“Yes,” he said, “they’ve already been informed.”

“You see,” she said to Al, “he, even the President, has more actual power than I.” She smiled wanly.

Al said, “How many attempts have there been on your life?”

“Six or seven,” she said. “All for psychological reasons. Unresolved Oedipal complexes or something like that. I don’t really care.” She turned to her husband, then. “I really think these two men here—” She pointed at Al and Ian. “They don’t seem to know what’s going on; maybe they are innocent.” To her husband and Slezak and the security guards she said, “Do they have to be destroyed? I don’t see why you couldn’t just eradicate a part of their memory-cells and let them go. Why wouldn’t that do?”

Her husband shrugged. “If you want it that way.”

“Yes,” she said. “I’d prefer that. It would make my job easier. Take them to the medical center at Bethesda and then let’s go on; let’s give an audience to the next performers.”

A security guard nudged Ian in the back with his gun. “Down the corridor, please.”

“Okay,” Ian murmured, gripping his jug. But what happened? he wondered. I don’t quite understand. This woman isn’t Nicole and even worse there is no Nicole anywhere; there’s just the TV image, the illusion, and behind it, behind her, another group entirely rules. A council of some kind. But who are they and how did they get power? Will we ever know? We came so far; we almost seem to know what’s really going on. The actuality behind the illusion… can’t they tell us the rest? What difference would it make now? How—

“Goodbye,” Al was saying to him.

“What?” he said, horrified. “Why do you say that? They’re going to let us go, aren’t they?”

Al said, “We won’t remember each other. Take my word for it; we won’t be allowed to keep any ties like that. So—” He held out his hand. “So goodbye, Ian. We made it to the White House. You won’t remember that either, but it’s true; we did do it.” He grinned crookedly.

“Move along,” the security guard said to them.

Holding their jugs, the two of them moved down the corridor, toward the door and the waiting black medical van beyond.

It was night, and Ian Duncan found himself at a deserted street corner, cold and shivering, blinking in the glaring white light of an urban monorail loading platform. What am I doing here? he asked himself, bewildered. He looked at his wristwatch; it was eight o’clock. I’m supposed to be at the All Souls Meeting, aren’t I? he thought dazedly.

I can’t miss another one, he realized. Two in a row—it’s a terrible fine; it’s economic ruin. He began to walk.

The familiar building, Abraham Lincoln with all its network of towers and windows, lay extended ahead; it was not far and he hurried, breathing deeply, trying to keep up a good steady pace. It must be over, he thought. The lights in the great central subsurface auditorium were not lit. Damn it, he breathed in despair.

“All Souls is over?” he said to the doorman as he entered the lobby, his identification held out.

“You’re a little confused, Mr. Duncan,” the doorman said, putting away his gun. “All Souls was last night; this is Friday.”

Something’s gone wrong, Ian realized. But he said nothing; he merely nodded and hurried on toward the elevator.

As he emerged from the elevator on his own floor, a door opened and a furtive figure beckoned to him. “Hey, Duncan.”

It was Corley. Warily, because an encounter like this could be disastrous, Ian approached him. “What is it?”

“A rumor,” Corley said in a rapid, fear-filled voice. “About your last relpol test—some irregularity. They’re going to rouse you at five or six A.M. tomorrow morning and spring a surprise quiz on you.” He glanced up and down the hall. “Study the late 1980s and the religio-collectivist movements in particular. Got it?”

“Sure,” Ian said, with gratitude. “And thanks a lot. Maybe I can do the same—” He broke off, because Corley had hurried back into his own apartment and shut the door; Ian was alone.

Certainly very nice of him, he thought as he walked on. Probably saved my hide, kept me from being forcibly ejected right out of here forever.

When he reached his apartment he made himself comfortable, with all his reference books on the political history of the United States spread out around him. I’ll study all night, he decided. Because I have to pass that quiz; I have no choice.

To keep himself awake, he turned on the TV. Presently the warm, familiar being, the presence of the First Lady, flowed into motion and began to fill the room.

“…and at our musical tonight,” she was saying, “we will have a saxophone quartet which will play themes from Wagner’s operas, in particular my favorite, ‘Die Meistersinger.’ I believe we will truly all find this a deeply rewarding and certainly an enriching experience to cherish. And, after that, my husband the President and I have arranged to bring you once again an old favorite of yours, the world renown cellist, Henri LeClercq, in a program of Jerome Kern and Cole Porter.” She smiled, and at his pile of reference books, Ian Duncan smiled back.

I wonder how it would be to play at the White House, he said to himself. To perform before the First Lady. Too bad I never learned to play any kind of musical instrument. I can’t act, write poems, dance or sing—nothing. So what hope is there for me? Now, if I had come from a musical family, if I had had a father or brothers to teach me how…

Glumly, he scratched a few notes on the rise of the French Christian Fascist Party of 1975. And then, drawn as always to the TV set, he put his pen down and turned to face the set. Nicole was now exhibiting a piece of Delft tile which she had picked up, she explained, in a little shop in Vermont. What lovely clear colors it had… he watched, fascinated, as her strong, slim fingers caressed the shiny surface of the baked enamel tile.

“See the tile,” Nicole was murmuring in her husky voice. “Don’t you wish you had a tile like that? Isn’t it lovely?”

“Yes,” Ian Duncan said.

“How many of you would like someday to see such a tile?” Nicole asked. “Raise your hands.”

Ian raised his hand hopefully.

“Oh, a whole lot of you,” Nicole said, smiling her intimate, radiant smile. “Well, perhaps later we will have another tour of the White House. Would you like that?”

Hopping up and down in his chair, Ian said, “Yes, I’d like that.”

On the TV screen she was smiling directly at him, it seemed. And so he smiled back. And then, reluctantly, feeling a great weight descend over him, he at last turned back to his reference books. Back to the harsh realities of his daily, endless life.

Against the window of his apartment something bumped and a voice called at him thinly, “Ian Duncan, I don’t have much time.”

Whirling, he saw outside in the night darkness a shape drifting, an egg-like construction that hovered. Within it a man waved at him energetically, still calling. The egg gave off a dull putt-putt noise, its jets idling as the man kicked open the hatch of the vehicle and then lifted himself out.

Are they after me already on this quiz? Ian Duncan asked himself. He stood up, feeling helpless. So soon… I’m not ready, yet.

Angrily, the man in the vehicle spun the jets until their steady white exhaust firing met the surface of the building; the room shuddered and bits of plaster broke away. The window itself collapsed as the heat of the jets crossed it. Through the gap exposed the man yelled once more, trying to attract Ian Duncan’s faculties.

“Hey, Duncan! Hurry up! I have your brother already; he’s on his way in another ship!” The man, elderly, wearing an expensive natural-fiber blue pin-stripe suit, lowered himself with dexterity from the hovering egg-shaped vehicle and dropped feet-first into the room. “We have to get going if we’re to make it. You don’t remember me? Neither did Al. Boy, I take off my hat to them.”