'Oh yes, doctor. There's definitely hope.' She said it in such a way as to convey to him that this was merely a philosophical answer; there was hope in every case, as far as she was concerned. So it meant nothing.

'Thank you.' And then he said, 'Check your files, please, and see what it says as to my place of business. I've changed jobs recently so it may be wrong.'

After a pause the ward technician said, 'You're listed as Chief Org-trans Surgeon at Kaiser Foundation in Oakland.'

'That's correct,' Eric said. And rang off.

He obtained the number from information and dialed Kaiser Foundation in Oakland.

'Let me talk to Dr Sweetscent.'

'Who is calling, please?'

That stopped him momentarily. Tell him it's his younger brother.'

'Yes sir. Just a moment, please.'

His face, his older, grayer face, appeared on the screen. 'Hi.'

'Hello,' Eric said. He was not sure what to say. 'Am I bothering you when you're busy?' He did not look bad, ten years from now. Dignified.

'No, go ahead. I've been expecting the call; I remember the approximate date. You just called Edmund G. Brown Neuro-psychiatric Hospital and learned about the Gloser-Little unit. I'll tell you something the ward technician didn't. The Gloser-Little unit constitutes the only brain artiforg they've managed to come up with. It replaces portions of the frontal lobe; once it's installed it stays as long as the person lives, If it helps. To be truthful with you, it should have worked right away.'

'So you don't think it's going to.'

'No,' the older Eric Sweetscent said.

'Do you think if we hadn't divorced her—'

'It would have made no difference. Tests we give now – believe me.'

Then even that wouldn't help, Eric realized. Staying with her, even for the rest of my life. 'I appreciate your help,' he said. 'And I find it interesting – I guess that's the word – that you're still keeping tabs on her.'

'Conscience is conscience. In some respects the divorce put more of a responsibility on us to see about her welfare. Because she got so much worse immediately after.'

'Is there any way out?' Eric asked.

The older Eric Sweetscent, of the year 2065, shook his head.

'Okay,' Eric said. Thanks for being honest with me.'

'Like you yourself say, you should always be honest with yourself.' He added, 'Good luck on the commitment proceedings; they're going to be rough. But that won't come for a while.'

'How about the rest of the war, in particular the takeover of Terra by the 'Starmen?'

The older Eric Sweetscent grinned. 'Hell, you're too bogged down in your own personal trouble to notice. War? What war?'

'So long,' Eric said, and rang off.

He left the vidphone booth. He's got a point, he admitted to himself. If I were rational – but I'm not. The 'Starmen are probably assembling an emergency plan right now, getting ready for the jump-off; I know this and yet I don't feel it, I feel-The need for death, he thought.

Why not? Gino Molinari made his death into an instrument of political strategy; he outwitted his opponents through it and he'll probably do so again. Of course, he realized, that's not what I had in mind. I'm outwitting nobody. Many people will die in this invasion; why not one more? Who loses by it? Who am I close to? He thought, Those future Sweetscents are going to be sore as hell about it but that's just too bad. I don't particularly give a damn about them anyhow. And, except that their existences depend on mine, they feel the same about me. Perhaps, he decided, that's the problem. Not my relationship with Kathy but my relationship with myself.

Passing through the lobby of the Caesar Hotel, he emerged on the daytime, busy Tijuana street of ten years hence.

Sunlight blinded him; he stood blinking and adjusting. The surface vehicles, even here, had changed. Sleeker, more attractive. The street, now, was adequately paved. There came the tamale vendors and the rug vendors except that now they were not robants; they were, he saw with a start, reegs. Evidently they had entered Terran society at the bottom rung, would have to work their way to the equality he had witnessed a century from his own time, ninety years from now. It did not seem fair to him, but there it was.

Hands in his pockets, he walked with the surging crowd that inhabited the sidewalks of Tijuana throughout all the ages, until he arrived at the pharmacy at which he had bought the capsules of JJ-180. As always it was open for business. It, too, had not altered in a decade, except that now the hernia belt display had gone. In its place he saw a contrivance unfamiliar to him. Halting, he examined the Spanish sign propped behind it. The thing evidently increased one's sexual potency, he decided. Permitted – as he translated the Spanish – an infinitude of orgasms, one immediately following the other. Amused, he continued on inside the pharmacy, to the counter in the rear.

A different pharmacist, this one a black-haired elderly female, greeted him. 'Sí?' She leered, showing cheap chromium teeth.

Eric said, 'You have a West German product, g-Totex blau?'

'I look. You wait, okay?' The woman trudged off and disappeared among the pharmaceuticals. Eric wandered around the displays sightlessly. 'G-Totex blau a terrible poison,' the old woman called to him. 'You have to sign the book for it; sí?'

'Sí,' Eric said.

The product, in its black carton, was laid on the counter before him. Two dollars fifty US,' the old woman said. She lugged the control book out, put it where he could reach it with the chained pen. As he signed she wrapped the black carton. 'You going to kill yourself, señor?' she asked acutely. 'Yes, I can tell. This will not hurt with this product; I have seen it. No pain, just no heart all of a sudden.'

'Yes,' he agreed. 'It's a good product.'

'From A. G. Chemie. Reliable.' She beamed in what seemed approval.

He paid the money – his ten-year-old bills were accepted without comment – and left the pharmacy with his package. Weird, he thought, in Tijuana it's still as it was. Always will be. Nobody even cares if you destroy yourself; it's a wonder they don't have booths at night where it's done for you, at ten pesos. Perhaps there is by now.

It shook him a little, the woman's evident approval – and she did not know anything about him, even who he was. The war did it, he said to himself. I don't know why I let it surprise me.

When he returned to the Caesar Hotel and started upstairsJo his room, the desk clerk – unfamiliar to him – halted him. 'Sir, you are not a resident here.' The clerk had moved swiftly from behind the counter to bar his way. 'Did you want a room?'

'I have one,' Eric said, and then remembered it had been ten years in the past; his occupancy had lapsed long ago.

'Nine U S dollars each night in advance,' the desk clerk said. 'Since you do not have luggage.'

Eric got out his wallet, passed over a ten-dollar bill. The clerk, however, inspected the bill with professional disavowal and mounting suspicion.

'These were called in,' the clerk informed him. 'Hard to exchange now because no more legal.' He raised his head and scrutinized Eric with defiance. Twenty. Two tens. And maybe even then I not accept them.' He waited, devoid of enthusiasm; he clearly resented being paid in currency of this kind. It probably reminded him of the old days, the bad times of the war.

He had only one more bill in his wallet and that was a five. And, incredibly, through some freakish foul-up, perhaps because he had traded his watch for them, the useless currency from ninety years in the future; he spread them on the counter, their intricate, multi-colored scroll-work shimmering. So perhaps, he thought, Kathy's electronic part had reached Virgil Ackerman back in the mid thirties after all; at least it had a chance. That cheered him.