So long as he didn't stay very long or they remained an even shorter time, all was equal. The people he'd met, the experiences he'd had while on these faraway holidays, were golden; they were, in fact, what kept him going. No matter who he met, they were equals, and, at least in his mind, they would always stay that way, for he could be close and friendly or cold and distant as it suited him to be, and those people with whom he interacted would be forever young, forever alive, because he would never see or hear of them again.

He liked this age, too, or at least he liked things more from this age onward. Those who idealized the past, whether recent or ancient, should have had to live through and endure it. Then, perhaps, they would appreciate what they now had and just how far things had come.

It also continued to astonish him how much of history duplicated itself, sometimes in the smallest details.

It would have astonished even great Caesar to know that he, or one nearly his twin, had crossed the Rubicon before, and what measure of futile toil had been done on a Great Wall for in-ner China long before the first brick was laid for that wall in this world; to know that Michelangelo could accomplish more than one David-and more than one Sistine Chapel; that Great Zimbabwe had stood before, almost but not quite on the same exact spot, and that Alexander had marched and Aristotle had thought not once but over again on more ancient ground. That Cyril, whom they would make a saint, would again and again commit the atrocity of burning the great library at Alexandria, and, once again, what remained of Greco-Roman writings would be preserved for Europe against Europe's best efforts by black Songhai at its library in great Timbuktu. Only the Hindus seemed to know, as they always did, that the cosmic wheel eternally came back again and again to the same place.

He understood why this was so, that the first natural de-velopment of Earth had been recorded through him in a vast data base so distant that none here could comprehend such a gulf and that "reset" meant just that, not a random restart, lest the experiment be spoiled.

He knew more or less what he was and had his own dim memories of before, but even now he found it more and more difficult to recall specific details, to remember all that much. The human brain could manage only so much. It was not a factor with these mortals, who died before they approached a fraction of their capacity, but for such as him it was . . . spooled off.

Still, therewere differences; there were always differ-ences, but until now, through the countless centuries that preceded it, they were relatively minor ones. Even major changes tended to rectify themselves over time, allowing history to rejoin the original flow. Still, he hadn't remem-bered the collapse of the Soviet Union at any point in this age, nor the creeping fascism edging out idealistic if no less abhorrent communism. It was so hard to remember, but that change had jolted him as nothing else he could remember with its sense of wrongness. If such a major departure was somehow allowed, did that mean that the experiment was in-evitably corrupted or that perhaps this time history was run-ning true?

Certainly it would delay s.p.a.ce exploration and colonization, perhaps for a century or two. He recalled fleeting snippets of time spent in the Soviet Mars colony. It was so long ago, and the thought was so fragmented, he could not be certain if it was a true memory or not, but he felt that it was. It sure wouldn't be now. It would be inter-esting to see whichwould be the nation to get out to the stars. Or was there still some "rectification" to come?

It bothered him, not so much in principle-he didn't re-ally care if things went differently or not, let alone who did what-but the mere fact that the difference existed at all. It seemed far too big to "rectify."

Something just as bad or worse might well come out of it all, but it seemed far too huge a departure for correction, and, lost memories or not, he was certain that a change this major had never happened before.

Could it be some new glitch in the system? He hoped not. Heprayed not. He wanted no more of that sort of thing, and anyway, if it was a glitch, the emergency pro-gram should call him and provide a means for him to come and fix things. That hadn't happened. And it wasn't as if, at this stage of technological development, he could just hop aboard an interstellar s.p.a.cecraft and steer for one of the old portals.

These people had barely made it to the moon the old-fashioned way, and when they had, they'd lost inter-est. He could never comprehend that; it seemed like social devolution. Oh, well . . .

His thoughts were suddenly broken by the sight of a cou-ple standing on the walk above looking out at the sea. There seemed something decidedly odd about them, but he couldn't figure out what it was.

Curiosity and the lack of anything better to do took him toward them. He saw that the woman was in a wheelchair-one of the elaborate, ex-pensive, motorized kinds. There was something odd about the man, more than the fact that he was overdressed for the area and the occasion, something in the way he stood, in the carriage of his head, and in the sungla.s.ses he was wear-ing.

It was enough to draw him closer to them. One did not often see a blind man and a wheelchair-bound woman out on these streets atany time, particularly on their own. Per-haps they were merely naive-thieves and muggers were not at all uncommon near the beach, and this couple was in no position to either defend themselves or give chase should they be threatened with violence. But he admired their courage and their obvious insistence that just because they were both handicapped did not mean that they were going to shut themselves away for the rest of their lives.

The woman sat oddly in the wheelchair, a position no one would naturally a.s.sume. A quadriplegic, most likely, with some limited control of at least one hand and arm suf-ficient to move the power joystick but not much else. She looked to be in her early to mid-forties, an attractive woman with short brown hair and lively eyes that seemed to pick up everything in a glance. She saw the stranger ap-proaching and said something to her companion, who nod-ded.

The man had on a white business suit and a well-knotted dark tie and wore a broad-brimmed Panama hat. He was a handsome man, too, perhaps a shade older than the woman, with signs of gray in the black hair that emerged beneath the hat, and he was fairly tall, almost a head taller than the man who was now walking toward him. He also had a look about him one saw only in this country-a curious mixture of nationalities, part Amerind, part European, part black, that had merged over the past four centuries into a unique and distinct new race, the Atlantic Brazilian.

"Good morning, sir and madam," the small man greeted them in an oddly accented but still very good Brazilian Por-tuguese dialect. He could see them both tense, as if they both had also just realized their vulnerability. "Please rest easy. I was simply walking along and could not help notic-ing you here. This is not a terribly safe place, you know."

"I was bom only two kilometers from here," the man re-sponded in a deep, elegant baritone. "I have no more fear of this place or these people than would you."

"What is he saying, Tony?" the woman asked in English with a clipped British Midlands accent. "I'm afraid I can't make out more than a word or two."

The stranger immediately switched to English. "I'm sorry, I hadn't realized that you both weren't locals."

His accent was still odd, but the words were clear.

"Just small talk, my dear," the blind man a.s.sured her.

"I distinctly got the impression of a warning," she per-sisted.

"I was just saying that this is a dangerous area these days, what with so many homeless youth gangs, thieves, and the like around," the small man explained.

"And I told him I was very familiar with the area," her companion added.

"Well, I said much the same," the woman noted. "Your memories of this beach are about twenty years out of date."

"You do not live here, then?" the small man asked.

"No," responded the Brazilian, "we live in Salisbury, in England, actually. But I have been promising myself that I would return home someday no matter what, and after pa.s.s-ing up previous opportunities, I decided that this was the time."

"You are staying with family, then?" The small man hes-itated, feeling suddenly a bit embarra.s.sed. "I'm sorry. My name is David Solomon-Captain David Solomon."

"Air force?"

"No. Merchant. My ship is theSumatra Sh.e.l.l out of Bah-rain. One of those huge supertankers filled with oil. I live aboard her for four months at a time, going back and forth from wherever there is crude oil to where they want me to unload it, seldom getting off for more than a few hours or a day at a time.

When I'm rotated off, I like to come to places I either have never been or haven't been to in a very long time."

"I shouldn't think that someone with a name like yours would be too welcome in Bahrain," the man responded. "I, by the way, am Joao Antonio Guzman, and this is my wife, Anne Marie. I generally use 'Tony' as a first name because, frankly, the British do a terrible job on 'Joao.' They still p.r.o.nounce Don Juan as Don Jew-an, you know."

"I can imagine," the captain replied. "And you're right. I'm Jewish, and that's neither popular nor even particularly legal in the Gulf, but n.o.body really minds so long as I stay out of Saudi Arabia. Besides, I am also Egyptian, which helps a great deal in such things. In fact, for practical rea-sons I'm listed on my doc.u.ments as a Coptic Christian. No-body ever cares or checks, and frankly, as religiously observant as I am, one faith is as good as another. In any event, I'm not there long when I'm there, and quite often I'm nowhere near Moslem territory. I've been running from Brunei to Sydney most recently, and neither of them gives a d.a.m.n what religion I might be. Certainly my Dutch em-ployers don't."

"And you're here on holiday, then?" Tony Guzman asked him. "First time?"

"First time in-a very long time. I've rented a small cot-tage at outrageous rates a few kilometers south but still near the beach. I just started walking and wound up here this morning. I like to watch the sun rise."

"As do we," Anne Marie told him. "It's such a huge, warm sun at this lat.i.tude. Tony, of course, can't see it come up except in his mind's eye, but he can feel it, and of course he has many more of these in his memories than I do, growing up here. We did this yesterday, too, taking a taxi from the hotel."

"Then you're not staying with family?"

"I have little family left here now. None close," the man told him. "The few that are left tend to be uncomfortable either with my condition or with the fact that I married an Englishwoman and am now a British citizen."

"And one that makes themmore uncomfortable," Anne Marie put in.

"Well, I don't find either of you uncomfortable," he said with a casual honesty they instantly knew was real. "In fact, I find you very interesting people, and I salute you for not letting anything get in the way of your enjoyment."

"Do you have a wife? Children?" Anne Marie asked him.

He shook his head. "No, no one, I'm afraid. The kind of life I lead, the kind of job, just doesn't lend itself to mar-riage, and I'm unable to have children, so that point is moot."

She sighed. "That's one thing we have in common. I used to be able, it's true, but going through it would have killed me, they said."

"Your accident was early, then? Sorry-again, I don't mean to pry. If you'd rather not discuss it, we'll drop it."

"Oh, I don't mind a bit. I minded theaccident, and I'd much rather be walking about and feel something below the armpits, but I certainly don't mind talking about it. I just wish it were more spectacular than it was, really, so I'd have a story to tell. An IRA bomb perhaps, or an aircraft accident, or perhaps a sport injury, but it was nothing so dramatic. Truth is, I don't even remember it. It was winter, I was sound asleep in the family car coming home from some Christmas visit to relatives, we hit a patch of ice, slid off, and rolled down an embankment. I was always a sound sleeper, so all I remember is tumbling and some very sharp pain in my neck and back, and that's it. I woke up unable to move anything below the neck.

Years of therapy got me to this point, where I stuck. There're just no more connec-tions to make."

"Mine was a bit more exotic," her husband added. "I was a pilot for Varig, and we had fuel and mechanical problems coming into Gatwick. We came in all right, but the nose wheel collapsed on landing, and we slid off the side of the runway and into a ground control radar hut. The base was concrete. All the pa.s.sengers survived with only minor injuries, but we hit the small building head on. It shattered the windscreen, which is very hard to do, and crumpled in a part of the nose around the c.o.c.kpit. My co-pilot had eleven broken bones and eventually lost his leg. I, on the other hand, had a piece of metal driven right into my skull. I have avery large metal plate in my head that makes it impossible for me to withstand airport security today- you should see their expressions when they use the hand scanner!-and although there is nothing wrong with the eyes themselves that we know of, there was internal bleed-ing and damage, and I've been unable to see since. I spent three years in British hospitals of one sort or another and remained there, partly because I had little to come home to and partly because, with the military government in power here and Brazil in such a bad shape economically, I could get much better care in the English system. Besides, I had to relearn even the basics of balance and get my confidence as a sightless man, and the therapy was quite good. I met Anne Marie while I was still in therapy."

"You shared hospitals?"

She laughed. "No, by that time I'd been this way for years. But I found I could sit and rot at home, watching the telly and being spoon-fed by doting relatives and nurses, or I could get out and do something. When an old friend of Father's who'd been working in the physical therapy wards voiced frustration that many people with relatively minor disabilities compared, say, to my own were so depressed and suicidal that they put themselves beyond help, I thought I might be able to do something.

After all, if you've lost an arm, or legs, or even your eyes but you are confronted with someone with a more serious disability, like me, actuallydoing something, what sort of excuse do you have?"

The captain liked them more and more as he heard their stories.

"In truth, we are one person," Tony Guzman noted. "Most of me works all right, except my eyes, and Anne Marie's eyes work quite well. So she guides me and de-scribes the world to me, and I do for her what she cannot do for herself. You would be surprised at how one could get used to almost anything."

"No," the captain responded, thoughtful. "No, I wouldn't. We all have crosses to bear. Some are just more obvious than others."

"But what of you?" Anne Marie said. "No wife . . . Do you have family of any sort?"

"No, not really. Well, there is one person, but I have no idea now where she is or what she is doing."

"A sister?"

"Not exactly. The relationship is rather-complex.Hard to describe. It's been so long, though, that I find it difficult now to even remember what she looked like. We had some sort of fight. I can't remember what it was about or even if I understood it then. She walked out, I thought for a little while, but she never returned, not even for her things. I never saw her again, even though I half tore that city apart looking."

"You speak of it as long ago, but you are not that old, surely," Tony noted.

He returned a grim smile the man could not see. "I am much older than I look."Much older. The city, after all, had been Nineveh at the time of its glories.

"I hesitate to say it, but from your account I would say that she met with foul play," Tony noted.

"Foul play possibly," he agreed, "although she's not dead. Once or twice I've run across someone who had known her, but never did I learn of it in time to track her. Like me, she is a survivor. If I had a clue as to where she might be, I'd still drop everything and go hunting for her, but, again like me, she could be anywhere in the world."

"You still think of her like that, even though you say you can hardly remember her looks?" Anne Marie asked, amazed. "Surely there must be someone else for you out there."

"I'm afraid not. We are bound in a way. Two of a kind. It's no use going into details, but trust me on that." He turned. "Ah! Here comes the sun!"

The three of them grew silent and let the great orb ap-pear from the ocean depths, seeming huge enough to swal-low the whole world. Finally Solomon said, "Have you two had breakfast yet? There is a cafe just a couple of blocks inland from here that is excellent. I would be honored if you would join me. My treat."

Tony said nothing but seemed to wait for his wife to speak. She mulled it over, then said, "Thank you, I believe we will. But then we must get back. I have to keep to something of a schedule, and I have some medications to take. But right now I feel all energy. We shall do some things this morning and go to sleep early."

"What? With all the nightlife here?"

She laughed. "Not tonight. Haven't you heard? They say there's some huge meteor that's going to come in tonight and crash in the western jungle. Some of these b.l.o.o.d.y locals are panicking and moving out for the night or stay-ing in church or whatever, afraid that G.o.d is going to smite them or something. They say, though, that it might be visible here in the early morning hours. Between one and threea.m. Atlantic time.

They say it might fragment and give us all a spectacular natural fireworks show. I shouldn't like to miss that, with the luck of being here when it comes."

"I had to pull every string I know just to get into our room," Tony told him. "There is not a vacant room any-where in the area or farther inland, either. All the scientists andtouristas, the sort of people who go on eclipse cruises, are all here for it, as are the newspeople from a hundred countries."

"I haven't paid much attention to the news," the captain admitted. "Idid hear something about it when I noticed the shops selling lucky charms and meteor repellent in the last week or so. I thought it was far away and inland, though."

Anne Marie roared with laughter. "Meteor repellent! That's wonderful!"

"Don't laugh," the captain responded in a serious tone. "I will be willing to wager a good amount of money that n.o.body who uses it has ever been hit by a meteor."

They all laughed at his little joke, and then Tony said, "It is supposed to be visible from here-if it is clear. Of course, it is rarely clear here."

The captain thought a moment. "Look, I've got a minivan. If you're really keen to see it, we might manage the wheelchair and drive up into the inland mountains for a while, maybe above some of the coastal weather. That's if you feel up to it."

"Oh! That would bedelightful !"Anne Marie exclaimed excitedly. "Sir, I willensure that I am up to it. It is only one night, and weare on holiday, after all!"

Tony frowned and started to say something, then thought better of it, but it didn't escape the captain's notice. He had the distinct impression, though, that Tony was not all that thrilled by her being out on an expedition, however con-servative. It made the captain wonder if there was some-thing else important he didn't know but should.

They had an excellent breakfast, and Anne Marie couldn't stop talking about their good fortune in meeting the captain and how excited she was to be going some-where where she wa.s.sure to see the big show.

After eating, Solomon accompanied them back to their hotel, one of the better ones in the area, as it turned out, with some handicapped-equipped rooms. Tony took his wife from the wheelchair with well-practiced motions and found the bathroom, acting as if he could see very well, in-deed. He was certainly well adjusted to his blindness and had the room memorized.

He took some time with her in the bathroom. Finally they were done, and he brought her out and laid her on one of the beds.

"Thank you, Captain, for adelightful morning," she said, sounding suddenly very tired. "I can hardly wait until to-night!"

Tony pulled up the covers on the still unmade bed, then made his way back to the door. The captain went outside, and Guzman followed, keeping the door slightly ajar.

"Captain, I think there is something you should know," the blind man whispered, switching to Portuguese.

Solomon responded in kind. "I thought there was some-thing."

"We are here, at grave expense, because it is the last chance we will have. She has been growing weaker and weaker, and eventually even the automatic organs like the heart and lungs will fail. It is only a matter of time. This is, most likely, our last holiday."

"I suspected as much. How long do they give her?"

"G.o.d knows. The doctors argued against this trip. I asked them how long she might last if she went into a hospital or was under constant home monitoring. They said a few weeks to no more than six months.

Then I asked them how long it would be if she made the trip. They re-sponded that it might be a few weeks to no more than six months but that it would certainly shorten her time. You have been with her this morning. I think you have seen why I fell in love with her. If she were to die today, here, it would be as she would want it, still out, still active, still doing new things. I think the doctors are wrong. I be-lieve she would have died far sooner rotting at home. Certainly she would have died in misery instead of here, in my homeland, about which I have spoken all too much, watching the sun rise and smelling the smells and meeting the people. You see?"

He nodded. "But even you think this kind of silly trip to-night might be too much for her, is that it? Shall I make some excuse and call it off?"

"No! Not now. Had this been suggested only to me, I would have refused, but-well, you saw her.

Perhaps itwill kill her, but not before she sees the meteor. I just-wanted you to know."

The captain nodded. "I'll keep it an easy drive. And I suspect you might be underestimating the power of her will. She may die within the period the doctors say, but I think she'll pick her own time and place."

He patted the blind man on the shoulder. "I'll see you at six."

There seemed to be only three kinds of people in metropol-itan Rio that night: those who were terrified of the meteors, those who were profiteering from it, and those who were anxious to see what they could of the big show. Bars served meteor c.o.c.ktails-which differed from bar to bar, but who cared?-and one main hotel advertised an Asteroid Ball in its rooftop club.

The captain found his new friends waiting for him, and once he was shown how the wheelchair collapsed, they managed to get everybody in the Volkswagen minivan. Get-ting out of town wasn't difficult, but though traffic nor-mally thinned out going farther inland, the two-lane road through the mountains that formed the natural barrier be-tween the city region and the dense jungle beyond was al-most b.u.mper to b.u.mper.

"It looks like everybody else had the same idea we did," the captain noted sourly.

"Well, there are not many roads back here, and even those give out not far beyond the mountains,"

Tony noted. "I do know a few places that might be less traveled, but the road may not be paved."