So there it was, out in the open, and he supposed the signal for their serious talk had come. How strange, he thought, that it should happen at a moment when briefly they had seemed closer than in a long time!

He said, with the sadness that he felt, "What the hell happened to us?"

Ruth answered sharply, "You should be the one best able to answer that. I'm curious about one thing, though-just how many other women have there been in our fifteen years of marriage?" He was aware of the recent hardness he had observed in Ruth as she continued. "Or maybe you've lost count, the way I did. For a while I could always tell when you had something new going-or should I say 'someone' new? then later on I wasn't so sure, and I guessed that you were overlapping, playing the field, with two or even more at once. Was I right?"

Having trouble in meeting Ruth's eyes directly, he answered, "Sometimes."

"Well, that's one point settled anyway. So my guess was right. But you haven't answered the first question. flow many women altogether?"

He said unhappily, "I'll be damned if I know."

"If that's true," Ruth pointed out, "it isn't exactly complimentary to those other females you must have felt something for, however briefly.

Whoever they were, I'd say they deserved better from you than not even to be remembered."

He protested, "It was never serious. None of it. Not with any of them."

"That I do believe." Ruth's cheeks were flushed with anger. "For that matter, you were never serious about me.

"That isn't true!"

"How can you possibly say that? After what you've just admitted Oh, I could understand one other woman; maybe two. Any wife with 1sense knows that happens sometimes in the best of marriages. But not scores of women, the way it's been with you."

He argued, "Now you're talking nonsense. It was never scores."

"One score then. At least."

Nim was silent.

Ruth said thoughtfully, "Maybe that was Freudian-my saying scores' just now. Because that's what you like to do, isn't it?-score with as many women as you can."

He admitted, "There's probably some truth in that."

"I know there's truth." She added quietly, "But it doesn't make a woman-a wife-feel any better, or less belittled, dirty, cheated, to hear it from the man she loved, or thought she did."

"If you've felt that way so long," he asked her, "why did you wait until now to bring it up? Why have we never had this kind of talk before?"

"That's a fair question." Ruth stopped, weighing her answer, then went on, "I suppose it was because I kept on hoping you would change; that you'd grow out of wanting to fornicate with every attractive woman you set eyes on, grow out of it the way a child learns to stop being greedy about candy.

But I was wrong; you haven't changed. And, oh yes, since we're being honest with each other, there was another reason. I was a coward. I was afraid of what being on my own might mean, of what it could do to Leah and Benjy, and afraid-or maybe too proud-to admit that my marriage, like so many others, wasn't working." Ruth stopped, her voice breaking for the first time.

"Well, I'm not afraid, or proud, or anything anymore. I just want out."

"Do you mean that?"

Twin tears coursed down Ruth's cheeks. "What else is there?"

A spark of resistance flared in Nim. Did he need to be so totally defensive? Weren't there two sides to everything, including this?

"How about your own love affair?" he asked. "If you and I go separate ways, does your man friend move in as soon as I step out?"

"What man?"

"The one you've been seeing. The one you went away with."

Ruth had dried her eyes. She regarded him now with an expression which seemed part amused, part sorrowing. "You really believe that. That I went away with a man."

"Well, didn't you?"

She shook her head slowly. "No."

"But I thought . . ."

"I know you did. And I let you go on thinking it, which probably wasn't a good idea. I decided-spitefully, I suppose-that it would do no harm, and might even achieve some good, if you had a taste of what I'd been feeling."

"Then how about those other times? Where were you?"

Ruth said, with a trace of her earlier anger, "There is no other man. Can't you get that through your thick head? there never has been. I came to you a virgin-you know that, unless you've forgotten or have me confused with one of your other girlfriends. And there hasn't been anyone else but you since."

Nim winced because he did remember, but persisted, "Then what were you doing . . . ?"

"That's my private business. But I'm telling you again: it wasn't a man."

He believed her. Absolutely.

"Oh Christ!" he said, and thought: Everything was coming apart at once; most of what he had done and said recently had turned out to be wrong. As to their marriage, he wasn't sure if he wanted it to go on or not. Maybe Ruth was right, and getting out would be the best thing for them both. The idea of personal freedom was attractive. On the other hand, there was a good deal he would miss-the children, home, a sense of stability, even Ruth, despite their having grown apart. Not wanting to be forced to a decision, wishing that what was happening could have been postponed, be asked almost plaintively, "So where do we go from here?"

"According to what I've heard from friends who traveled this route" -Ruth's voice had gone cold again-"we each get a lawyer and begin staking out positions."

He pleaded, "But do we have to do it now?"

"Give me one single, valid reason for waiting any longer."

"It's a selfish one, I'll admit. But I've just been through one difficult time..." He let the sentence trail off, realizing it sounded like self pity.

"I know that. And I'm sorry the two things have come together. But nothing is going to change between us, not after all this time. We both know that, don't we?"

He said bleakly, "I suppose so." there was no point in promising to revise his own attitudes when he wasn't sure he could, or even wanted to.

"Well, then..."

"Look . . . would you wait a month? Maybe two? If for no other reason than that we'll have to break the news to Leah and Benjy, and it will give them time to get used to the idea." He was not sure that the argument made sense; it probably didn't. Nor did it seem plausible that a delay would achieve anything. But instinct told him that Ruth, too, was reluctant to take the final, irrevocable step to end their marriage.

"Well . . ." She hesitated, then conceded, "All right. Because of what's happening to you just now, I'll wait- a little while. But I won't say two months, or one. If I decide to make it less, I will."

"Thank you." He had a sense of relief that there would be an interval, however brief.

"Hey!" It was Benjy, appearing at the dining room door. "I just got a new cassette from the Merediths. It's a play. Wanna watch?"

The Merediths were next door neighbors. Nim glanced at Ruth. "Why not?"

In the basement recreation room Ruth and Nim sat side by side on a sofa, with Leah sprawled on a rug, while Benjy deftly inserted a video cassette into their Betamax tape deck, connected to a color TV. A group of residents in the area had an agreement which was becoming widespread: One family recorded a television program-usually the children of the house, or a baby-sitter, took care of it-hitting the "stop" button whenever commercials appeared. The result was a high quality recording, sans commercials, which the adults and other families watched later at their leisure, the cassettes being rotated among a dozen or so households.

Knowing that the practice was growing as increasing numbers of people shared the discovery, Nim wondered how long it would be before it affected TV network revenues. Perhaps it had already. In a way, Nim thought, the TV networks and stations were going through the same shoal waters power companies like GSP & L had already navigated. The TV people had abused their public privileges by flooding the airwaves with a vulgar excess of advertising and low-grade programming. Now, Betamax and comparable systems were giving the public a chance to strike back by being selective, and eliminating advertising from their viewing. In time, perhaps, the development would cause those in charge of TV to grasp the need for public responsibility.

The two-hour play on the borrowed cassette was Mary White, a tragic, moving story about the family of a loved teenager who had died. Perhaps because he had seldom been more aware of his own family, yet realized how little time was left in which it was likely to remain a unit, Nim was glad the lights were low, his sadness and his tears unobserved by the other three.

2.

On a dark, lonely hill above the suburban community of Millfield, Georgos Winslow Archambault crawled on his belly toward a chain link fence protecting a GSP&L substation. The precaution-against being observed-was probably unneeded, he reasoned; the substation was unattended, also there was no moon tonight and the nearest main road, which carried traffic over the sparsely inhabited hill, was half a mile away. But recently, Golden State Piss & Lickspittle had hired more security pigs and set up mobile night patrols which varied their operating hours and routes-clearly so they would not create a pattern. So it made sense to be cagey, even though crawling while carrying tools and explosives was awkward and uncomfortable.

Georgos shivered. The October night was cold and a strong wind knifed around crags and boulders of the rocky hill, making him wish he had worn two sweaters beneath his dark blue denim jumpsuit instead of one.

Glancing back the way he had come, he saw that his woman, Yvette, was just a few yards behind, and keeping up. It was important that she did.

For one thing she had the wire and detonators; for another, Georgos was running behind schedule due to a traffic delay in getting out here from the city, a journey of twenty miles. Now he wanted to make up time because tonight's operation intervened the destruction of three substations by the entire Friends of Freedom force. At one of the other sites Ute and Felix were working together; at the third Wayde was operating alone.

Their plan called for all three explosions to occur simultaneously.

When he reached the fence, Georgos detached a pair of heavy wire shears from his belt and began cutting. All be Deeded was a small hole, close to the ground. Then if a patrol came around, after the two of them had gone and before the explosion, the cut fence might escape attention.

While Georgos worked he could see the widespread, shimmering lights of Millfield below him. Well, all of them would be out soon; so would a lot of others further south. He knew about Millfield and the other townships nearby. They were bourgeois communities, peopled mainly by commuters-more capitalists and lackeys!-and he was glad to be causing them trouble.

The hole in the fence was almost complete. In a minute or so Georgos and Yvette could wiggle through. He glanced at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. Time was tight! Once inside, they would have to work fast.

The targets of tonight's triple strike had been chosen carefully. There used to be a time when Friends of Freedom bombed transmission towers, toppling two or three at once in an attempt to knock out service over a wide area. But not anymore, Georgos and others had discovered that when towers were toppled, power companies rerouted their power, so that service was restored quickly, often within minutes. Also, fallen towers were immediately replaced by temporary poles, so even that power highway was soon in use again.

Large substations, though, were something else. They were vulnerable, critical installations and could take weeks to repair or replace completely.

The damage which would be done tonight, if all went well, would cause a widespread blackout, extending far beyond Millfield, and it could be days, perhaps a lot longer, before everything was switched back on.

Meanwhile the disruption would be tremendous, the cost enormous. Georgos gloated at the thought. Maybe, after this, more people would take the Friends of Freedom seriously.

Georgos thought: His small but glorious army had learned a lot since their early attacks on the despicable enemy. Nowadays, well ahead of any operation, they studied GSP&L's layout and working methods, seeking areas of vulnerability, situations where the greatest havoc could be caused.

This aspect had been helped recently by an ex-GSP & L engineer, dismissed for stealing, who now nursed a hatred of the company. While not an active member of Friends of Freedom, the former employee had been bought with some of the fresh money supplied by Birdsong. Other money from the same source had been used to buy more and better explosives.

Birdsong had let slip one day where the cash was coming from-the Sequoia Club, which believed it was financing p & lfp. It greatly aniused Georgos that a fat-cat, establishment outfit was unknowingly footing the bill for revolution. In a way it was a pity that the dim-witted Sequoia crowd would never find out.

Click! The last strand of wire was severed and the cut portion of the fence fell away. Georgos pushed it inside the substation enclosure so it would be less noticeable, then followed it with three packets of plastic explosive, after which he wriggled through himself.

Yvette was still close behind. Her hand had healed-after a fashion -since her loss of two fingers when a blasting cap exploded prematurely a couple of months ago. The stumps of the fingers were ugly and not sewn up neatly as would have happened if a surgeon had attended her. But Georgos had done his best to keep the wounds clean and, largely through luck, infection was avoided. Also avoided were the dangerous questions certain to have been asked at a hospital or doctor's office.

Damn! His jumpsuit had caught on an end of wire. Georgos heard the denim rip and felt a sharp pain as the wire penetrated his undershorts and sliced into his thigh. In being cautious, he had made the aperture too small. He reached back, felt for the wire and managed to dislodge it, then continued through the fence with no further trouble. Yvette, who was smaller, followed without difficulty.

No talk was necessary. They had practiced beforehand and knew exactly what to do. Cautiously, Georgos taped plastic explosive to the three large transformers the substation housed. Yvette handed him detonators and played out wire to be connected to timing devices.

Ten minutes later all three charges were in place. Yvette passed him, one by one, the clockwork fuse mechanisms with attached batteries which he had carefully assembled yesterday for himself and the other two teams. Handling each one gingerly, making sure there would be no premature explosion, Georgos connected the wires from the detonators.

Again he checked his watch. By working fast they had made up some, but not all, of the lost time.

Ile three explosions would occur, more or less together, eleven minutes from now. It barely gave Georgos and his woman time to make it back down the bill to where their car was hidden, off the road, in a stand of trees. But if they hurried-ran most of the way-they would be safely en route to the city before a response to the massive power failure could be mounted. He commanded Yvette, "Get going! Move it!" This time she preceded him through the fence.

It was while Georgos himself was crawling out that he heard the sound of a car, not far away and ascending the hill. He paused to listen.

Unmistakably it was using the private gravel road, owned by GSP & L, which provided access to the substation.

A security patrol! It had to be. This late at night no one else would come here. As Georgos finished scrambling through and stood upright, he could see the reflection of headlights on some trees below. The road was winding, which explained why the car was not yet in sight.

Yvette had beard and seen too. As she started to say something, be motioned her to silence and snarled, "Over here!" He began running toward the gravel road, then across it to a clump of bushes on the far side. In the bushes he dropped and flattened himself, Yvette beside him doing the same. He sensed her trembling. He was reminded of what he forgot sometimes-that she was little more than a child in many ways; also, she had never been quite the same, despite her devotion to him, since the incident of the hand.

Now the headlights were in sight as the car rounded the last bend before the substation. It was approaching slowly. Probably the driver was being careful because the service road had no reflective markers and the edges were hard to see. As the headlights came nearer, the entire area was illuminated brightly. Georgos pressed down, raising his bead only slightly. Their chances of remaining concealed, he calculated, were good.

What worried him was the nearness of the explosion. He checked his watch.

Eight minutes to go.

The car stopped, only a few feet from Georgos and Yvette, and a figure got out on the passenger side. As the figure moved forward into the range of headlights, Georgos could see a man in security guard uniform. The guard had a flashlight with a powerful beam which be directed at the fence surrounding the substation. Moving the beam from side to side, be began walking, making a circuit of the fence. Now Georgos could distinguish the shape of a second man-the driver-who seemed to be staying in the car.

The first man had gone part way around when he stopped, directing the flashlight downward. He had found the opening where the fence 1was cut. Moving closer, he used the flashlight to inspect inside the fence.

The light moved over power lines, insulators and transformers, paused at one charge of plastic explosive, then followed the wires to the timing device.

The guard swung around and shouted, "Hey, Jake! Call in an alarm!

Something's funny here."

Georgos acted. He knew that seconds counted, and there was no alternative to what had to be done.

He leaped to his feet, at the same time reaching to his belt for a hunting knife he carried in a sheath. It was a long, sharp, vicious knife, intended for an emergency such as this, and it came out smoothly. The leap had carried Georgos almost to the car. One more pace and he wrenched open the driver's door. The startled occupant, an elderly man with gray hair, also in security guard uniform, turned. He had a radio mike in his hand, close to his lips.

Georgos lunged forward. With his left hand be pulled the guard from the car, spun him around, then with a powerful upward thrust buried the knife in the man's chest. The victim's mouth opened wide. He began a scream which almost at once subsided to a gurgle. Then he fell forward to the ground.

Pulling hard, Georgos retrieved the knife and returned it to the sheath. He had seen a gun in a holster as the guard fell. Now, snapping open the holster, he grabbed it. Georgos had learned about guns in Cuba. This was a- 38 Smith & Wesson revolver and, in the reflection from the headlights, he broke the gun and checked the chambers. All were loaded. He snapped the gun closed, cocked it, and released the safety.

The first guard had heard something and was returning to the car. He called out, "Jake! What was that? Are you okay?" His gun was drawn but he had no chance to use it.

Already Georgos had slipped like a silent shadow around the rear of the car, making use of darkness behind the lights. Now he was down on his knees, taking careful aim, the muzzle of the -38 cradled on his left elbow for stability, his right forefinger beginning to squeeze the trigger. The sights were lined on the left side of the approaching guard's chest.

Georgos waited until he was sure be would hit his target, then fired three times. The second and third shots were probably unnecessary. The guard pitched backward without a sound and lay still where he had fallen.