"This used to be a naval lookout station," he said. "It's over a hundred years old. They used to watch for Japanese planes from here. Now, it's mostly a weather station. And a place for tourists to picnic."

He led us up through four levels of concrete bunker, up a set of stairs, and out onto a catwalk

"Urk-" I said.

"You are now two hundred and thirty-three meters above sea level," said Foreman. "Don't look if it bothers you."

The catwalk led around a bulge of rock on the outermost edge of the highest point of the crater, to a set of stairs and a handrail. At the very top was a tiny concrete gazebo. It looked too high, too precarious, and much too easy to fall off of.

"I, uh . . . think, I'll go back inside . . . and look from there."

"Okay," said Foreman. He started up the last flight of stairs. Lizard followed him.

Neither looked back at me. Goddammit.

I hadn't even known I was this afraid of heights.

I closed my eyes and climbed the stairs, not opening them until I reached the top.

They were waiting for me there.

They had spread out a blanket. Lizard was laying out a small buffet. Foreman was opening a bottle of champagne. The cork popped and shot straight out toward Waikiki. It arced high, then tumbled down into the greenery, two hundred and forty meters below.

"Nice shot," I commented.

Foreman handed me a glass. "Thank you." He poured for himself and Lizard. "Have you ever been here before?"

"Uh, no."

"That's why we brought you. When I was your age, there weren't as many stairs or handrails. That last bit of stairs, for example-that used to be a rocky slope. A bit more challenging then."

I looked back and shuddered.

"Spend a moment taking in the view," he said.

"I feel like I can see almost all of Oahu from here."

"Well, this side of it anyway. Look," he pointed. "There goes the state bird of Hawaii."

I looked. "All I see is a lumbering old 747."

"That's it. We've got everything that flies going back and forth between here and the mainland. They're on the ground only long enough to take on fuel and supplies. We've got planes landing every thirty seconds. We're connecting to Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LAX, and San Diego. We're moving as much of the vital organs of the United States as possible out of the cancerous part of the body. We're duplicating the memory tanks in New York, Denver, and Washington, D.C. as well.

"If you look out there," he pointed, "you can see where we've started three new artificial islands. By next year, we'll have a chain of them ten miles long. As long as the current flows, we have electricity. As long as we have electricity, we can grow all the sea domes and islands we can use. We're also putting in a floating runway exclusively for shuttle operations, but that'll be at Maui."

"How are the locals taking it?" I asked.

"Some of them hate it. Some of them love it." He shrugged. "Nobody likes living in a refugee camp, and there's a very good chance that's what this state will become. We're trying to get more people to move on to Australia and New Zealand, but most Americans don't want to go that far. Would you?"

"I wouldn't want to abandon the United States to the Chtorrans, no. Here, we're still fighting back."

"Uh-huh." Foreman smeared some chopped liver on a cracker and popped it into his mouth. "What about you?"

"What do you mean, what about me?"

"What do you want to do?"

"Haven't we had this conversation once before?"

"Uh-huh, and we'll probably have it again. The answer may have changed. What do you want to do, Jim?"

"You know where my commitment is. I hate the worms. I want to kill them."

"So? What?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"I didn't say 'So what?' I said, 'So? What?' Two different sentences. So? What next?"

"I don't understand."

"Wanting to kill Chtorrans isn't all, Jim. There's something else there. If all you really wanted was to kill Chtorrans, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You'd just be a killing machine. We'd point you at Chtorrans and you'd kill them. But the truth is, you don't want to kill any more, do you? You've got some very real questions about what's going on, don't you? And you want to find the answers more than you want to keep on killing. Right?"

What he was saying was true. "Right," I agreed.

Foreman refilled my champagne glass. He refilled Lizard's as well. She was listening to both of us, saying nothing.

Foreman said to me, "Who are you?"

"I'm James Edward McCarthy."

"No, you're not. That's a name you use to identify that body."

"Well, I'm this body then."

"No, you're not. That's just a body that you use."

"Well, then, I'm the person who uses this body."

"So? Who's that? Who are you?"

"I'm a human being!"

"So? What's a human being?"

I stopped. "I don't know what you want me to say."

"I want to know who you are, Jim."

"Well, none of my answers has been good enough for you."

"None of your answers is who you really are. You keep saying things that show that you think you're your name, or your body, or your species. Are you really?"

I thought about it. I didn't know what he was driving at. I said, "I don't know."

He said, "That's right. You don't. You don't know who you really are. And you don't even know that you don't know."

"I know now," I said. "This conversation is . . . sort of silly. I mean, I don't know what we're talking about at all. It's like a head game."

"Yes, it is a head game, Jim. That's why God gave you a head. You can't play football without a ball, you can't play head games without a head. That's all it's good for. Now, let me ask you the next question. Now that you know that you don't know who you really are, what are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do."

"No, I don't."

"Saying you don't know is what keeps you unconscious. It keeps you stuck. It lets you avoid being responsible."

"All right. I guess I'm supposed to say that the next step is that I should find out who I really am. Except, I don't know how to do that."

"I didn't ask you if you knew how. That wasn't the question. Have you ever noticed that most people never answer the question that's asked them. They give you the reason why they won't answer it instead."

"What is all this about?"

"Lizard asked me to put you into the next Mode Training. I need to know if you really want to do it. Do you?"

I said, "I don't know."

Foreman smiled. "Thanks for being so honest. The purpose of the training is to reveal your operating modes, so that you can be aware of them and transcend them."

"Could you translate that into English?"

"It's really very simple, Jim." He scratched his ear. "Let me give it to you this way. Do you know how to surprise a fish?"

"Huh? No, how do you surprise a fish?"

"You reach very carefully into the tank, grab it by the tail and lift it up out of the water, just high enough for it to get a very clear view of the top of the water. You'll have to watch very quickly, but if you do, you'll see that fish get a very surprised expression on its face."

"Uh-huh." How far into his cheek was his tongue?

"Now-whatever you do, do not put that fish back into the same tank with other fish who have not also had the same experience."

"Why?"

"Why? Because that poor fish is now crazy by their standards. He'll be swimming around poking all the other fish, saying, 'Hey! This is water! We're swimming in water!' They're going to look at him sideways and swim off into the corner to say, 'Poor old fellow, he used to be so sensible, till he started talking about this water stuff.' That's how the Training works.

"We grab you by the tail, we lift you up out of the water you're swimming in, then we put you back in the water. You know why? You can't keep a fish out of water. It dies. The Training doesn't mean you won't be swimming in water. It just lets you see the water you're swimming in. That's called an operating conditionor a mode. The Training is the opportunity to discover your modes. Right now, you're unconscious to most of your operating states. So they run you. If you were conscious of them, you could transcend them. And you could be more responsible for the results you produce in the world.