By geometry, geography, and simplest knowledge of what an APV can do, Boss's new headquarters had to be someplace more or less around Des Moines-but in this case "more or less" meant a radius of at least a hundred kilometers. I did not conjecture. Nor did I conjecture as to which ones of us actually knew the location of HQ. It was a "need-to-know" and trying to guess how Boss decided such things was a waste of time.

In East Saint Louis I bought a light cloak with a hood, then a latex mask in a novelty shop, picking one that was not grotesque. Then I took careful pains to randomize my choice of terminal. I was of strong but not conclusive opinion that Boss had been hit again and this time smeared, and the only reason that I had not panicked was that I am trained not to panic until after the emergency.

Masked and hooded, I punched the last-resort call code. Same result and again the terminal could not be switched off. I turned my back on the pickup, pulled off that mask and dropped it on the floor, got out of there slow-march, around a corner, shed that cloak as I walked, folded it, shoved it into a trash can, went back to Saint Louis-

credit card to pay my tube fare to Kansas City. An hour earlier in Little Rock I had used it without hesitation but at that time I had had no suspicion that anything had happened to Boss-in fact I held a "religious" conviction that nothing could happen to Boss. ("Religious" "absolute belief without proof.")

But now I was forced to operate on the assumption that something had indeed happened to Boss, which included the assumption that my Saint Louis MasterCard (based on Boss's credit, not my own) could drop dead on me at any moment. I might stick it into a slot to pay for something and have it burned out by a destruction bolt when the machine recognized the number.

So four hundred kilometers and fifteen minutes later I was in Kansas City. I never left the tube station. I made a free call at the information desk about service on the KC-Omaha-Sioux Falls- Fargo-Winnipeg tube and was told that there was full service to Pembina at the border, none beyond. Fifty-six minutes later I was at the British Canadian border directly south of Winnipeg. It was still early afternoon. Ten hours earlier I had been climbing up out of the bottomland of the Mississippi and wondering light-headedly whether I was in the Imperium or if I had floated back into Texas.

Now I was even more overpoweringly anxious to get out of the Imperium than I had been to get in. So far I had managed to stay one flea-hop ahead of the Imperial Police but there was no longer any doubt in my mind that they wanted to talk to me. I did not want to talk to them because I had heard tales about how they conducted an investigation. The laddies who had questioned me earlier this year had been moderately rough... but the Imperial Police were reputed to burn out a victim's brain.

XIX

Fourteen hours later I had moved only twenty-five kilometers east of where I had had to leave the tube system. An hour of that I had spent in shopping, most of an hour in eating, over two hours in close consultation with a specialist, a heavenly six hours in sleeping, and almost four in moving cautiously east parallel to the border fence without getting close to it-and now it was dawn and I did approach the fence, right up to it, and was walking it, a bored repairman.

Pembina is just a village; I had to go back to Fargo to find a specialist-a quick trip by local capsule. The specialist I wanted was the same sort as "Artists, Ltd." of Vicksburg save that such entrepreneurs do not advertise in the Imperium; it took time and some cautious grease to find him. His office was downtown near Main Avenue and University Drive but it was behind a more conventional business; it would not easily be noticed.

I was still wearing the faded blue neodenim jump suit I had been wearing when I dived off the Skip to M'Lou, not through any special affection for it but because a one-piece blue suit of coarse cloth is the nearest thing to an international unisex costume you can find. It will get by even at Ell-Five or in Luna City, where a monokini is more likely. Add a scarf and a smart housewife will wear it to shop; carry a briefcase and you are a respected businessman; squat with a hatful of pencils and it's a beggar's garb. Since it is hard to soil, easy to clean, won't wrinkle, and almost never wears out, it is ideal for a

courier who wishes to fade into the scene and can't waste time or luggage on clothes.

To that jump suit had been added a greasy cap with "my" union badge pinned to it, a well-worn hip belt with old but serviceable tools, a bandolier of repair links over one shoulder and a torch kit to install them over the other.

Everything I had was well worn including my gloves. Zippered into my right hip pocket was an old leather wallet with IDs showing that I was "Hannah Jensen" of Moorhead. A worn newspaper clipping showed that I had been a high-school cheerleader; a spotted Red Cross card gave my blood type as 0 Rh pos sub 2 (which in fact it is) and credited me with having won my gallon pin-but the dates showed that I had neglected to donate for over six months.

Other mundane trivia gave Hannah a background in depth; she even carried a Visa card issued by Moorhead Savings and Loan Company-but on this item I had saved Boss more than a thousand crowns: Since I did not expect to use it, it lacked the invisible magnetic signature without which a credit card is merely a piece of plastic.

It was just full light and I had, I figured, a maximum of three hours to get through that fence-only that long because the real fence maintenance men started working then and I was most unanxious to meet one. Before that time Hannah Jensen should disappear... possibly to resurface in the late afternoon for a final effort. Today was go-for-broke; my cash crowns were used up. True, I still had my Imperium credit card-but I am extremely leery of electronic sleuths. Had my three attempts yesterday to call Boss, all with the same card, tripped some subprogram under which 1 could be identified? I seemed to have gotten away with using the card for tube fare immediately thereafter... but had I really escaped all electronic traps? I did not know and did not want to find out-I simply wanted to get through that fence.

I sauntered along, resisting a powerful urge to fall out of character by hurrying. I wanted a place where I could cut the fence without being watched, despite the fact that the ground was scorched for about fifty meters on each side of the fence. I had to accept that; what I wanted was a stretch shielded along the scorched band by trees and bush about like Normandy hedgerows.

Minnesota does not have Normandy hedgerows.

Northern Minnesota almost does not have trees-or at least not in the stretch of the border I was covering. I was ey~ing a piece of fence, trying to tell myself that a wide reach of open space with no one in sight was just as good as being shielded, when a police APV came into sight cruising slowly west along the fence. I gave them a friendly wave and kept on trudging east.

They circled, came back, and squatted, about fifty meters from me. I turned and went toward them, reaching the car as the best boy got out, followed by his driver, and I saw by their uniforms (hell, damn, and spit) that they were not Minnesota Provincial Police but Imperials.

Best boy says to me, "What are you doing here this early?"

His tone was aggressive; I answered it to match: "I was working, until you interrupted me."

"The hell you say. You don't go on until eight hundred hours."

I answered, "Get the news, big man. That was last week. Two shifts now. First shift comes on at 'can.' Shifts change at noon; second shift goes off at 'can't.'