"Hold it!" Caird said, and he let Eyebrows fall. The gun was set for full power. Bulldog knew 'that.

"I don't want to kill you," Caird said, "though I should. You were going to kill me."

("Take them out, anyway," Repp said. "They're vermin, and a dead enemy is one less enemy.")

("Don't!" Isharashvili cried.)

"Your left hand up in the air. High. OK. Now, slowly, very slowly, ease the gun out with the right hand. Drop it on the box by you. Turn your head away; don't look at me. Hold it until I tell you different."

Bulldog's neck quivered, but he looked straight ahead. After a slight hesitation, he took the butt of the weapon by two fingers and placed it on the box by him. His right hand joined the left one above his head.

"Now slide off the box and walk about twenty feet away. Keep your hands high. Don't turn around. I know how to use this. I'm a crack shot."

Bulldog obeyed. Caird got swiftly onto the box and stuck the gun into his shoulderbag. He got down off the box, walked to Bulldog, reversed the weapon, and struck the man hard on the crown of his head. Bulldog crumpled.

("Don't!" Isharashvili cried again.)

"Go back where you came from," Caird muttered. He removed the ID disc-star from Bulldog's neck and put it in his shoulderbag. He might be able to use it, though he doubted it. He rolled the body onto the west-going belt and climbed back over the box. After putting Eyebrows' ID in the bag, Caird rolled the body onto the west-going belt. Since there might be a use for the hammer and screwdriver, he placed them in the bag. It was bulging and was very heavy, but he did not plan to carry it for some time. He stood watching the light and the two unconscious men in it for a minute. Then he lay down. He did not think he had closed his eyes, but a man shouting at him woke him up.

The man's eyes were level with the belt. Caird shouted, "Surprise inspection! You should be glad I found you awake!"

Caird sat up and grinned at him until the man turned and walked into the office. Caird did not have time to worry about what the worker meant to do. He had to change belts soon. If he kept going much longer, he would be under the East River and on his way to Brooklyn.

By the time that he had gotten to his goal, he had switched belts nine times. A few times, he had been forced to travel for a while in the opposite direction. He had stolen a worker's lunch. He had gotten off four times to drink from a fountain and had twice had to go down an access ladder to the lower level. He had washed off the tissue from his cheek wound and the dirt from his face and hands.

When he got out of an elevator in an access tube, he was tired. The events of today and the six days before, the tension, the uncertainty, the battles, the running, and the warring voices within him had punished him. He had been stretched to his outer limits on a rack and squeezed to his inner limits in a compacter.

Nevertheless, when he stepped out into Central Park near the Alice in Wonderland statue, he at once felt stronger and more hopeful. Alice, after falling down a hole, had survived her many perils. He hoped that there was no mirror he had to pass through in his future.

He planned to hole up somewhere in the park over night. As a ranger, that is, drawing on Isharashvili's memory, he knew several good hiding places. Tomorrow, he would try for the wilds of New Jersey. The great forest that covered most of the state's eastern part sheltered some outlaws. They might accept him. If he was rejected, he would starve. He knew nothing of noncity survival. Even if he was taken in, he would live hunted and harried.

At least, he would be living. Someday, he might get back into a city and there insert a new ID into the data bank. That idea, at the moment, tasted like he imagined cockroach droppings would taste.

The sight of Central Park cleansed him of such thoughts. Amazingly, the storm had passed and was now only low black clouds in the west. The air was exhilarating; the wind, a mere five miles an hour. The world looked as it always does after a good rain. It seemed to have been remade by God to His better liking. A male cardinal's Toowheert-Toowheert -- -- Toowheert- Twock-Twock-Twock-Twock rang from an oak branch. A squirrel was scold-barking from an Osage orange tree branch at a big black cat that had braved the wet grass.

The clear sky also meant that the satellites had their eyes o Central Park.

This did not bother Caird. He walked along a winding, uj and-down flower-lined path past bushes and trees, past statue of Frodo and Smaug, Lenin, the Cowardly Lion and Dorothi Gandhi, Don Quixote, Spinoza, Rip van Winkle, Woody Allen and John Henry. He went by a few people who had taken she ter from the storm and were out again. So far, no rangers or oi ganics, but they would be somewhere near.

After going for several hundred feet on a path covered by ir terlocking tree branches, he left it. He plunged into an are that was not off-limits to the public but was seldom venture into. It stood out like a green thumb, a patch of bright an poisonous-looking vegetation. The stone statues of the animal crouching in the very thick ranks of fronds and huge el phant's-ear plants looked slightly misshapen. He was walkin in a landscaper's reproduction of an Amazon jungle by the am cient French painter Henri Rousseau. Yellow eyes framed i spotted faces gleamed from behind heavy nightmarish bushe:

A proboscis monkey, resembling a politician whom the lanc scaper disliked, stared down foolishly from a branch.

Caird pushed through the forbidding growth, struggled ur hill, skirted a black-painted granite god, squat, massiv crouching on frog legs, its half-human, half-jaguar face snarl ing, and came to the ridge of the hill. He crossed into the veg tation on the other side, descending abruptly into a land c pines and birches. The statues here were of folk-tale monsters c the far north, baba-yagas, cernobogs, chudo-yudos, hiisis, kosF cheis, lyeshies, and veshtitzes. At the bottom of the hill, h walked, ankle-deep in mud, around a swamp from which prc truded the heads of rusalkas, female water-spirits with lon wavy green hair.

This was a fenced area the public could visit only dunn guided tours. Between the fence and a creek flowing under into the swamp was a gap of two feet. He got down on his knee in the water, pushed the fence up, and, bent over, went beneath the fence. Trees growing thickly along the creek banks shielded him from the sky-eyes.

Another half-mile would get him to a small cave well-hidden by bushes near the foot of a hill.

After wading for several hundred yards in the winding stream, he came to a bridge. All had gone well so far. He needed only a few more minutes to get to his haven.

He froze.

There, like a troll under a bridge, was an organic.

She was standing, half-hidden behind a bush, on the right bank. The only good thing about the situation was that she was facing away from him.

("Hide!" Ohm said.)

("Go for it!" Repp said fiercely. "Take her! Don't pay any attention to that cowardly coyote! ")

("You don't know that she's looking for you," Tingle said. "Maybe she's waiting there for her lover.")

("True," Dunski said. "She could be here for any of a dozen reasons. Maybe she just took a pee.")

Caird paid as little attention as possible to the voices whispering inside him. He turned and slowly climbed onto the bank and pushed gently through the bushes and high grasses on the slope. Once, he startled a dragonfly. He became motionless until it was long gone, then went on. He came up on the walk that led to the bridge. For a moment, he would be exposed to the sky-eyes, but he would cross the path quickly into the dense vegetation on the other side. Unless the organic had by now come up from under the bridge, he would be safe.