit and blow so much radioactive debris into the air that the world would be plunged into a horrible, cold darkness for years, while radioactivity scoured the planet of even the hardier forms of life. They didn't even know about the massive superbomb sitting underneath this very complex, which, when it went, would make their silly scramble to destroy all rec-ords and controls an exercise in childish futility. Max Shumb sighed, looked at his watch, then got up from his big desk and looked around the office he'd occu-pied for so many years. He didn't want to leave, didn't want to give up what had become so much a part of him, but it was either do so or perish with the Earth. He had no intention of doing that. One of these days they might work out a way back there in the great prehistoric waste-land to keep this from happening, to prevent what was now inevitable. He liked to think so, if only because of the great art and great works of literature he would lose here.
The death of the population of the Earth did not trouble him in the slightest. Only a few human beings

really mattered other than himself. The rest were mostly cattle, easily replaced if you had enough time and
enough women.
General Kolodin entered and saluted smartly. "Sir, we are ready to transport and time is getting short. I must insist that you come with me immediately." Chairman Shumb nodded and sighed. "Yes, you're right, Alexei." The general looked around the room and read his leader's thoughts. "It's not really gone, you know. Not so long as the belts work."
Shumb grinned. "You know just what to say every time." "The Russian is a pragmatist at all times. It is the climate that does it." He paused a moment. "There is still the matter of Eric Benoni."
"Huh? Second Wave, isn't he? Won't that take care of itself?" "Sir, he's quite clever and he thinks well ahead for self-preservation. He is insisting on First Wave priority."
"That son-of-a-bitch is a pushy bastard, isn't he? He's the one who was supposed to bail us out and instead we're riding down the toilet, and now he expects to get a free ride. Where is he now?" "In the reception area near the time project control center." Shumb nodded. "Well, come on, Alexei. Time to march forward into the past. On the way down we'll find a squad of protectors and order them to shoot the son-of-a-bitch." THE NIGHT SIDE
"I know where I came from, but where did all you zombies come from?" Robert A. Heinlein, particularly in his short fiction, had an annoying habit of raising questions that he never thought worth solving, I think mostly because he was going for an emotional reaction to which such things would have brought needless complexity. For that level of complexity, he needed a novel, and he didn't turn to answering those questions from the shorts when he wrote his long work, but rather other concepts. I have a different reaction to such things. In "They," Heinlein writes of the classic paranoid who is institutionalized because he comes to believe that the whole world is being put on for his benefit alone. I hope I'm not destroying a classic for any of my readers by noting that, of course, Heinlein closes with the director of the asylum wor-rying about the subject escaping, and uttering those wonder-ful lines, "New York City and Harvard University are now dismantled. Divert him with those sectors. Move!"
That line justifies the story on its own, but it's really just a lightweight gimmick tale, a shaggy dog story, but from the first time I read it I found myself less interested in the "shock" ending (whose sense, although not its great lines, I already expected) than I was fascinated by the concept of an entire race devoting its sole energies to fooling and containing one individual. What, I wondered, would cause a race to devote its entire activity to such an end? Phil Dick addressed this same concept to a degree in his novel Time Out of Joint, but his solution, while ingenious, wasn't of the scope I imag-ined the first time I read "They." Maybe someday I'll write it. I have a number of very rational solutions, but I've never thought the rationales up to the premise. We'll see. "All You Zombies" had a much more direct effect on me along the same lines. Heinlein always had a fascination with time paradoxes, and "All You Zombies" is a more modern, "grown-up" variation on his early Forties novelette "By His Bootstraps," in which the hero isn't also the heroine, as in "Zombies," but does wind up being not only the hero but also the arch-villain (and much of the supporting cast). The problem was, he still had to throw those extras to the wind in both stories, although in "Zombies" he acknowledges the problem. I grew fascinated with answering the question about who all those zombies were and where they all came from and how they came about, and determined to have that answer stand up to a ruthless logic. It was basically my second book concept (after A Jungle of Stars), and I started to work on the problem way back in 1976. The heart of the problem was, of course, causality.
Backward time travel stories are really fantasies, not sci-ence fiction at all, because they all are forced to either ignore laws of physics or collapse. (Forward time travel, of course, has no such problems except the fact that you can't go home again). Evan Hunter, wearing his Richard Marsden hat, tried to tackle it head on accepting the laws of physics and causality in a Fifties Winston "juvenile" novel called Danger: Dino-saurs. A much unappreciated and little known book today that should be back in print, it was the first work I know of in which, as each major character dies, the entire premise of the book changes constantly. A little of which was in the Back to the Future movies, but they owed more to It's a Wonderful Life than to real science fiction for their causality problems, with perhaps a touch of Jack Williamson's The Legion of Time, in which the "present" is the last point of reality and from that point the future is conditional. That to me also brings up more questions than it solves, since my hard-headed logi-cal bent refuses to accept the idea that the "present" in any real temporal sense isn't the farthest out in the expanding master time wave. In effect, I didn't want any solution that wound up with the old cliche that meddling in the past so changed the

future that nothing you just read actually happened. The "present" is that far future; we are in the past in a temporal
sense, and what they do is from the basis of reality, not possibility. That "present" has to be fixed; it has to have existed, or none of the actions would have been necessary. No conditional future. But the real future, the second beyond the present, is always conditional because it hasn't yet happened. The concept, then, had to be from the point of view of influencing the future course of a fixed "present." And already you're seeing why so few decent, complex time travel paradox books are done. "Oops! But if we accept this, then we also have to buy that! But if that has to be accepted, then . . ." And you forget it and go off and write something saner. And you always thought that writing science fiction was fun, huh? In other words, to answer Heinlein's question, I discovered I had to invent a whole new line of physics and work it out while accepting the real world as it is, and I had to do it completely before I could do a single bit of plotting. I also had to accept Heinlein's logic, that what we know today is the result of what's already happened, but without throwing paradox to the winds.
So, most of all, I had to take on causality. Accepting the unlikely premise that backward travel might be possible, at the very least we're faced with the sure phenomenon of natu-ral resistance. If you go back, you will find yourself in a situation where you are (A) unlikely to effect events in any way, and (B) in which time, as a force of nature, would be fighting you every step of the way. Defining this process, while accepting a level of "present," as stated, resulted, I think, in a logical answer to Heinlein's unanswered question. By late 1978, I had it sufficiently worked out so that I understood it. Unfortunately, it wasn't until about 1981 that I had it well enough along that I could make other people understand it. Once I had that, though, I could proceed to work out the book—and then I hit the second "gotcha" inher-ent in the construction of all good time travel paradox stories.
It quickly become obvious that such a book, if it was to be true to itself and the readers, had to be not only constructed but written quite differently than just about any other sort of book. Just as a complex murder mystery has to be at least partly written backwards—if you don't write the ending first you'll never solve the crime yourself—the structure of a time travel paradox story must be, by definition, Shakespearian— a five-act play in which the climax comes not at the end but in the third act, beyond which the logic of what precedes it dictates the final two acts. Cause and effect in a time paradox book are reversed—effect comes in Acts I and II; definining climax comes right in the middle, while cause comes in the last two acts to explain the first two acts. I call this the Won-derland Method: sentence first, verdict after.
This, then, means scrupulous outlining with little room to maneuver. It's constricting and can drive a creative mind completely around the bend, particularly when you see a wonderful idea that you'd love to use but which would mean throwing out the 50,000 words you already wrote. This kind of time travel book requires more discipline than most writers have, and more than any writers want to have. The book you are now reading took many false starts and was worked on over a long period of time, between the other projects, requiring in the end better than two years to write after its mechanics were worked out. I realize when I finished it that it could not have been written by me any sooner; without the personal computer and a decent word processor, it would have been nearly impossible for me to have seen it through. That alone gives me both admiration for the earlier paradox writers using only typewriters and some feeling of why so many of the questions were left unanswered by those who came here before. Well, here's my answer to the question, and my way of making time travel science fiction, rather than a branch of fantasy. If done right, these stories can be a lot of fun to read while making your head spin. I think Downtiming the Nightside is both fun and fast and yet thoughtful. It, and this explanation, though, may tell you why in forty-plus
subse-quent books, I haven't written another time travel book. Now, then . . . Never mind that they dismantled New York City. The real question is, why did they build it in the first place? Hmmmm. . . .
Jack L. Chalker
May 8, 1992