Forget it, forget it, he was not going to give either Gramp or his father any reason to shoot, or even to be angry-and you forget it too, you blind snake! Lazarus wondered when his father would be home, and tried to remember how he looked-found his memory blurred. Lazarus had always been closer to his Grandfather Johnson than to his father; not only had his father often been away on business, but also Gramp had been home in the daytime and willing to spend time with Woodie.

His other grandparents? Somewhere in Ohio- Cincinnati? No matter, his memory of them was so faint that it did not seem worthwhile to try to see them.

He had completed all that he had intended to do in Kansas City-and if he had the sense God promised a doorknob, the time to leave is now. Skip church on Sunday, stay away from the pool hall, go down Monday and sell his remaining holdings-and leave! Climb into the Ford-no, sell it and take a train to San Francisco; there catch the first ship south. Send Gramp and Maureen polite notes, mailed from Denver or San Francisco, saying that he was sorry but that business trip, etc.-but Get Out of Town!

Because Lazarus knew that the attraction had not been one-sided- He thought that he had kept Gramp from guessing his emotional storm...but Maureen had been aware of it-and had not resented it. No, she had been flattered and pleased. They had been on the same frequency at once, and without a word or any meaningful glance or touch, her transponder had answered him, silently...then, as opportunity made it possible, she had answered overtly, once with a dinner invitation-which Gramp had tromped on-and she had promptly tromped back in a fashion that made it acceptable by the mores. Then a second time, just as he was leaving, with the also fully acceptable suggestion that she would expect to see him in church.

Well, why should a young matron, even in 1917, not be pleased-and flattered, and unresentful-to know that a man wanted most urgently to take her to bed and treat her with gentle roughness? If his nails were clean...if his breath was sweet...if his manners were polite and respectful-why not? A woman with eight children is no nervous virgin; she is used to a man in her bed, in her arms, in her body-and Lazarus would have bet his last cent that Maureen enjoyed it.

Lazarus had no reason then, or in his earlier life, to suspect that Maureen Smith had ever been anything but "faithful" by the most exacting Bible-Belt standards. He had no reason to think that she was even flirting with him. Her manner had not suggested it; he doubted if it ever would. But he held a deep certainty that she was as strongly attracted as he was, that she knew exactly where it could lead-and he suspected that she realized that nothing but chaperonage would stop them.

(But a father in residence and eight children, plus the contemporary mores concerning what can and can't be done, constituted a lot of chaperonage! Llita's chastity belt could hardly be more efficient.)

Let's haul it out into the middle of the floor and let the cat sniff it. "Sin?" "Sin" like "love" was a word hard to define. It came in two bitter but vastly different flavors. The first lay in violating the taboos of your tribe. This passion he felt was certainly sinful by the taboos of the tribe he had been born into-incestuous in the first degree.

But it could not possibly be incest to Maureen.

To himself? He knew that "incest" was a religious concept, not a scientific one, and the last twenty years had washed away in his mind almost the last trace of his tribal taboo. What was left was no more than that breath of garlic in a good salad; it made Maureen more enticingly forbidden (if such were possible!); it did not scare him off. Maureen did not seem to be his mother-because she did not fit his recollection of her either as a young woman or as an old woman.

The other meaning of "sin" was easier to define because it was not clouded by the murky concepts of religion and taboo: Sin is behavior that ignores the welfare of others.

Suppose he stuck around and managed somehow (stipulate safe opportunity) to bed Maureen with her full cooperation? Would she regret it later? Adultery? The word meant something here.

But she was a Howard, one of the early ones when marriage between Howards was a cash contract, eyes wide open, payment from the Foundation for each child born of such union-and Maureen had carried out the contract, eight paid-for children already and would stay in production for, uh, about fifteen more years. Perhaps to her "adultery" meant "violation of contract" rather than "sin"-he did not know.

But that is not the point, Bub; the real question is the only one that has ever stopped you when temptation coincided with opportunity-and this time he could consult neither Ishtar nor any geneticist. The chance of a bad outcome was slight when there were so many hurdles in the way of any outcome. But it was the exact risk that he had always refused to take: the chance of placing a congenital handicap on a child.

Hey, wait a minute! No such outcome could result because no such had resulted. He knew every one of his siblings, alive now or still to be born, and there had not been a defective in the lot. Not one. Therefore no hazard.

But- That was grounded on the assumption that his "no paradoxes" theory was a law of nature. But you've long been aware that the "no-paradoxes" theory itself involves a paradox-one that you've kept quiet about so as not to alarm Laz and Lor and the rest of your "present" (that present, not this one) family; to wit, the idea that free will and predestination are two aspects of the same mathematical truth, and the difference is merely linguistic, not semantic: the notion that his own free will could not change events here-&-now because his freewill actions here-&-now were already a part of what had happened in any later "here-&-now."

Which in turn depended on a solipsistic notion he had held as far back as he could remember- Cobwebs, all of it!

Lazarus, you don't know what trouble you might cause. So don't! Get out of town now and don't come back to Kansas City at all! Because, if you do, you're certain to try to get Maureen's bloomers off...and she's going to breathe hard and help. From there on only Allah knows-but it could be tragic for her and tragic for others, and as for you, you stupid stud, all balls and no brain, it could get your ass shot off...just as the twins predicted.

In which case, since you are not going to see your family again, there is no sense in waiting in South America for this war to end. You've seen enough of this doomed era; ask the girls to come pick you up now.

Was her waist really that slender? Or did she lace it in? Shucks, it didn't matter how she was built. As with Tamara, it simply did not matter.

Dear Laz and Lor,

Darlings, I've changed plans. I've seen my first family, and there isn't anything else I want to do in this era- nothing worth sweating out most of two years in a backwater while this war drags on to its bloody and useless finish. So I want you to pick me up now, at the impact crater. Forget about Egypt; I can't get there now.

By "pick me up now" I mean Gregorian 3 March 1917-repeat, third day of March one thousand nine hundred and seventeen Gregorian, at that meteor impact crater in Arizona.

Much to tell you when I see you. Meanwhile-

My undying love,

Lazarus

Was it her voice? Or her fragrance? Or something else?