I was tempted to stay there. There was something so warm and friendly about all these outcasts, no one of whom would ever point a finger of scorn. Had it not been for Boss on one hand and Georges and the memory of places that smelled better on the other hand, I might have stayed in (lower) Vicksburg and found a scam that suited my talents.

"But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep." Master Robert Frost knew why a person keeps on going when she would rather stop. Dressed as if I were a soldier out of work and shopping for the best recruiting deal, I frequented river town listening for a riverboat skipper willing to smuggle live cargo. I had been disappointed to learn how little traffic there was on the river. No news was coming out of the Imperium and no boats were coming down the river, so very few skippers were willing to risk going upriver.

So I sat in bars in river town, drinking small beer and letting the word filter around that I was prepared to pay a worthwhile price for a ticket up the river.

I considered advertising. I had been following the Opportunity Ads, which were considerably more outspoken than those I had noticed in California-apparently anything was tolerated as long as it was limited to low town:

Do You Hate Your Family?

Are You Frustrated, Tied Down, Boned?

Is Your Husband/Wife a Waste of Space?

LET US MAKE A NEW (WO)MAN OF YOU!!!!!

Plasticizing-Reorientation-Relocating Transsexualizing-Discreet Wet Work

Consult Doc Frank Frankenstein

Softly Sam's Bar Grill

This was the first time I'd ever seen murder for pay blatantly advertised. Or did I misunderstand it?

Do You Have a PROBLEM? Nothing is illegal-it isn't what you do; it's the way that you do

it. We have the most skilled shystens in the Lone Star State.

LOOPHOLES, Inc.

(Special Rates to Bachelors)

Punch LEV 10101

With the above it helped to know that "LEV" call codes were assigned only to locations under the bluff.

Artists, Ltd.

Documents of All Sorts, Negotiable Instruments, Money Of All Nations, Diplomas, Birth Certificates, IDs, Passports, Photognaphs, Business Licenses, Marriage Licenses, Credit

Cands, Holograms, Audio/Video Tapes, Commissions, Pardons, Wills, Seals, Fingerprints-All Work Guananteed with warnanty underwritten by Lloyd's Associates-LEV 10111

Certainly all of the above services were available in any large city but they were rarely openly advertised. As for the warranty, I simply did not believe it.

I decided not to advertise my need because of doubt that anything so public could help in a matter essentially clandestine-I went on relying on chandlers and barkeeps and madams. But I continued to watch the ads on the chance of spotting something of use to me. and came across one probably not of use but decidedly of interest. I froze it and called it to Georges' attention:

W.K.-Make your will. You have

only ten days to live.

A.C.B.

"What about it, Georges?"

"The first one we saw gave W.K. only a week. More than a week has passed and he now has ten days. If this keeps up, W.K. will die of old age."

"You don't believe that."

"No, my love, I do not. It's a code."

"What sort of a code?"

"The simplest sort and thereby impossible to break. The first ad told the person or persons concerned to carry out number seven or expect number seven or it said something about something designated as seven. This one says the same with respect to code item number ten. But the meaning of the numbers cannot be deduced through statistical analysis because the code can be changed long before a useful statistical universe can be reached. It's an idiot code, Friday, and an idiot code can never be broken if the user has the good sense not to go too often to the well."

"Georges, you sound as if you had done military code and/or cipher work."

"I have but that's not where I learned it. The most difficult code analysis ever attempted-one that still goes on today and will never be complete-is the interpretation of living genes. An idiot code all of it... but repeated so many millions of times that we can eventually assign meaning to nonsense syllables. Forgive me for talking shop at meals."

"Piffle, I started it. No way to guess what A.C.B. means?"

"None."

That night the assassins struck the second time, right on schedule. I don't say that the two were related.

They struck ten days, almost to the hour, after their first attack. The timing did not tell us anything about which group was responsible~ as it matched the predictions of both the so-called Council for Survival and their rivals the Stimulators, whereas the Angels of the Lord had offered no prediction about a second strike.

There were differences between the first wave of terror and the second, differences that seemed to tell me something-or us something, as Georges and I discussed it as the reports came in:

a) No news at all from the Chicago Imperium. No change here, as no news had come out of the Imperium since the initial reports of the slaughter of Democrats... then nary a peep for over a week, which made me increasingly anxious.

b) No news from the California Confederacy concerning a second strike-routine news only. NB.: a few hours after the initial news reports of a second wave of assassinations elsewhere a "routine" news item came out of the California Confederacy. Chief "Warwhoop" Tumbril, on the advice of his physicians, had named a three-person executive regency with plenipotentiary powers to govern the nation while he underwent long-postponed medical treatment. He had gone to his retreat, the Eagle's Nest, near Tahoe, for this purpose. Bulletins would be issued horn San Jose, not from Tahoe.

c) Georges and I agreed on the most probable-almost certain- meaning of this. The medical treatment that pitiful poseur now needed was embalming and his "regency" would now give news handouts while they settled their power struggle.

d) This second time there were no reports from off-Earth.

e) Canton and Manchuria did not report attacks. Correction: No such reports reached Vicksburg, Texas.

f) So fan as I could tell in ticking them off against a list, the terrorists did strike at all other nations. But my tally had holes in it. Of the four hundred-odd "nations" in the U.N. some produce news only during total solar eclipses. I don't know what happened in Wales or the Channel Isles or Swaziland or Nepal or Prince Edward Island and I can't see why anyone (who does not live in one of those nowhere places) should care. At least three hundred of those so-called sovereign nations that vote in the U.N. are ciphers, aboard only for quarters and rations-important to themselves, no doubt, but totally meaningless in Geopolitick. But in all major countries, except as noted above, the terrorists did strike and those strikes were reported except where baldly censored.

g) Most strikes failed. This was the glaring difference between the first wave and the second. Ten days earlier most assassins had killed their targets and most assassins had escaped. Now this was reversed:

Most targets survived, most assassins died. A few had been captured, a very few had escaped.

This last aspect of the second-wave assassinations put to rest a nagging fret in my mind, i.e., Boss was not the mover behind these assassinations.

He did look skinny but that probably reflected his having just Why say I so? Because the second wave was a disaster for whoever was in charge.