Kralick said, “There was an Apocalyptist rally in Santa Barbara last night. Did you hear about it?”

“No.”

“A hundred thousand people gathered on the beach. In the course of getting there they did two million dollars worth of property damage, estimated. After the usual orgies they began to march into the sea like lemurs.”

“Lemmings.”

“Lemmings.” Kralick’s thick fingers hovered over the bar console a moment, then withdrew. “Picture a hundred thousand chanting Apocalyptists from all over California marching stark naked into the Pacific on a January day. We’re still getting the figures on the drownings. Over a hundred, at least, and God knows how much pneumonia, and ten girls were trampled to death. They do things like that in Asia, Leo. Not here. Not here. You see what we’re up against? Vornan will smash this movement. He’ll tell us how it is in 2999, and people will stop believing that The End Is Nigh. The Apocalyptists will collapse. Another rum?”

“I think I ought to get to my hotel.”

“Right.” He uncoiled himself and we went out of the bar. As he walked around the edges of Lafayette Park, Kralick said. “I think I ought to warn you that the information media know you’re in town and will start to bombard you with interview requests and whatnot. We’ll screen you as well as we can, but they’ll probably get through to you. The answer to all questions is—”

“No comment.”

“Precisely. You’re a star. Leo.”

Snow was falling again, somewhat more actively than the melting coils were programmed to handle. Thin crusts of white were forming here and there on the pavement, and it was deeper in the shrubbery. Pools of newly melted water glistened. The snow twinkled like starlight as it drifted down. The stars themselves were hidden; we might have been alone in the universe. I felt a great loneliness. In Arizona now the sun was shining.

As we entered the grand old hotel where I was staying. I turned to Kralick and said, “I think I’ll accept that offer of a dinner companion after all.”

SIX

I sensed the real power of the United States Government for the first time when the girl came to my suite about seven that evening. She was a tall blonde with hair like spun gold. Her eyes were brown, not blue, her lips were full, her posture was superb. In short, she looked astonishingly like Shirley Bryant.

Which meant that they had been keeping tabs on me for a long time, observing and recording the sort of woman I usually chose, and producing one of exactly the right qualifications on a moment’s notice. Did that mean that they thought Shirley was my mistress? Or that they had drawn an abstract profile of all my women, and had come up with a Shirley-like girl because I had (unconsciously!) been picking Shirley-surrogates all along?

This girl’s name was Martha. I said, “You don’t look like a Martha at all. Marthas are short and dark and terribly intense, with long chins. They smell of cigarettes all the time.”

“Actually,” Martha said, “I’m a Sidney. But the government didn’t think you’d go for a girl named Sidney.”

Sidney, or Martha, was an ace, a star. She was too good to be true, and I suspected that she had been created golemlike in a government laboratory to serve my needs. I asked her if that was so, and she said yes. “Later on,” she said, “I’ll show you where I plug in.”

“How often do you need a recharge?”

“Two or three times a night, sometimes. It depends.”

She was in her early twenties, and she reminded me forcibly of the co-eds around the campus. Perhaps she was a robot, perhaps she was a call girl; but she acted like neither — more like a lively, intelligent, mature human being who just happened to be willing to make herself available for duties like this. I didn’t dare ask her if she did things of this sort all the time.

Because of the snow, we ate in the hotel dining room. It was an old-fashioned place with chandeliers and heavy draperies, head waiters in evening clothes and an engraved menu a yard long. I was glad to see it; the novelty of using menu cubes had worn-off by now, and it was graceful to read our choices from a printed card while a live human being took down our wishes with a pad and pencil, just as in bygone times.

The government was paying. We ate well. Fresh caviar, oyster cocktails, turtle soup, Chateaubriand for two, very rare. The oysters were the delicate little Olympias from Puget Sound. They have much to commend them, but I miss the true oysters of my youth. I last ate them in 1976 at the Bicentennial Fair — when they were five dollars a dozen, because of the pollution. I can forgive mankind for destroying the dodo, but not for blotting out bluepoints.

Much satiated, we went back upstairs. The perfection of the evening was marred only by a nasty scene in the lobby when I was set upon by a few of the media boys looking for a story.

“Professor Garfield—”

“ — is it true that—”

“ — words on your theory of—”

“ — Vornan-19—”

“No comment.” “No comment.” “No comment.” “No comment.”

Martha and I escaped into the elevator. I slapped a privacy seal on my door — old-fashioned as this hotel is, it has modern conveniences — and we were safe. She looked at me coquettishly, but her coyness didn’t last long. She was long and smooth, a symphony in pink and gold, and she wasn’t any robot, although I found where she plugged in. In her arms I was able to forget about men from 2999, drowning Apocalyptists, and the dust gathering on my laboratory desk. If there is a heaven for Presidential aides, let Sandy Kralick ascend to it when his time comes.

In the morning we breakfasted in the room, took a shower together like newlyweds, and stood looking out the window at the last traces of the night’s snow. She dressed; her black plastic mesh sheath seemed out of place in the morning’s pale light, but she was still lovely to behold. I knew I would never see her again.

As she left, she said, “Someday you must tell me about time-reversal, Leo.”

“I don’t know a thing about it. So long, Sidney.”

“Martha.”

“You’ll always be Sidney to me.”

I resealed the door and checked with the hotel switchboard when she was gone. As I expected, there had been dozens of calls, and all had been turned away. The switchboard wanted to know if I’d take a call from Mr. Kralick. I said I would.

I thanked him for Sidney. He was only a bit puzzled. Then he said, “Can you come to the first committee meeting at two, in the White House? A get-together session.”

“Of course. What’s the news from Hamburg?”

“Bad. Vornan caused a riot. He went into one of the tough bars and made a speech. The essence of it was that the most lasting historic achievement of the German people was the Third Reich. It seems that’s all he knows about Germany, or something, and he started praising Hitler and getting him mixed up with Charlemagne, and the authorities yanked him out of there just in time. Half a block of nightclubs burned down before the foam tanks arrived.” Kralick grinned ingenuously. “Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this. It still isn’t too late for you to pull out.”

I sighed and said, “Oh, don’t worry, Sandy. I’m on the team for keeps now. It’s the least I can do for you… after Sidney.”

“See you at two. We’ll pick you up and take you across via tunnel because I don’t want you devoured by the media madmen. Stay put until I’m at your door.”

“Right,” I said. I put down the phone, turned, and saw what looked like a puddle of green slime gliding across my threshold and into the room.

It wasn’t slime. It was a fluid audio pickup full of monomolecular ears. I was being bugged from the corridor. Quickly I went to the door and ground my heel into the puddle. A thin voice said, “Don’t do that, Dr. Garfield. I’d like to talk to you. I’m from Amalgamated Network of—”