"Everything is absolutely all right. I am in good health, have enough money, and am perfectly safe. I'll write other and longer letters-better preserved, no time to have this one etched-using all the mail drops Justin suggested.

"Kiss everyone for me. Long letter follows.

"My undying love,

"Ol' Buddy Boy

"P.S. I hope it's a boy and a girl-wouldn't that be fun!" -

DA CAPO-II

The End of an Era

25 September 1916 Greg.

Dear Laz-Lor,

This is the second of many letters I will attempt to send, using all the Delay Mail drops Justin suggested-three law firms, Chase National Bank, a time capsule to be forwarded with instructions to a Dr. Gordon Hardy via W. W. Smith via a safe-deposit box (unreliable coot, that Smith; he'll probably open it and thereby destroy it-although I don't recall it, either way), and all the other dodges I memorized, If I can get just one into the Archives just before the Diaspora, it should be delivered when you ask for it, late in Greg. 4291 by the schedule we worked out.

With luck, you will receive dozens of letters all at the same time. Arranged by dates, they should constitute a record of the, next ten years. There may be gaps in the account (letters that failed to get through)-if so, I'll fill those gaps (after you pick me up) by dictating to Athene, to keep my promise to Justin and to Galahad for a full report. Me, I'll be satisfied if just one gets through-and tell Athene to keep working on that notion of time-capsule-cum-Delay-Mail for still earlier centuries; there ought to be some way to make it foolproof.

I'll be using a wide variety of addressees-plus a wrinkle I thought up. I'm going to send a letter in the usual multiple covers to the Executive Computer, Secundus, Year 2000 Diaspora, to be opened by and read by the computer (untouched by human hands!) with a program to hold the message and deliver it to the Colony Leader, Tertius, the day after we left.

I don't believe in paradoxes. Either Minerva got that message before you were born, and filed it in dead storage, and passed it on to Athene, and now (your now) Ira has it and has passed it to you two-or it failed to get through at all. No anomaly, no paradox-either total successor total failure. I got the idea from the fact that the executive computer opens and reads and acts on endless written messages without referring them to the Chairman Pro Tern or to any human unless necessary.

Basic Message: (This was in my first note and will be in every letter.) I made an error in calibration and arrived three years early. This is not Dora's fault, and be sure to tell her I said so before you tell her what happened. Reassure her. Despite her tomboy rowdiness, she is very vulnerable and must not be hurt. If I had given her sufficiently accurate figures, she would have hit any split second I asked for; of this I am certain.

Basic rendezvous time and place remains ten (10) T-years after you dropped me and at meteor-impact crater in Arizona, other rendezvous times & places figured from basic as before.) My error changes the Gregorian date of rendezvous to 2 August 1926-but still ten T-years after drop, as planned.

If Dora will worry less if she finds the error in the data I gave her, here are time marks she can rely on: Gregorian dates of total eclipses by Luna of Sol with respect to Terra between Gregorian 2 Aug 1916 and 2 Aug 1926.

1918 June 8 1923 September 10

1919 May 29 1925 January 24

1922 September 21 1926 January 14

If Dora wants to be still fussier, she can get any ancient Solar System date from Athene she wants; the Great Library at New Rome perpetuated endless stuff of that sort. But Dora has in her own gizzards everything she really needs.

Recapitulation:

1. Pick me up ten T-years after you dropped me.

2. I'm three years early-my error, not Dora's.

3. I'm tine, healthy, safe, holding, miss my darlings, and send love to all of you.

Now the hairy & scary adventures of a time-traveler- To begin with, they have been neither hairy nor scary, I've been careful to attract no attention, as retiring as a mouse at a cat show. Whenever the locals rub blue mud in their navels, I rub blue mud in mine just as solemnly.

I agree with the politics of anyone who speaks to me, attend the church he does-while sheepishly admitting that I've missed lately-I listen instead of talking (difficult as you may find that to believe), and I never talk back. If someone tries to rob me, I will not kill him or even break his arms; I'll shut up and let him have all he can find on me. My fixed purpose is to be on the lip of that crater in Arizona ten years from now; I shan't let anything jeopardize keeping our date. I am not here to reform this world; I am simply revisiting the scenes of my childhood.

It has been easier than I expected. Accent gave me some trouble at first. But I listened and now speak as harsh a Cornbelt accent as I did as a youngster. It is amazing how things have come back. I confirm from experience the theory that childhood memories are permanent, even though one may "forget" them until restimulated. I left this city when I was younger than you two are; I have been on more than two hundred planets since then, I have forgotten most of them.

But I find that I know this city.

Some changes...but changes in the other entropy direction; I am now seeing it as it was when I was four T-years old. I am four years old elsewhere in this city. I have avoided that neighborhood and have not yet tried to see my first family-the idea makes me a bit uneasy. Oh, I shall, before I leave to travel around the country; I'm not afraid of being recognized by them. Impossible!

I look like a young man and much-I think-as I looked when I was in fact a young man. But no one here has ever seen what that four-year-old will look like when he grows up. My only hazard would lie in trying to tell the truth. Not that I would be believed-no one here believes even in space travel, much less time travel-but because I would risk being locked up as "crazy"-a nonscientific term meaning that the person to whom one applies that label has a world picture differing from the accepted one.

Kansas City in 1916- You put me down in a meadow; I climbed the fence and walked to the nearest town. No one noticed us-tell Dora that she did it slick as a pickpocket. The town was pleasant, the people friendly; I stayed a day to get reoriented, then moved on to a larger town, did the same there and got clothes to change me from a farm worker into someone who would not be conspicuous in a city. (You dears, who never wear clothes when you don't need them-except festive occasions-would have trouble believing how status here-&-now is shown by clothes. Far more so than in New Rome-here one can look at a person and tell age, sex, social status, economic status, probable occupation, approximate education, and many other things, just by clothing. These people even swim with clothes on-I am not farcing; ask Athene. My dears, they sleep in clothes.)

I took a railroad train to Kansas City. Ask Athene to display a picture of one from this era. This culture is prototechnical, just beginning to shift from human muscle power and animal power to generated power. Such as there is originates from burning natural fuels or from wind or waterfall. Some of this is converted into primitive electrical power, but this railroad train was propelled by burning coal to produce expanding steam.