He applauded himself almost constantly. By damned, he was going to pull it off! A plot so delicate and complex that he was constantly awed by his own temerity.

Finding the man's nearest living relative. What a hunt that had been. Then he had had to become a respected member of her church. Finally, the time had been right to offer his medical services to the convent… He lacked a license, but there hadn't been many questions. It was a poor parish.

Such joy he had known the day he had brought home the blood-stained paper towel she had used to stop a nosebleed. Cells enough for a thousand clones. With a little ingenious gene sculpture using a half-million dollars worth of equipment, he had produced a male embryo.

Ah, the fortunes he had had to spend. But it was worth it. Definitely worth it.

The corpse would cause an uproar so mighty that she would have to run to Fial.

It had come to that. He had gotten nowhere in his search for the last Groloch. If only he could have gotten to Fian's things at Lidice… But the security police would have cut him up for fish bait.

Spooking Fiala was the only way left. She would know where to find the man-if he were alive at all.

Smiley could not accept the possibility that one of his enemies might have escaped him through death. No. There was order and justice in this universe. The man was hiding. When the fire got intense enough, Fiala would bolt for the same cover.

Smiley was enjoying himself hugely. For the first time since the Uprising, he was having fun.

He heaved the clone into the power wheelchair. The other four… well, he would have to do something. After he saw how this worked out. He wouldn't need them if it clicked. He began whistling while he dressed his homemade stalking horse.

The wheelchair could climb steps. It was the fanciest available. He had practiced leaving the basement with a sandbag as passenger, but never with a human body. He anticipated snags.

There were none. The chair climbed slowly but perfectly.

He opened his garage and dragged the uninflated mini-blimp into the alley. The clone sat silently, motionlessly, the only sign of life an occasional shiver.

Smiley had come to the tricky part. It was still early. If anyone spotted him, or his airship, before the snowfall cut visibility and stopped traffic… If he erred during his two block flight and crashed the damned blimp… If there were lightning in the storm…

He shouldn't have used hydrogen. Too dangerous.

But he wouldn't have gotten enough lift from helium. The airship was too small.

It would work out. It had to. He had invested too much time and money and energy, had taken too many risks, to have it sour now.

It hummed along smoothly. The gas bag filled. He manhandled his unnatural child into the gondola, clambered in himself. Everything was in place. The little single stroke engine began purring first try. The breeze fell off to nothing as the snowfall grew heavier.

He took the ship up. It responded as perfectly as it had during test flights on the small farm he owned a hundred miles south of the city. There was one minor mishap, when the ship nudged the sky-clawing fingers of a gigantic sycamore, but the incident scarcely slowed him. He navigated by the lights of the houses, clearing their rooftops by a scant ten feet.

Soon he was over the alley, anchored to an elm. He lowered the clone. The snow was so dense he could hardly discern the ground, though a streetlight stood fifty feet to the west.

Excellent.

The clone tried to walk, as its muscles had been taught. But when the breakaway harness cut loose, it collapsed.

Smiley aimed his crude sonic weapon. The clone twitched, squirmed, died.

They would think it had been shock.

He flew home to await developments.

But it didn't work out the way he hoped. After momentary excitement, everyone lost interest. Even Fiala misinterpreted the message he had thought implicit in the body's appearance.

Maybe he was being too subtle.

Well, he still had four soldiers sleeping in the womb. He would put them in one by one till the police had to lean on somebody. An apparently endless column of O'Briens had to break things open.

Meanwhile, his detective agency watched the woman around the clock.

The break came only after months of waiting. The warning that something unusual was in the wind came when she left her home to make a phone call by daylight. Smiley fired up his cranky old '53 Dodge and listened on CB channel nineteen.

His detectives did the tailing. He allowed them to guide him in.

A funeral. For the clone.

He acted on impulse, allowed himself to be seen.

He hadn't wanted to do it that way. But she just hadn't gotten the message of the time-traveler corpse.

He felt the electricity. She had recognized him as surely as he had recognized Dunajcik. Maybe there was some sort of personality field which grew more intense with time…

Smiley began moving the moment he got home. There wasn't much left to do. He had been at it for months. He boxed the remnants of his stamp collection and sent them out by UPS. He watched the truck leave with a feeling of emptiness. It might be years before he found time to relax again. It could be a long chase, police wolves nipping his heels all the way. And he had had to sell so much to finance his work.

Those little bits of paper with their quiet story of human communication were the thing he could love, the one thing he could worry about, cherish and preserve. It was an odd sublimation, though not unusual, and even he recognized that strange twist in his character.

The crisis had come on unexpectedly. Now there would be no time to dispose of the redundant clones, nor to dismantle and disperse the lab. He had planned to bury everything on his farm. But the detectives said the woman was in a panic, shipping out boxes and bags already. He would have to take drastic steps.

He had the nearby service station deliver a hundred gallons of gasoline in a variety of gas cans purchased from the auto parts shop next door. A big, hot fire should erase the most important clues.

All he needed was a head start anyway. Two days and there would be no way they could track him. He had been a step ahead for ages.

He was in a hotel in New York City when his agency informed him that his quarry's final destination appeared to be Rochester. She had stopped making transfers there. Within the hour he was headed north in his chartered Lear jet, nerve ends tingling.