Jimmy looked at her. " 'Selle Sierran, I honestly don't know. That's a matter between 'Selle Lovely and Obodi. Lovely will be in Los Angeles again in two days; most of the evacuation is going to end up here on this set, for training. You can ask Lovely when she gets here whether she was consulted. But if you can think of any way other than the one we chose to give our people some remarkably genuine combat experience prior to July Fourth, I'd love to hear it. We have Unification spysats hovering overhead right now that take pictures so sharp they can see if your makeup key is detuned. But they'renot watching us; they know who we are." He shrugged. "Good Germans, making a pro-Unification sensable."

Lan and Callia left, Denice did not know where to, at mid-morning. To her surprise, Denice found herself left more or less to her own devices for the rest of that day. Jimmy vanished on unspecified business after lunch, left in an obvious hurry after telling her to listen to anybody who wanted to talk to her, but to tell them nothing about herself. "You'll be here about two weeks, I think; we have a job in mind for you, but I think it needs to get cleared before I tell you any more about it."

Denice raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

They were alone, n.o.body else within hearing distance. Nonetheless Jimmy dropped his voice. "My job is to tell people what they need to know, when they need to know it. That's difficult with you, obviously."

"Jimmy, I don't Touch people when I don't have to. I especially don't do it to my friends." She paused.

"When do I get to meet 'Sieur Obodi?"

"When he sends for you. Probably," said Jimmy, "very soon." He kissed her on the forehead quickly, said, "I'll be back."

"Sixty."

The man standing next to Denice in the cloudy sunshine, at the edge of a long bluff overlooking a deep ravine, was rawboned and moderately ugly. He had the wide shoulders of a pro football player, and the lanky frame of a pro basketball player. A cigarette holder, lit cigarette smoldering at its tip, dangled from his lips.

A pair of incredibly dark, round granny sungla.s.ses protected his eyes from the hazy sun.

He wore a Beijing Bears windbreaker and a Los Angeles Lakers cap.

Denice thought he had recognized her, but had not bothered to ask.

"I've been having a surreal life," said Denice, "recently."

Three empty bottles of Tytan smoke whiskey littered the ground around him. In his left hand he held a fourth bottle, and in his right he held a small round object with a red 49s flickering on its surface.48s.

A crate full of the small round objects sat on the ground at his feet.

"Me too," said Terry Shawmac."Forty-five."

"I keep having this dream. Do you want to hear about it?"

"Not particularly. I think," said Shawmac carefully, "that today I want to blow things up."

"I'm standing in this empty black place-"

"An editor's office? Why would you dream about standing in an editor's office?" Shawmac paused.

"Fifteen."

"-and there's this flame that comes out of nowhere and dances around me, and it's the best thing I've ever felt in my life. What's that you're holding?"

"A hand grenade. Which goes off in-" In one smooth motion Shawmac pitched the grenade over the edge of the bluff and shrieked, "Duck!"

Shawmac threw himself down, being careful of the bottle in his hand.

Denice took one step backward.

A moment later the hand grenade exploded with a m.u.f.fledwhump. Fragments of metal and clods of earth exploded upward into the sky.

From where he lay on the ground, Shawmac said, "I'm the explosives master on this sensable. For the effects."

"Really."

Shawmac rolled over on his back, lay staring up at the sky. He had avoided crushing the cigarette at the end of his holder, and he puffed on it before speaking. "They wanted someone else. But they wanted my script."

"So that's why you quit your column?"

"I didn't quit," he snarled. "Iretired"

"Quit, retired. Big difference."

"It's animmense difference," Shawmac muttered petulantly. "When you quit you don't get your pension."

Loudly, he said, "Theywanted my script."

"You said that."

"But they wanted this other guy to do the explosives. Some deserting s.p.a.ce Force punk."

"Really."

"So we compromised. Other guy got the t.i.tle, you understand. Thecredit. But they gave me a bunch of hand grenades to play with." Shawmac took a long drink and shrugged. Denice thought shrugging must be a difficult thing to do while lying down on the ground. "It seemed fair."

"My life has been very surreal recently, I think I said that."

"You did."

"You're not helping."

"We all have problems," Shawmac agreed. "I'm having the odd reality lapse myself today. This big ol'

son of a b.i.t.c.h with a long white beard is sitting in the gra.s.s over there, you just walked through him, and he's got a s...o...b..x, and in the s...o...b..x are thedice. So he shakes the box back and forth, real fast, so the dice never quite get a chance to land, and the cover is on the s...o...b..x anyway so you can't see inside."

"What are you talking about?"

"Physics, dear." Terry Shawmac stared at her with his granny sungla.s.ses. "The state of physics today.

Want a drink?"

"Not if it's going to make me see big ol' sons of b.i.t.c.hes with s...o...b..xes, no."

"Maybe. Maybe not. But you won't know till you've had a drink, will you? What do you like?"

Denice shivered. "Anything but tequila."

"I have eight bottles of Tytan smoke left." Shawmac paused.

"Maybe seven. I drank something last night and I don't remember what it was." He squinted at the bottle in his hand. "This one is the only one I have left with me.Here, at this location. If I want more I have to go back to my trailer."

Denice sat down next to Shawmac, refused his gestured offer of the bottle. "Since you're here, I was wondering if I could ask you some questions."

"I charge. Want to throw a grenade?"

"No."

"You should try it," said Shawmac earnestly. "G.o.d, I love explosives. Sometimes when a really big one goes I can get my rocks off." He sat up suddenly, Said grimly, "That's not the sort of thing a man likes to have known about him, not in public. If this gets out I'llknow where to go."

"Who would I share it with?"

"Okay, good point. Questions? What sort? If it's anything about that b.i.t.c.h Ichabod, don't evenstart."

Denice blinked. "You do remember me."

"We met at a dinner, I forget where. You're one of Ripper's little girlfriends with muscles. He seems to like those." Shawmac sucked back another hit of whiskey, swirled it around in his mouth before swallowing. "Denice."

"I'm impressed. You were drunk as a Peaceforcer on payday that night."

"I'm always drunk. Reputation, you know. It's gotten easier to handle as I've gotten older, had more practice." Shawmac whipped his sungla.s.ses off, fixed Denice with an even, icy stare. "When I was a boy, hangovers wereserious. They weren't some punkinconvenience that some little transform virus floating around in your bloodstream stomped down before you even got a headache. Oh, Brave New World. You don't recognize the reference, do you?"

Denice said, "No."

Shawmac whipped his sungla.s.ses back on. "Look it up. Why should I be the only educated person left in the whole d.a.m.n System?" He smiled at her then, became, with a mood switch as sudden as the touching of a pressure point, the charming lecturer she had seen on the Boards. He picked up another hand grenade suddenly, rubbed a thumb over the fuse. A bright red60s appeared on the surface of the bulb. 59s. "What can I do for you, dear?"

"I need advice, 'Sieur Shawmac."

Shawmac said with instant paranoia, "You're not likethe others, are you?"

"Not really."

"You're areal person. With aheart. And blood, and intestines. Would you like to be my friend?"

Denice took a deep breath. "Mister Shawmac, I'm curious about something, and I know you've written on more different subjects than anyone elseI've ever read. What I want to know is-is it at all possible that there was another civilization before ours? Or that the human race evolved on another planet?"

Shawmac looked at her curiously, holding the bulb of blasting plastic while the fuse counted down.12s.

"What?"

"Is it-look, could you throw that?"

"Huh? Oh, sure." The fuse had counted down to 5s; Shawmac seemed startled to realize he was still holding it. He tossed it backward, over his shoulder. This time it nearly reached the ground before exploding; it was nowhere near as loud as the previous grenade. "Sorry about that," said Shawmac.

"Where were we?"

"It's just I can't think clearly when you do that. It makes me nervous."

"I'll stop." Shawmac unsealed his blazer, reached inside for his handheld. "Like Atlantis or something?"

Denice nodded. "I've heard stories about 'Sieur Obodi that are very odd."

"He ran the same cruel, relentless line on me. The one about how he was exiled from another planet, and got trapped in a slowtime bubble, and we're all the long-lost descendants of him and his fellow exiles. All that s.h.i.t." Shawmac shrugged, flipping the handheld open. FrancoDEC, Denice noted, the same model as the crippled handhelds the rebel soldiers had been given. "I was toasted when we talked, it sounded reasonable. I agreed with him and he sent me away after a while. I don't think he knew what to make of me."

"Do you think he could be telling the truth?"

"Not a chance in h.e.l.l. The man's a sick and demented pig, is what I think." Data scrolled up through the handheld's holofield. "Here we go. Okay, listen: Middle Paleolithic period began about three hundred thousand years ago and lasted until about thirty thousand years ago. People of this period made flake tools by striking thin sharp flakes from large stones. Upper Paleolithic started about thirty thousand years ago and lasted until about ten thousand years ago, when the last Ice Age ended. What do we have to work with-blade tools, stone hammers, punches, chisels, sc.r.a.pers, drills. It says that they boiled things in bark or skin containers." Shawmac glanced up from the field. "Odds are that n.o.body was building slowtime fields back then."

"Odds are?"

Shawmac snorted. "That'ssarcasm. n.o.body was building slowtime fields, okay? Wasn't happening. If the sort of industrial infrastructure had existed back then that would have been required for something like this, there would be an extensive fossil record. You couldn't turn around without tripping over the sh.e.l.l of somebody's s.p.a.cesc.r.a.per."

"So there was no civilization on Earth. How about Obodi's claim that he was exiled here from somewhere else? I already heard one argument that makes that sound pretty d.a.m.n unlikely."

Shawmac flipped his handheld shut. "Genetics? Yeah. Humans evolved on Earth. Period, end of discussion. That's not to say that there's not people out there; the probe to Tau Ceti, back in '69, showed that pretty clearly. And they know we're here, too; the probe came in off the ecliptic, to throw off the scent in case the aliens were bad guys. Direct backtracking of the probe's trajectory wouldn't do them much good. Paranoid, but that's s.p.a.ce Force for you. Silly, too. We've been sending out radio signals, and then television, since the 1930s or thereabouts. Everything from ILove Lucy to Belter kiddie p.o.r.n."

Shawmac grinned cynically at Denice. "But Obodi's human, which means he was born here, on Earth.

Probably in Tulsa or Cleveland, somewhere like that. If I was Obodi, I'd tell people I was an alien in disguise, come to recruit humanity into the Galactic Empire. It's still stupid, but it's less full of obviously idiotic contradictions than the story he picked."

Denice said quietly, "You speak very clearly for somebody who's had so much to drink."

"Transform virus," Shawmac muttered after a moment. "Scavenges alcohol out of my system pretty fast, doesn't let me get too drunk. The Rebs made me take an injection before I came. If I keep drinking, I get a nice glow and I stay there. The injection will wear off. Soon I hope."

"I see."

"We all make sacrifices for the cause. This is mine."

"This is a sacrifice?"

Shawmac spoke with mild, drunken seriousness, in a voice grown suddenly intimate. "Oh, yes. When I drink, I don't think about that c.u.n.t Ichabod, about how he screwed me over, wasted my time and lied to me about being in love with me." Very reasonably, he added, "I've been remembering him a lot since I got here. Whenever I'm not drunk. Or working. Things were nice with Ichabod at first."

"I know."

"I thought it was going to last."

"So did he."

Shawmac whipped his sungla.s.ses off like Clark Kent becoming Superman, fixed her with an impressive glare. "I willnever forget how he left me."

"Did he leave you?"

Shawmac's glare defocused; he looked blankly at a spot off somewhere to Denice's right. "Yes," he said after a moment. "I would have worked on it. He didn't want to."

"It's important to remember," Denice said softly. "But it's more important to forgive."

"Should everything be forgiven? Has no one ever done something to you that was such a betrayal, did such violence to your trust, that you could not forgive him?"

"You can be very eloquent when you put your mind to it."