"The… snarfitar is bonfrect?" the man queried.

"Exactly; and the doolfroon have taken over the ignort."

"Doolfroon's taken over the ignort." The man hurried away, mumbling. Bailey watched the officer turn as the messenger came up; he waited until the sound of raised voices told him the message had been delivered. Then he strolled behind a group of Peacemen as they stared toward the disturbance, tried keys until one opened the lift doors, stepped into a silver-filigree decorated, white leather upholstered car, and punched the top key.

26

Bailey changed cars three times at intermediate levels, each time under the eyes of guards alert for a man descending, before he reached the tower suite. He stepped out into a mirror-walled ante-room rugged in soft gray. A wide white and silver door stood at one side. It opened at a touch. Across the room a square-faced man with carelessly combed black hair looked up with a faintly puzzled expression.

"Are you Micael Drans?" Bailey heard himself ask.

"Yes…"

Bailey made a smooth motion and the gun he had bought in another lifetime, six hours earlier, was in his hand. He raised it to point squarely at the forehead of the man behind the desk. His finger moved to the firing stud A side door burst open. A girl stood there, wide-eyed, white-gowned, elegant. In a single step she was between them, shielding the victim with her slim body. A gun in her jeweled hand was aimed at Bailey's chest.

"No, William Bailey!" she cried. "Drans mustn't die!"

27

"I remember you," Bailey said. His voice sounded blurred in his ears; the room, the girl, the man sitting rigid behind the desk had taken on a dream-like quality. "You're the girl who helped me. I never learned your name."

"Throw the gun away, William," she said urgently.

Bailey trembled, sick with the hunger of his need to shoot, restrained by the impossibility of killing the girl. "I can't," he groaned. "I have to kill him!"

"Why?" the girl demanded.

"The voice," he said, remembering. "In the Euthanasia Center, it told me how to control my circulation to keep the drug from paralyzing my heart, how to make my legs work enough to carry me out through the service door. It told me to come here, shoot Micael Drans! I have to kill him! Stand aside! I'll kill you if I have to!"

"William," the girl's voice was low, urgent. "Micael Drans is more important than you can dream-than even he dreams." She spoke over her shoulder to the waiting and watching man. "Micael-something very important has happened within the last few hours." It was a statement, not a question. Drans nodded slowly. "Yes." He seemed calm, merely puzzled.

"A message," the girl said. "A message from very far away."

A look of incredulity came over Drans' face. "How could you know of that, Aliea?"

"The message is genuine," the girl said in an intense voice. "Believe it, Micael!" Bailey listened, feeling the sweat trickling down the side of his face. His heart thudded dully.

"I think I understand part of it, William," the girl went on. "You received a part-but I received the rest! You knew what-and I knew why. I made my way here-just as you did. I didn't understand, then-but now I do! And you must, too!"

"I have to kill him-"

"I can shoot first, William," she said steadily. "You're confused, under terrible stress. I'm not. You must try to understand. Perhaps…" She broke off. "William, close your eyes. Concentrate. Let me try to reach you…!"

Like an automaton, he followed instructions. Blackness. Swirling light. Out of the darkness, a shape that hovered, a complex structure of light that was not light, a structure incomplete, needing him to complete it. He moved toward it, sensing how the ragged surfaces of his own being reached out to meet and merge with its opposite Light blossomed like a sudden dawn. All barriers fell. Her mind lay open to him.

Now come, William, her voice spoke in his brain. I'll lead you… He followed along a dark path that plunged down, down, through terrible emptiness…

And emerged into-somewhere. He was aware of the compound ego-matrix that was himself, Bailey/Aliea; saw all the foreshortened perspective of his narrow life, her pinched, love-starved existence. And saw the presence that had reached out, touched him/her. And abruptly, he/she was that other presence.

28

He lay in darkness, suffering. Not the mere physical pain of the wasted, ancient body; that was nothing. But the ceaseless, relentless pain of the knowledge of failure, the bitterness of vain regret for the irretrievable blunder of long ago.

Then, out of despair, a concept born of anguish; the long struggle, probing back down along the closed corridor along which he had come, searching, searching; and at last the first hint of success, the renewed striving, the moment of contact with the feeble, flickering life-mote that glowed so faint and far away:

WILLIAM BAILEY! LISTEN TO ME! YOU MUST NOT DIE! THERE IS THAT WHICH MUST BE DONE, AND ONLY YOU CAN DO IT! LISTEN: THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST DO…"

The girl still stood, aiming the weapon at his heart. Tears ran down her face, but the gun did not waver.

"It was the voice," Bailey said. "You and I were… linked. We… touched him, were him. He's the one who made me live, sent me here. Who was he? What was he?"

"He's a man, William. A dying man, a hundred years in the future. In some way that perhaps not even he understands, he projected his mind back along his own life line-to us."

"A mind-reaching back through time?" Bailey asked.

"I think he meant only to reach one man, to explain the terrible thing that had happened, to enlist your help to do what he believed had to be done to right the wrong. But his brain was too powerful, too complex. An ordinary mind couldn't encompass it. I was near-on the Intermix, ready to jump. A part of his message spilled over-into my mind. I saw what had happened, what would happen-saw who and where you were, knew that I had to help you-but I didn't know-didn't understand what it was you were to do."

"A message," Bailey said, remembering the flood of impressions. "A transmission from a point in space beyond Pluto. A ship-heading for Earth. Aliens-from a distant star. They asked for peace and friendship. And we gave them-death."

Drans spoke up, his voice strained. "When did we attack?"

"Sarday, Sember twenty," Bailey said. "Black Sarday."

"Tomorrow's date," Drans said in a voice like cracked metal.

"And Micael Drans was the man who gave the order!" Bailey blurted. "Don't you see, Aliea? That's why he sent me here, why Drans has to die!"

"For three days and three nights I've wrestled with it," Drans said dully. "Pro and con, trust or mistrust, kill-or welcome. There are so many factors to consider, so terrible a risk…"

"And you decided: it had to be death, because how could man, who had betrayed his own species, trust another race?" Bailey accused.

"Is it possible?" Drans stared from Aliea to Bailey. "Can you know the future? In some miraculous way, were you sent here to save me from this terrible decision? Can we trust them? Are they what they say?"

"They come as friends," Aliea said softly.

Drans stood. "I believe you," he said. "Because the alternative is too bitter to contemplate." He stepped forward, gently thrust the girl aside. "Do your duty," he said flatly to Bailey.

"William-no!" Aliea said swiftly. "You know now, don't you? You see?"