"The cop didn't say," Sebastian said. As far as he himself was concerned it didn't much matter; the company's pastor sufficed for all religions, including Jewish and Udi. Although the Uditi, in particular, did not much share this view. Anyhow, Father Faine was what they got, like it or not.

"It's settled, then?" Lotta asked. "We're going?"

"Yes," he said. "We've got everyone we need." Bob Lindy to sink the air shaft, put digging tools to work; Dr. Sign to provide prompt--and vital--medical attention; Father Faine to perform the Sacrament of Miraculous Rebirth... and then tomorrow during business hours, Cheryl Vale to do the intricate paper work, and the company's salesman, R.C. Buckley, to take the order and set about finding a buyer.

That part--the selling end of the business--did not much appeal to him; he reflected on this as he dressed in the vast suit which he customarily wore for cold night calls. R.C., however, seemed to get a bang out of it; he had a philosophy which he called "placement location," a dignified term for managing to pawn off an old-born individual on somebody. It was R.C.'s line that he placed the old-borns only in "specially viable, selected environments of proven background," but in fact he sold wherever he could--as long as the price was sufficient to guarantee him his five percent commission.

Lotta, trailing after him as he got his greatcoat from the closet, said, "Did you ever read that part of First Corinthians in the N.E.B. translation? I know it's getting out of date, but I've always liked it."

"Better get finished dressing," he said gently.

"Okay." She nodded dutifully, trotted off to get workpants and the high soft-leather boots which she cherished so much. "I'm in the process of memorizing it, because after all I am your wife and it pertains so directly to the work we--I mean you-- do. Listen. That's how it starts, I mean; I'm quoting. 'Listen. I will unfold a mystery: we shall not all die, but we shall be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet call.'"

"A call," Sebastian said meditatively as he waited patiently for her to finish dressing, "that came one day in June of the year 1986." Much, he thought, to everyone's surprise--except of course for Alex Hobart himself, who had predicted it, and after whom the anti-time effect had been named.

"I'm ready," Lotta said proudly; she had on her boots, workpants, sweater, and, he knew, her pajamas under it all; he smiled, thinking of that: she had done it to save time, so as not to detain him.

Together, they left their con apt; they ascended by the building's express elevator to the roof-field and their parked aircar.

"Myself," he said to her as he wiped the midnight moisture from the windows of the car, "I prefer the old King James translation."

"I've never read that," she said, childish candor in her voice, as if meaning, But I'll read it; I promise.

Sebastian said, "As I recall, in that translation the passage goes, 'Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep; we shall be changed--' and so on. Something like that. But I remember the 'behold.' I like that better than 'listen." He started up the motor of the aircar, and they ascended.

"Maybe you're right," Lotta said, always agreeable, always willing to look up to him--he was, after all, so much older than she-as an authority. That perpetually pleased him. And it seemed to please her, too. Seated beside her, he patted her on the knee, feeling affection; she thereupon patted him, too, as always: their love for each other passed back and forth between them, without resistance, without difficulty; it was an effortless two-way flow.

Young, dedicated Officer Tinbane met them inside the dilapidated spiked iron-pole fence of the cemetery. "Evening, sir," he said to Sebastian, and saluted; for Tinbane every act done while wearing his uniform was official, not to mention impersonal. "Your engineer got here a couple of minutes ago and he's sinking a temporary air-shaft. It was lucky I passed by." The policeman greeted Lotta, seeing her now. "Good evening, Mrs. Hermes. Sorry it's so cold; you want to sit m the squad car? The heater's on."

"I'm fine," Lotta said; craning her neck, she strove to catch sight of Bob Lindy at work. "Is she still talking?" she asked Officer Tinbane.

"Chattering away," Tinbane said; he led her and Sebastian, by means of his flashlight, toward the zone of illumination where Bob Lindy already toiled. "First to me; now to your engineer."

On his hands and knees, Lindy studied the gauges of the tubeboring rig; he did not look up or greet them, although he evidently was aware of their presence. For Lindy, work came first; socializing ran a late last.

"She has relatives, she claims," Officer Tinbane said to Sebastian. "Here; I wrote down what she's been saying; their names and addresses. In Pasadena. But she's senile; she seems confused." He glanced around. "Is your doctor coming for sure? I think he'll be needed; Mrs. Benton said something about Bright's disease; that's evidently what she died of. So possibly he'll need to attach an artificial kidney."

Its landing lights on, an aircar set down. Dr. Sign stepped from it, wearing his plastic, heat-enclosing, modern, stylish suit. "So you think you've got a live one," he said to Officer Tinbane; he knelt over the grave of Mrs. Tilly Benton, cocked an ear, then called, "Mrs. Benton, can you hear me? Are you able to breathe?"

The faint, indistinct, wavering voice drifted up to them, as Lindy momentarily ceased his drilling. "It's so stuffy, and it's dark and I'm really very much afraid; I'd like to be released to go home as soon as I can. Are you going to rescue me?"

Cupping his hands to his mouth, Dr. Sign shouted back, "We're drilling now, Mrs. Benton; just hang on and don't worry; it'll only be another minute or so." To Lindy he said, "Didn't you bother to yell down to her?"

Lindy growled, "I have my work. Talking's up to you guys and Father Faine." He resumed the drilling. It was almost complete, Sebastian noted; he walked a short distance away, listening, sensing the cemetery and the dead beneath the headstones, the corruptible, as Paul had called them, who, one day, like Mrs. Benton, would put on incorruption. And this mortal, he thought, must put on immortality. And then the saying that is written, he thought, will come to pass. Death is swallowed up in victory. Grave, where is thy victory? Oh death, where is thy sting? And so forth. He roamed on, using his flashlight to avoid tripping over headstones; he moved very slowly, and always hearing--but not exactly; not literally, with his ears, but rather inside him--the dim stirrings underground. Others, he thought, who one day soon will be old-born; their flesh and particles are migrating back already, finding their way to their onetime places; he sensed the eternal process, the unending complex activity of the graveyard, and it gave him a thrill of enthusiasm, and of great excitement. Nothing was more profoundly optimistic, more powerful in its momentum of good, than this re-forming of bodies which had, as Paul put it, corrupted away, and now, with the Hobart Phase at work, reversing the corruption.

Paul's only error, he reflected, had been to anticipate it in his own lifetime.

Those who were presently being old-born had been the last to die: final mortalities before June of 1986. But, according to Alex Hobart, the reversal of time would continue to move backwards, continually sweeping out a greater span; earlier and still earlier deaths would be reversed... and, in two thousand years from now, Paul himself would no longer "sleep," as he himself had put it.

But by then--long, long before then--Sebastian Hermes and everyone else alive would have dwindled back into waiting wombs, and the mothers who possessed those wombs would have dwindled, too, and so on; assuming, of course, that Hobart was right. That the Phase was not temporary, short in duration, but rather one of the most vast of sidereal processes, occurring every few bfflion years.