Self-pity, he thought. Or is there such a thing as self-compassion? Not much mentioned, anyhow.

'Made up your mind, buddy?' the proprietor asked him, now finished.

Eric said, 'I want you to write on my chest, "Kathy is dead." Okay? How much will that cost?'

'"Kathy is dead,"' the proprietor said. 'Dead of what?'

'Korsakow's syndrome.'

'You want me to put that too? Kathy is dead from – how you spell it?' The proprietor got pen and paper. 'I want it to be right.'

'Where around here,' Eric said, 'can I find drugs? You know, real drugs?'

'Across the street at the pharmacy. Their specialty, creaker.'

He left the tattoo parlor, crossed against the seething, massive organism of traffic. The pharmacy looked old-fashioned, with displays of foot-ailment models and hernia belts and bottles of cologne. Eric opened the door, manually operated, and walked to the counter in the back.

'Yes sir.' A gray-haired respectable professional-looking man in a white smock, waiting on him.

'JJ-180,' Eric said. He laid a fifty-dollar US bill on the counter. 'Three or four caps.'

'One hundred US.' This was business. With no sentiment.

He added two twenties and two fives. The pharmacist disappeared. When he returned he had a glass vial which he placed close to Eric; he took the bills and rang them up on his antique register. Thanks,' Eric said. Carrying the vial, he left the pharmacy.

He walked until more or less by chance he located the Caesar Hotel. Entering, he approached the desk clerk. It appeared to be the same man who had taken care of him and Deg Dal II earlier in the day. A day, Eric thought, made out of years.

'You remember the reeg I came here with?' he asked the clerk.

The clerk eyed him silently.

'Is he still here?' Eric said. 'Was he really cut to bits by Corning, the 'Star hatchet man in this area? Show me the room. I want the same room.'

'Pay in advance, sir.'

He paid, received the key, took the elevator to the proper floor; he walked down the dark carpeted empty hall to the door of the room, unlocked it, and stepped in, feeling for the light switch.

The room lit up and he saw that there was no sign of anything; the room was simply empty. As if the reeg had gone. Stepped out, perhaps. He was right, Eric decided, when he asked me to take him back to the POW camp; he was on the right track all the time. Knew how it would end.

Standing there, he realized that the room horrified him.

He opened the glass vial, got out one capsule of JJ-180, laid it on the vanity table, and with a dime cut the capsule into three parts. There was water in a pitcher nearby; he swallowed one third of the capsule and then walked to the window to look out and wait.

Night became day. He was still in the room at the Caesar Hotel but it was later; he could not tell how much. Months? Years? The room looked the same but probably it always would; it was eternal and static. He left the room, descended to the lobby, asked for a homeopape at the newsstand next to the reservations desk. The vendor, a plump old Mexican woman, handed him a Los Angeles daily; he examined it and saw that he had gone ahead ten years. The date was June 15, 2065.

So he had been correct as to the amount of JJ-180 needed.

Seating himself in a pay vidphone booth, he inserted a coin and dialed Tijuana Fur & Dye. The time appeared to be about noon.

'Let me speak to Mr Virgil Ackerman.'

'Who is calling, please?'

'Dr Eric Sweetscent.'

'Yes of course, Dr Sweetscent. Just a moment.' The screen became fused over and then Virgil's face, as dry and weathered as ever, basically unchanged, appeared.

'Well I'll be darned! Eric Sweetscent! How the hell are you, kid? Gosh, it's been – what has it been? Three years? Four? How is it at—'

Tell me about Kathy,' he said.

'Pardon?'

Eric said, 'I want to know about my wife. What's her medical condition by now? Where is she?'

'Your ex-wife.'

'All right,' he said reasonably. 'My ex-wife.'

'How would I know, Eric? I haven't seen her since she quit her job here and that was at least – well, you remember – six years ago. Right after we rebuilt. Right after the war.'

Tell me anything that would help me find out about her.'

Virgil pondered. 'Well Christ, Eric; you remember how sick she became. Those psychopathic rages.'

'I don't remember.'

Raising his eyebrows, Virgil said, 'You were the one who signed the commitment papers.'

'You think she's institutionalized now? Still?'

'As you explained it to me it's irreversible brain damage. From those toxic drugs she was taking. So I presume she is. Possibly in San Diego. I think Simon Ild told me that one day, not long ago; you want me to check with him? He said he met somebody who had a friend in a psychiatric hospital north of San Diego and—'

'Check with him.' He waited while the screen showed nothing, while Virgil conferred on the interdepartmental circuit with Simon.

At last the elongated, doleful face of his former inventory control clerk appeared. 'You want to know about Kathy,' Simon said. 'I'll tell you what this fellow told me. He met her in Edmund G. Brown Neuropsychiatric Hospital; he had a nervous breakdown, as you call it.'

'I don't call anything that,' Eric said, 'but go ahead.'

Simon said, 'She couldn't control herself, her rages, those destructive binges where she'd break everything, they were coming every day, sometimes four times a day. They kept her on phenothiazine and it had helped – she told him that herself – but finally no matter how much phenothiazine they gave her it didn't help. Damage to the frontal lobe, I guess. And she had difficulty remembering things properly. And ideas of reference; she thought everyone was against her, trying to hurt her... not grandiose paranoia, of course, but just the never-ending irritability, accusing people as if they were cheating her, holding out on her – she blamed everyone.' He added, 'She still talked about you.'

'Saying what?'

'Blaming you and that psychiatrist – what was his name? – for making her go into the hospital and then not letting her out.'

'Does she have any idea why we did it?' Why we had to do it, he thought.

'She said she loved you, but you wanted to get rid of her so you could marry someone else. And you had sworn, at the time of the divorce, that there wasn't anyone else.'

'Okay,' Eric said. Thanks, Simon.' He cut the connection and then called Edmund G. Brown Neuropsychiatric Hospital in San Diego.

'Edmund G. Brown Neuropsychiatric Hospital.' A rapid, overworked middle-aged female at the hospital switchboard.

'I wish to ask about Mrs Katherine Sweetscent's condition,' Eric said.

'Just a moment, sir.' The woman consulted her records, then switched his call to one of the wards; he found himself facing a younger woman, not in white uniform but in an ordinary flowered cotton dress.

'This is Dr Eric Sweetscent. What can you tell me about Katherine Sweetscent's condition? Is she making any progress?'

'There hasn't been any change since you called last, doctor, two weeks ago. I'll get her file, however.' The woman disappeared from the screen.

Good Lord, Eric thought. I'm still watching over her ten years from now; am I caught in this one way or another the rest of my life?

The ward technician returned. 'You know that Dr Bramel-man is trying the new Gloser-Little unit with Mrs Sweetscent. In order to induce the brain tissue to start repair of itself. But so far—' She leafed through the pages. 'Results have been meager. I would suggest you contact us again in another month or possibly two. There won't be any change before that.'

'But it could work,' he said. This new unit you spoke about.' He had never heard of it; obviously it was a construct of the future. 'I mean, there's still hope.'