“Ed,” his wife said, “what are you doing?”

He glanced at her. She was gaunt, tangle-haired, and faded past her years. He looked away, not answering.

“Ed! Tell me, Ed!”

Tyler-Blaine looked at her in annoyance, feeling his ulcer stir at the sound of that sharp, worried voice. Sharpest voice in all California, he told himself, and he'd married it. Sharp voice, sharp nose, sharp elbows and knees, breastless and barren to boot. Legs to support a body, but not for a second's delight. A belly for filling, not for touching. Of all the girls in California he'd doubtless picked the sorriest, just like the damn fool his Uncle Rafe always said he was.

“Where you taking that bowl of food?” she asked.

“Out to feed the dog,” Tyler-Blaine said, moving toward the door.

“We ain't got no dog! Oh Ed, don't do it, not tonight!”

“I'm doin‘ it,” he said, glad of her discomfort.

“Please, not tonight. Let him shift for himself somewhere else. Ed, listen to me! What if the town found out?”

“It's past sundown,” Tyler-Blaine said, standing beside the door with his bowl of food.

“People spy,” she said. “Ed, if they find out they'll lynch us, you know they will.”

“You'd look mighty spry from the end of a rope,” Tyler-Blaine remarked, opening the door.

“You do it just to spite me!” she cried.

He closed the door behind him. Outside, it was deep twilight. Tyler-Blaine stood in his yard near the unused chicken coop, looking around. The only house near his was the Flannagan's, a hundred yards away. But they minded their own business. He waited to make sure none of the town kids were snooping around. Then he walked forward, carefully holding the bowl of food.

He reached the edge of the scraggly woods and set the bowl down. “It's all right,” he called softly. “Come out, Uncle Rafe.”

A man crawled out of the woods on all fours. His face was leaden-white, his lips bloodless, his eyes blank and staring, his features coarse and unfinished, like iron before tempering or clay before firing. A long cut across his neck had festered, and his right leg, where the townsfolk had broken it, hung limp and useless.

“Thanks, boy,” said Rafe, Tyler-Blaine's zombie uncle.

The zombie quickly gulped down the contents of the bowl. When he had finished, Tyler-Blaine asked, “How you feeling, Uncle Rafe?”

“Ain't feeling nothing. This old body's about through. Another couple days, maybe a week, and I'll be off your hands.”

“I'll take care of you,” Tyler-Blaine said, “just as long as you can stay alive, Uncle Rafe. I wish I could bring you into the house.”

“No,” the zombie said, “they'd find out. This is risky enough… Boy, how's that skinny wife of yours?”

“Just as mean as ever,” Tyler-Blaine sighed.

The zombie made a sound like laughter. “I warned you, boy, ten years ago I warned you not to marry that gal. Didn't I?”

“You sure did, Uncle Rafe. You was the only one had sense. Sure wish I'd listened to you.”

“Better you had, boy. Well, I'm going back to my shelter.”

“You feel confident, Uncle?” Tyler-Blaine asked anxiously.

“That I do.”

“And you'll try to die confident?”

“I will, boy. And I'll get me into that Threshold, never you fear. And when I do, I'll keep my promise. I truly will.”

“Thank you, Uncle Rafe.”

“I'm a man of my word. I'll haunt her, boy, if the good Lord grants me Threshold. First comes that fat doctor that made me this. But then I'll haunt her. I'll haunt her crazy. I'll haunt her ‘til she runs the length of the state of California away from you!”

“Thanks, Uncle Rafe.”

The zombie made a sound like laughter and crawled back into the scraggly woods. Tyler-Blaine shivered uncontrollably for a moment, then picked up the empty bowl and walked back to the sagging washboard house…

Mariner-Blaine adjusted the strap of her bathing suit so that it clung more snugly to her slim, supple young body. She slipped the air tank over her back, picked up her respirator and walked toward the pressure lock.

“Janice?”

“Yes mother?” she said, turning, her face smooth and expressionless.

“Where are you going, dear?”

“Just out for a swim, Mom. I thought maybe I'd look at the new gardens on Level 12.”

“You aren't by any chance planning to see Tom Leuwin, are you?”

Had her mother guessed? Mariner-Blaine smoothed her black hair and said, “Certainly not.”

“All right,” her mother said, half smiling and obviously not believing her. “Try to be home early, dear. You know how worried your father gets.”

She stooped and gave her mother a quick kiss, then hurried into the pressure lock. Mother knew, she was sure of it! And wasn't stopping her! But then, why should she? After all, she was seventeen, plenty old enough to do anything she wanted. Kids grew up faster these days than they did in Mom's time, though parents didn't seem to realize it. Parents didn't realize very much. They just wanted to sit around and plan out new acres for the farm. Their idea of fun was to listen to some old classic recording, a Bop piece or a Rock ‘n’ Roll, and follow it with scores and talk about how free and expressionistic their ancestors had been. And sometimes they'd go through big, glossy art books filled with reproductions of 20th century Comic Strips, and talk about the lost art of satire. Their idea of a really Big Night was to go down to the gallery and stare reverently at the collection of Saturday Evening Post covers from the Great Period. But all that longhair stuff bored her. Nuts to art, she liked the sensories.

Mariner-Blaine adjusted her face mask and respirator, put on her flippers and turned the valve. In a few seconds the lock was filled with water. Impatiently she waited until the pressure had equalized with the water outside. Then the lock opened automatically and she shot out.

Her dad's pressure farm was at the hundred foot level, not far from the mammoth underwater bulk of Hawaii. She turned downward, descending into the green bloom with quick, powerful strokes. Tom would be waiting for her at the coral caves.

The darkness grew as Mariner-Blaine descended. She switched on her headlamp and took a firmer bite on her respirator. Was it true, she wondered, that soon the undersea farmers would be able to grow their own gills? That's what her science teacher said, and maybe it would happen in her own lifetime. How would she look with gills? Mysterious, probably, sleek and strange, a fish goddess.

Besides, she could always cover them with her hair if they weren't becoming.

In the yellow glow of her lamp she saw the coral caves ahead, a red and pink branched labyrinth with cozy, airlocked places deep within, where you could be sure of privacy. And she saw Tom.

Uncertainty flooded her. Gosh, what if she had a baby? Tom had assured her it would be all right, but he was only nineteen. Was she right in doing this? They had talked about it often enough, and she had shocked him with her frankness. But talking and doing were very different things. What would Tom think of her if she said no? Could she make a joke out of it, pretend she'd just been teasing him?

Long and golden, Tom swam beside her toward the caves. He flashed hello in finger talk. A trigger fish swam by, and then a small shark.

What was she going to do? The caves were very near, looming dark and suggestive before them. Tom smiled at her, and she could feel her heart melting…

Elgin-Blaine sat upright, realizing that he must have dozed off. He was aboard a small motor vessel, sitting in a deck chair with blankets tucked around him. The little ship rolled and pitched in the cross-sea, but overhead the sun was brilliant, and the trade wind carried the diesel smoke away in a wide dark plume.

“You feeling better, Mr. Elgin?”

Elgin-Blaine looked up at a small, bearded man wearing a captain's cap. “Fine, just fine,” he said.