"I should certainly think we can," said Anthony, and picked up a phone in front of him.

The conversation was brief. Mr. Newton Anthony hung up and nodded to J. "It's on. You may call your man Blade now."

J picked up the green phone. The Treasury boffin said: "I should like to meet this Richard Blade before he goes through the computer. I cannot begin to imagine what sort of man he is."

J shook his head sternly. "Very few people can. For the simple reason that there are no others like him. But you can't meet him, sir. Strictly against security regulations. Sorry."

He dialed a single digit on the green phone.

Blade had slipped off Zoe's very brief panties and flung them to one side in the tall growing thyme and heather. By now they were dew sodden.

He put down an old mack, in a small depression along the cliff top that Zoe called "Blade's Snuggery," and after making love for the first time they lay close together and, by looking down a sort of winze, could see the Channel. It lay broad and flat, dead calm but for a fleck of lace here and there, and marred only by the lights of a freighter, far out, beating up to Thamesmouth. Just below them, on a ledge, gulls stirred and ruffled and dreamed their gull's dreams. The surf was only froth on shingle. The moon sailed away from them, a silver galleon showing its high stern in disdain.

Blade, his mouth against Zoe's ear - as small and soft and velvety as a pet mouse - said: "The moon is fair tonight along the Straits."

She had taken her mouth from his and turned away, and now she stirred but did not turn back to kiss him again. She muttered: "And idiot armies struggle on the darkling plain."

It was a game they often played, quoting and requoting from a favorite poem, and her reply was not exactly what Blade had expected. She had not used the word love. And she nearly always did, when she could. Love. For, of, about, to, Richard Blade. Not this night. Zoe had not, even in the last gasping throes of passion, murmured that she loved him.

Blade, dark-muscled giant that he was, was acute without being particularly intellectual. In many ways he was a sensitive man, an image belied by his rugged good looks and his outsize, Greek athlete's body. He was as tough as concrete, an efficient killer in England's service, and one of the best secret agents in the world.

Had been. Lord Leighton's computer had changed all that.

Now he kissed her ear and said, "What is it, Zoe? What's wrong? Something is wrong, I've known it all day."

She went tense for a moment, then relaxed. "Who is Taleen?" she asked.

For a moment he really did not know. His memories of Alb were faint, tenuous, like smoke drifting and disappearing, faint beacons flashing for an instant and then doused in black. Lord L had explained it. His memory molecules could not restore the past.

Taleen? Taleen - -the ghost came then, for a breath, a shimmer of golden girl flesh, a savage little mouth slashing at his, an imperious cry of passion somewhere in limbo.

Zoe said: "You don't answer me, Richard." She had been calling him Richard all day, not Dick.

He could not answer her. The brief carnal phantom vanished and he did not know who Taleen was. Had he ever known?

"I don't know anyone named Taleen," he said. "Should I? Why are you asking?"

When he touched her again she went rigid and pulled away, but her voice was calm. Zoe was always calm, except in passion.

"Really, Richard, I wish you wouldn't try to deceive me. I deserve better than that. So do you. We're neither of us fools, nor lying children. If you've found another woman for God's sake tell me, just simply tell me, and that will be that. I am not a clinger, you know. I don't make scenes. But after what we have had of each other I think I deserve honesty. That's why I am so puzzled and hurt, really. I know you are honest, just as I know you are a gentleman - and that is why I cannot understand."

"Can't understand what, Zoe? For God's sake! What is this all about? You have been sulking underneath all day, and when I ask why, suddenly you come up with a name! Taleen? I suppose it's a name. And I don't know what in hell you're talking about!"

Did he know? What just now, faster than light, had pressed against his brain? A golden-orbed and blue - painted breast? Gone.

He pulled Zoe to him in an embrace that was nearly savage. She cried out. "Dick! Please - you're hurting me." For the first time today she had called him Dick.

"I'm sorry, honey." Yet he held her firmly, made her turn to face him so their eyes glinted close in the moonlight. "But you've got to tell me what this is all about, Zoe. It is all getting a little crazy, you know. Barmy as hell!"

Lord L would know, of course, and Lord L must be asked and made to tell. Was the giant computer, and the subsequent, memory treatments, affecting his brain permanently? That could wait. Right now he was in deep trouble with the woman he loved.

"All right," said Zoe. Some of the hurt left her voice. "Maybe it was only a nightmare. Maybe I'm only a jealous fool. After all, Richard, I have never known you to lie to me."

She still called him Richard.

"Last night, Richard, after we had been in bed an hour or so, you began to make love to a woman named Taleen. You woke me up by threshing about and calling her name. You were going through the actual physical motions of love - sweating and groaning and crying. And you - you..." She broke off her words and looked at' him.

Blade stared at her, stunned and a little afraid. "Why didn't you wake me, for God's sake?"

"I couldn't. I tried. Don't you think I tried! But I was afraid of you, afraid of being smashed. I know how powerful you are, and how gentle you are, at least always with me, but last night you were a different man. I had never seen that man before and I did not like him. I hated him! You were a great ravening savage brute, Richard, and I was frightened to death. Finally I just slipped out of bed and watched from a corner until it was over."

"How long?"

"At least half an hour. When you had finally spent, actually spent, you sighed and rolled over and went back to sleep like a tired baby."

He had had time to think now and knew that this scene was only an entry into another - to others. This storm had been brewing for a long time and now it was going to break. He tried the light note.

"All it means, love, is that I had a particularly realistic nightmare, an erotic dream, and you had the bad luck to witness it."

He smiled at her, so close, their eyes mirroring. The smile that J, with his acerbic tongue, sometimes alluded to as the coup de grace.

"It also means," said Blade, "that I am a lousy lover. A selfish pig that cares only for my own satisfaction. A pig that rolls over and snores without even a goodnight kiss. Now I ask you, darling, is that the Blade you know? Even if there were another woman, which there isn't - and I swear that on the Queen and my own sainted mother - would I treat her like that? Even in a dream? So you see it was only a nightmare. Someone else's nightmare. Not me at all. I think we had best just forget it. Come sweets, and give a kiss, and I'll pay you back threefold."

This time the quote did not work. The smile did not work. The famous Blade charm did not work. Zoe turned her face away from his.

"I think we had best not forget it, Richard. The nightmare, yes. You are probably right and it was only that. I am a little fool and there is no other woman named Taleen. It is an odd name, though. To imagine, dream up, even in a nightmare!"

Even the best, the sweetest, of them have nasty claws.

Blade sighed and closed his eyes against the moonlight, plucked a stalk of heather and chewed on it, and silently goddamned Lord L and all the boffins, and computers, and J and M16A, and especially damned himself as far back as Oxford for having let himself be recruited there. He damned the concept of duty and knew he could never refute it. Most especially he damned, to the nethermost regions of the darkest pit, the Official Secrets Act. There was never any release from it. Not ever. Even if duty and country and decency did not deter - the Act did. They had you forever. You opened your mouth once, one faint whisper, and they hung you. Even J would do it. And J loved him like a son.

Zoe was speaking quietly. "Until a few months ago, Richard, you were asking me to marry you."

And so he had been. He had loved her then and he loved her now. He gritted his teeth and was silent. The gulls fluttered on their ledge. The moon sailed away to adventure. Blade waited. He might yet get out of this one, but it was going to be a near thing. Christ! He didn't want to lose this woman.

"I wouldn't at first," she went on, "because of a number of things. There was no rush, I didn't know very much about you, and I wasn't sure if I loved you enough for marriage. Then, when I was sure, and loved you desperately, you stopped asking. Just like that." Blade groaned aloud.

Quickly she leaned to kiss his cheek. Her lips were chill and in her voice was a subtle note of change as she said: "Poor darling. Does it hurt so much?"

She was not, he knew, alluding to any physical pain. She had her lovely little sharp talons ha him now and she was going to rend a little, just to even matters up.

"You disappear for long periods of time, Richard. You never give me any excuses, I'll say that for you. You just disappear and then come back with strange marks and scars on you, and an odd look in your eye, and you walk in and expect me to pick right up where we left off. And I do. I always have, so far. I hop right into bed and I love it. But I can't love it forever, you know. I'm a woman. I want to get married and have children and have a husband I see every day. And every night. You won't even tell me what you really do for a living!"

Blade squinted up at her and made the effort. "Come off it, Zoe. You know what I..."

She put a cool hand over his lips. "Bureau of Economic Planning. Whitehall."

It was a new cover, one that J had dreamed up since the computer experiments began.

"I asked about your real job, Richard. That Bureau thing is only what they call a cover in the thrillers. I've looked into it. Father has friends, I have friends, and all our friends have friends. It wasn't so hard, really. You have got an office in Whitehall, and a pretty little thing as a secretary, and you spend about one hour a week there, signing papers that mean nothing."