Or had he?

"All I've seen," he said slowly, aloud, "is one para-world after another." Chilled, he realized, I still don't know which is real. The class, through its Control Sheila Quam, had been on the verge of determining which of the several possibilities was the authentic one. Had he waited fifteen minutes longer he would have found out.

A weak shock made his right hand tingle; the con­tainer of deep-sleep components within Freya's purse had responded to the strip of titanium in the menu and had already crawled across the underside of the page to make physical contact with him.

With his fingers he pried it, clam-like, loose from its grip, its tropism; the object dropped into his lap and he experienced its real, actual weight. After a pause he reached out with his left hand to transfer it sight unseen, even by him, to the pocket of his cloak...

"Oops — sorry." The robot busboy had stumbled against him as it conveyed its chest-high load of dirty dishes back to the kitchen.

At once Rachmael leaped up; seizing the artificial candle in the center of his table he brought it down with all his strength onto the metal head of the robot.

Without hesitation the robot busboy kicked him in the groin.

"It's got the components," he gasped to Freya, shud­dering in abysmal pain. "Don't — let it — get away!"

Swiftly reacting, Freya clouted the robot busboy with her purse. A torrent of metal and plastic parts rained from it, and out of its hand fell the circular container of deep-sleep components; Rachmael, despite his agony, managed to close his fingers around it.

"What's going on here?" Caspar, the maitre d' yelled, striding toward the three of them, his face dark with outrage.

"Come on," Rachmael said, seizing Freya by the arm. "Let's get out of here." He led her among the squeezed-together tables, toward one of the exits; the other diners gaped at them in bewilderment.

"I got it," he said as he and Freya stepped out into the deserted, faintly misty street, the looming down­town section of San Diego; a few for-hire flapples jogged and fluttered past, but that was all — the two of them had gotten away. With, this time, the components.

"You're going to make the trip?" Freya asked as they walked on, away from the Fox's Lair, toward a lighted main intersection.

"Yes," he said, nodding. So everything was changed. He would go to Whale's Mouth, but not as before; not via Telpor. This time he would make the trip across deep space to Fomalhaut as he had intended all along. The way I wanted it from the start, he realized. And no one can stop me, now; not Ferry, not von Einem — not even Lupov, whichever side he's on, if not both sides simultaneously.

The air, in his lungs, the cool cloudy scent of the city, tasted good; he inhaled deeply, and strode on at an in­creased pace.

Freya said, "It's a very good thing you're doing. Very brave. I admire you for it." She wiggled her hand beneath his arm so that she was hanging onto him, ad­miringly; he felt her keen, appraising gaze.

"It's a good thing," he agreed. But, he realized, not so brave; in fact not brave at all, in comparison to what I encountered — and would have to encounter again — by direct teleportation to Whale's Mouth. Theodoric Ferry, the dead, resurrected monster that claimed once to have been Matson Glazer-Holliday — this flight, long as it is, eighteen vast and empty light-years of it, will be much easier. And, he thought, I won't even know its tedious length because at last I have this. His hand, in the pocket of his cloak, closed over and tightly squeezed the cylinder of deep-sleep components, engagingly marked Eternity of Sexual Potency Fragrance #54.

And, he realized, during the intervals in which I am conscious, when it's necessary to recorrect the trajectory of the Omphalos, I could have someone with me for company. Someone I like — and know I would like in­creasingly better as time goes on... goes its regular path, undisturbed. This, he realized, is the genuine solution. Finally. This — and not the UN's time-warping device or any device at all.

Thinking that, he paused before entering the area of light; in the darkness of the side street, unnoticed by passers-by, he scrutinized Freya Holm a long, long period.

"Hmm," he said, half aloud. Contemplatively.

"What are you thinking about?" Freya asked shyly, her dark, full lashes trembling as she returned his stare. "The years of deep sleep ahead of you?"

"Not quite that," Rachmael answered. "Something a little more this side of sleep. But connected with it." He put his arm around her.

"Gee," Freya said after a time.

In his pocket the container of components hummed happily.