Lifting the receiver to his ear he said, "Goodbye."

"I love you, Niehls," Charise McFadden stated in her breathless, emotion-saturated voice. "Do you love me?"

"Yes, I love you, too," he said. "When have I seen you last? I hope it won't be long. Tell me it won't be long."

"Most probably tonight," Charise said. "After work. There's someone I want you to meet, a virtually unknown inventor who's desperately eager to get official eradication for his thesis on, ahem, the psychogenic origins of death by meteor-strike. I said that because you're in section B -"

"Tell him to eradicate his thesis himself."

"There's no prestige in that." Earnestly, Charise pleaded, "It's really a dreadful piece of theorizing, Niehls; it's as nutty as the day is long. This boy, this Lance Arbuthnot -"

"That's his name?" It almost persuaded him. But not quite. In the course of a single day he received many such requests, and every one, without exception came represented as a crank piece by a crank inventor with a crank name. He had held his chair at Section B too long to be easily snared. But still – he had to investigate this; his ethical structure insisted on it. He sighed.

"I hear you groaning," Charise said brightly.

Lehrer said, "As long as he's not from the F.N.M."

"Well – he is." She sounded guilty. "I think they threw him out, though. That's why he's here and not there."

But that, Lehrer realized, proved nothing. Arbuthnot – possibly – did not share the fanatical militant convictions of the ruling elite of the Free Negro Municipality; possibly he was too moderate, too balanced for the Bards of the republic carved out of quondam Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas and Missouri. But then again he perhaps had too fanatical a view. One never knew; not until one met the person, and sometimes not even then. The Bards, being from the East, had managed to dribble a veil over the faces of three-fifths of mankind, a veil which successfully obscured motive, intention and God knew what else.

"And what is more," Charise continued, "he personally knew Anarch Peak before Peak's sad shrinking."

"Sad!" Lehrer bristled. "Good riddance." There: that had been the foremost eccentric and idiot of the world. All Lehrer needed was the opportunity to rub shoulders with a follower of the newly parasitic Anarch. He shivered, recalling from his professional eclectic books – examining at the library the accounts of mid-twentieth century race violence; out of the riots, lootings and killings of those days had come Sebastian Peak, originally a lawyer, then a master spellbinder, at last a religious fanatic with his own devout following… a following which extended over the planet, although operating primarily in the F.N.M. environs.

"That could get you in trouble with God," Charise said.

"I have to get to work now," Lehrer said. "I'll phone you during my coffee break; meanwhile I'll do some research on Arbuthnot in the files. My decision as regards his nut-head theory of psychosomatic meteor-strike deaths will have to wait until then. Hello." He hung up the phone, then, and rose swiftly to his feet. His soiled garments gave off a truly gratifying odor of must as he made his way from his apartment to the elevator; satisfaction as to his grooming made him brighten. Possibly – despite Charise and this, her newest fad, the inventor Arbuthnot – today might be a good day after all.

But, underneath, he doubted it.

When Niehls Lehrer arrived at his section of the library, he found his slim blonde-haired secretary Miss Tomsen trying to rid herself – and him, too – of a tall, sloppily-dressed middle-aged gentleman with a briefcase under his arm.

"Ah, Mr. Lehrer," the individual said in a dry, hollow voice as he made out Lehrer, obviously recognizing him at once; he approached Niehls, hand extended. "How nice to meet you, sir. Goodbye, goodbye. As you people say out here." He smiled a flashbulb instantly-vanishing smile at Niehls, who did not return it.

"I'm quite a busy man," Niehls said, and continued on past Miss Tomsen's desk to open the inner door to his private suite. "If you wish to see me, you'll have to make a regular appointment. Hello." He started to shut the door after him.

"This concerns the Anarch Peak," the tall man with the briefcase said. "Whom I have reason to believe you're interested in."

"Why do you say that?" He paused, irritated. "I don't recall ever expressing any interest in anyone of Peak's sort."

"You must recall. But that's so. You're under Phase, here. I'm oriented in the opposite, normal time-direction; therefore what for you will soon happen is for me an experience of the immediate past. My immediate past. May I take a few minutes of your time? I could well be of great use to you, sir." The man chuckled.

" 'Your time.' Well-put, if I do say so. Yes, decidedly your time, not mine. Just consider that this visit by myself took place yesterday." Again he smiled his mechanical smile – and mechanical it was; Niehls now perceived the small but brilliant yellow stripe sewed on the tall man's sleeve. This person was a robot, required by law to wear the identifying swath so as not to deceive. Realizing this, Niehls' irritation grew; he had a strict, deeply-imbedded prejudice against robies which he could not rid himself of; which he did not want to rid himself of, as a matter of fact.

"Come in," Niehls said, holding the door to his lavish suite open. The roby represented some human principal; it had not dispatched itself: that was the law. He wondered who had sent it. Some functionary of the syndicate? Possibly. In any case, better to hear the thing out and then tell it to leave.

Together, in the main workchamber of the library suite, the two of them faced each other.

"My card," the roby said, extending its hand.

He read the card, scowling.

Carl Gantrix

Attorney At Law W.U.S.

"My employer," the roby said. "So now you know my name. You may address me as Carl; that would be satisfactory." Now that the door had shut, with Miss Tomsen on the other side, the roby's voice had acquired a sudden and surprising authoritative tone.

"I prefer," Niehls said, cautiously, "to address you in the more familiar mode as Carl Junior. If that doesn't offend you." He made his own voice even more authoritative. "You know, I seldom grant audiences to robots. A quirk, perhaps, but one concerning which I am consistent."

"Until now," the robot Carl Junior murmured; it retrieved its card and placed it back in its wallet. Then, seating itself, it began to unzip its briefcase. "Being in charge of section B of the library, you are of course an expert on the Hobart Phase. At least so Mr. Gantrix assumes. Is he correct, sir?" The robot glanced up keenly.

"Well, I deal with it constantly." Niehls affected a vacant, cavalier tone; it was always better to show a superior attitude when dealing with a roby. Constantly necessary to remind them in this particular fashion – as well as in countless others – of their place.

"So Mr. Gantrix realizes. And it is to his credit that via such a realization he has inferred that you have, over the years, become something of an authority on the advantages, uses and manifold disadvantages of the Hobart reverse-time field. True? Not true? Choose one."

Niehls pondered. "I choose the first. Although you must take into account the fact that my knowledge is practical, not theoretical. But I can correctly deal with the vagaries of the Phase without explaining it. You see, I am innately an American; hence pragmatic."

"Certainly." The roby Carl Junior nodded its plastic humanoid head. "Very good, Mr. Lehrer. Now down to business. His Mightiness, the Anarch Peak, has become infantile and will soon shrivel up entirely into a homunculus and re-enter a nearby womb. Correct? It is only a matter of time – your time, once again."