"I love you, too," Ohm said, and he laughed.

Mudge scowled even deeper and closed the door behind him. Ohm turned on the hail and outside monitor strips to make sure that Mudge was not hanging around. Then he went to bed, applied the electrodes of a sieepwavc machine to his temples, set and turned the unit on, and slept dreamlessly and compulsively. At 9:30 P.M., he was awakened by the unit alarm.

"I have to do it," he muttered. "Maybe I shouldn't. But I have to."

Chapter 26

The loud voices had become whispers, perhaps because the others had hope now that they would not die. The quieting of that part of the inner tumult allowed Ohm to concentrate. Sitting in a chair, a cup of coffee on the table by him, he gave orders to a strip. One after the other, appearing or disappearing at his command, the diagrams of the Tower of Evolution and of the area beneath and around shone on the screen. At 10:15, he ordered any evidence of his viewing of the diagrams to be erased. He did not know that it would be done. It was possible that the Department of Building Construction and Maintenance had programed a nonerasure command. However, he could think of no reason why the department should do that. Even if it had done so, the chances that anyone would note his request and ask for the identity of the requester were not high.

He left the apartment at 10:17 P.M. and walked as much under the tree cover as possible. The sky was clear, and it was still hot but cooler than in the daytime. The streets were almost empty of traffic, though the sidewalks were crowded with neighborhood residents. Most of them were going home from the empathoria, the bowling alleys, or the taverns. In fifteen minutes, few would be outside. That would make him more conspicuous, but that could not be helped. Fear of consequences and desperation did not go hand in hand.

Ohm turned onto West Fourteenth Street and walked to the northwest corner of the Tower of Evolution. Here, as on every night at this time, an oblong of light shone up from a hole in the sidewalk. Ohm looked down into the hole and saw two men standing there. They were in the kilted blue uniform of Saturday's Civilian Corps of Transportation and Supply. Ohm pressed the UP button on the mobile cylindrical machine by the hole. As the platform began moving, the men looked up. Ohm nodded at them, got onto the platform when it stopped level with the sidewalk and pressed the DOWN button. Twenty feet below the sidewalk, the platform stopped. Ohm got off and said, "How're things going?"

The two men looked at each other, and one said, "Fine. Why?"

Ohm bounced the tip of a finger off his ID disc as if he was indicating that it contained his authority. "I have to investigate a shipment. It's nothing illegal, just an error."

He was at the first obstacle, the foremost of several ticklish crossroads. If the workers doubted him and asked for his ID, he would have to improvise an explanation. The workers, however, were not concerned, and his air of knowing what he was about convinced them.

He walked past them and into a tunnel, and soon he was around a bend and out of their sight. Below the grating on which he walked were well-lit levels on which belts or elevators carried boxes of stoned or unstoned supplies. These were part of the vast underground system that transported goods and food to computer-assigned destinations from the unloading depots at the ports or the Thirteen-Principles Towers. The individual belts and elevators moved with little sound, but their aggregation caused a low rumble like that of a distant cataract.

Ohm took an elevator reserved for personnel to the third level down. From there he passed over a narrow catwalk to a bank of personnel elevators, chose number three, and sent himself swiftly up to Exhibit No. 17, EXTINCT TYPES OF HOMO SAPIENS. He went down a short but wide and high hall and stopped at a door. The next ticklish crossroads would be when he entered the room beyond the door. There were hundreds of monitor strips inside the Tower, all active during visiting hours. Was there any reason for them to be on now? Vandalism and burglary were such uncommon crimes, especially in public buildings, that it seemed to him that active monitor strips and personnel to watch them would not be required. However, there might be someone in Immerman's apartment who was viewing the exhibit display strips. Mudge was a likely candidate.

He breathed in deeply and pushed the door open. Stepping through, he found himself at the rear of the seventeenth-century French court tableau. The vast interior of the tower was silent, the sightseers gone, the circling escalator stopped, the information screens turned off, the sounds of the robot beasts quelled. The workers that he had feared might be repairing or altering exhibits were not there. Or, if they were, he could not hear them. Certainly, there were none in this recess.

He moved from around the back of the dais and thrones past the sitting figures of The King and The Queen. He zigzagged through The Courtiers, the gentlemen in their finery and powdered wigs, the ladies in their silk, brocades, hooped skirts, and high-piled wigs. They all looked very realistic. A smiling young woman displayed four teeth missing, the rest blackened by decay. A man's face was deeply scarred with smallpox. A fan held by a woman did not entirely conceal that part of her nose had been eaten away by syphilis. Missing, however, were other realistic elements. The stench of long-unwashed bodies and the perfume to cover the stench. The head lice infesting the wigs. Stains on the shoes spattered when their owners urinated in the corners of the palace halls.

He also noticed something that at another time would have made him laugh. Despite all the research and rechecking, the designer of these figures had forgotten that seventeenth-century people were much shorter than New Era people. Every one of these figures would have towered above all in the court of the real Louis XIII.

Near the middle of the throng, he stopped. The silent and motionless woman in a scarlet and yellow gown and golden-yellow wig stared at him with large brown eyes. Her face was thickly powdered and rouged.

He said, "God help us!"

He lifted the wig and saw, as he had expected, the short, straight, gleaming-brown hair that looked like the fur of a seal.

"The bastards! The old bastard! What arrogance!"

He stepped behind her and began dragging her backward toward the elevator. Her high-heeled shoes made a slight rubbing noise, then came off. He stopped, held her upright with one hand, and bent down to pick up the shoes. He must not leave any evidence that an exhibit figure was missing. It was possible that her absence might not be noticed for a long time. All he wanted was a relatively short time.

"Ohm!"

The voice came from somewhere close, and it was Mudge's. Charlie dropped the shoes and the stoned body of Snick, which fell with a loud noise to the floor. He stared wildly around and saw two men, but he was so bewildered and surprised that he did not immediately recognize them. It took a second or two for him to bring them into the focus of reality. A dreamlike state washed over him, numbing him. Then he saw that the two cavaliers who had seemed to come to life were Mudge and a companion.

They had clad themselves in the clothes taken from two figures and had waited for him. They must have monitored him from the moment he entered the underground. They had assumed the stiffness of exhibit figures just before he came through the door.

"Traitor! Damn fool!" Mudge said as he walked slowly toward Ohm. "What do you care about the womhn? She's an organic, a danger to us! What in hell is wrong with you?"

Ohm slipped off his shoulderbag and let it fall to the floor. He crouched and looked around as if he were about to run. Let them think that.