Tamme Two dodged again, reducing the effect of the blow, and blocked the clasping arms. Tamme was already dropping down through the cubes -- but her hold was not tight, and Tamme Two slipped through. The double suicide would only kill one.

This time Tamme Two let her go, knowing better than to come again within reach of those arms. Instead, she drew and threw a fine knife. It shot straight down with unerring aim to embed itself in Tamme's skull, penetrating the brain.

"I am going to s.p.a.ce," he said.

"If you do, I will kill myself," she said.

Bunny heard her parents engaging in their solemn, serious dialogue, terrified. Knowing there was nothing she could do. They never fought, never argued; when either spoke, it was final.

Actually, they had never spoken these words; the words were in Bunny's mind, her nightmares. But they reflected the unvoiced reality, building over the years into inevitable decision.

Her father went to s.p.a.ce, unable to resist the gratification of a lifelong lure. Ocean sailing was in his ancestry; the nature of the challenge had changed, not his response.

Bunny understood this, for he had told her of s.p.a.ce, its myriad wonders only now being revealed, its compelling fascination. Neutron stars, black holes, quasars; alien life, mysterious artifacts of long-dead empires; acceleration, free fall; meteors, comets, craters. She wanted to go, too.

The day he left, her mother carefully sc.r.a.ped the insulation from the apartment's energy line and shorted it out across her body. Bunny was an orphan.

"I know your father was lost in s.p.a.ce, and your mother died when you were a child," he said. "This is what first attracted me to you. You needed me, and I thought that was enough." He paused to walk around park s.p.a.ce, idly knocking his powerful hands together. "I'm strong; I like taking care of things. I wanted to take care of you. But Bunny, it isn't enough. Now I'm ready to marry -- and what I crave is a wife figure, not a daughter figure. It just wouldn't work out, and we both know it."

She did know it. She didn't plead, she didn't cry. After he left, she followed the model she remembered as closely as was convenient. She jumped off the pa.s.senger ramp into the moving line of a major freight artery.

"Both arms severed at the shoulders, one leg mangled, internal organs crushed. Heart and liver salvageable; kidneys unsalvageable. Brain intact. It would cost a fortune, but we could reconst.i.tute her. To what point? she is medically indigent, no parents, no insurance, no special dispensations, no extraordinary talents, and she obviously doesn't want to live."

"A suitable prospect, would you say?"

"Yes. You would be doing her a favor. She doesn't want to remember."

"Very well, You will authorize the condemnation procedure?"

"I don't see much choice; it's that or death in hours."

So Bunny's mangled but living remains were condemned as legally unsalvageable, and the government a.s.sumed possession in much the same manner as it acquired the right of way through a slum.

Two years later, the rebuilt, retrained body and brain were issued under the stamp of an agent, series TA, female.

Tamme opened her eyes. A snout-nosed near-human leaned over her. "Hvehg!" the woman called.

A man came, bearded, putting his strong hand on hers. It was a hand very like that of the man Bunny had hoped to marry. "You'll make it, Tam," he said. "We're taking good care of you."

"Who?" It was hard to speak; she was weak and confused, and she needed... too much. He would reject her if he knew.

"You don't remember who you are?" the man asked, alarmed.

She made an effort. "I am TA. You?"

"You don't remember me?" This seemed to bother him even more.

"Is this the start of a mission? I don't know how I got here, or who either of you are, or anything. Please tell me." Speaking was such an effort that she knew she would soon have to desist -- and she hardly understood her own words. TA?

"I am Veg. This is Ms Hmph, near as I can p.r.o.nounce it. You were badly hurt, nearly dead; I brought you here, and the Hmphs made a place for us. We'd met them before on our trek through alternity."

"Alternity?"

"Brother! You really are out of it. Maybe you better rest now."

The mere suggestion was enough. She sank into sleep.

Her first mission as a TA was on Earth. She was told nothing, not even that it was the first. As with all agents, her mind was erased and reset between a.s.signments, so it made no difference to her or the computer whether it was the first or the last. This reprogramming was to preserve the series ident.i.ty; the computer needed a.s.surance that any agent of a given series would respond and report precisely as allowed for. That way there was negligible human distortion; it was as though the computer itself had made the investigation. It was an efficient system, replacing the outmoded FBI, CIA, and similar organizations.

Had Bunny been aware of the transformation, she would have been incredulous. The weak, frail, insecure girl now was superhuman -- literally. She could run thirty miles an hour and sustain it for miles: twice the world record for normals. She could invert herself and walk on two extended fingers. She was thoroughly grounded in the use of a wide variety of weapons, from bazookas to kitchen knives, and was also adept at barehanded combat. She had the equivalent of college degrees in a number of technical and liberal arts. And she had a stunning face and figure.

But Bunny was not aware. Bunny was part of the dross that had been erased. Her body and brain had been stripped to their fundamental content, then recycled.

Tamme found herself in a riot-p.r.o.ne city. She moved among the people, questioning, searching out her mission. She had been given a single name and a probable address, no more. And in due course she found it; there was an a.s.sa.s.sination plot against a touring official. As the steam rifle oriented, so did she. The a.s.sa.s.sin died a fraction of a second before he fired, and Tamme returned to her barracks.

There she indulged in the predebriefing relaxation that was customary, almost mandatory: play being a recognized adjunct of the fit man. It was postponed for the agents until after completion of their missions, partly as additional inducement for performance, partly because that was the time of their greatest divergence from the agent-norm. Freshly briefed agents would have found each other so predictable as to be dull; postmission agents had differing experiences to discuss and were to a certain extent different people. Interaction became entertaining.

She met a male of the SU series. He was fascinating. He had been dispatched to apprehend a moonshine gunsmith and had been shot in the foot by one of the old-fashioned contraptions. She played nude water polo with him, and because of that foot was able to hold him under while she made the first score. But then he had hauled her under with him, and for four minutes they both held their breaths while they made love -- though love was too strong a term for this physical release of pa.s.sion.

"Will we ever meet again, Subble?" she asked as she lay in his arms, floating on the surface, enjoying the almost-combatlike exercise of power that no normal human could match.

"It hardly matters," he replied. "We will not remember or care." And he shoved her head under, brought her bottom up, and penetrated her again... as a subterfuge while he knocked the ball in for the tying score.

After she got even with him for that, they both reported for final debriefing, and all had been erased.

Now Tamme did remember. She sat up with an anguished effort, her wounded side and chest excruciating. "Subble died on his next mission!" she exclaimed.

Strong arms came about her shaking shoulders. "Easy, Tam," Veg said. "You're dreaming."

"No -- I'm only now coming awake! You knew him!" she cried. "You killed him!"

He bore her back to the bed. "We knew him. We liked him. 'Quilon especially. He was a decent sort. For an agent. He may have died, but we didn't do it."

She clung to him. "I'm terrified! Stay with me -- please!"

"Always." He lay down beside her, smoothing her troubled forehead with his hand, careful of the bandage. "Rest. Rest. You're still very weak."

Tamme had other missions. One by one she relived them: one a mere interview with a scientist, another a spell as housemistress to an outpost halfway across the Earth-Sphere of colonization, keeping the normals sane. She had acted, always, with complete, objective ruthless-ness, forwarding the interests of that government that had fashioned her in that manner it required.

Right up until her a.s.signment on the first alternate world, Paleo. That mission, surprisingly, had been a multiple-agent venture. It brought her to the present.

When she was well enough to walk, Veg took her out of the house. The building was made of blocks of foam-like fog, and it tended to degenerate. Periodically, the farmer and his family cut new fog from the bank and built a new residence. The makings of the old house were chopped up for cattle bedding; the bovines liked the impregnated people-smell of it.