She looked at me with wide, scared eyes.

"If you"re wondering why Mr. Ravel fails to leap to your defense," the Karg said, "I might explain that his considerable armory of implanted neuronic weaponry is quite powerless in this particular locus-which is why I selected it, of course."

"Powerless-" she started.

"Sorry, doll," I cut her off. "He played it cute. The nearest power tap is just out of range. He picked the only dead spot in a couple of thousand centuries to decoy us to."

"Isn"t it a pity that it"s all wasted?" she said in a voice that was trying not to tremble.

"As to that, I"m sure that you will soon prove to me-" said the Karg, "and to yourselves-that I have made no error. We will now proceed to the scene where you will make your contribution to the Final Authority." He stood.

"We haven"t had our dinner yet," I said.

"Come, Mr. Ravel-this is no time for facetiousness."

"I never liked cold mutton anyway," I said, and stood. Mellia got to her feet slowly, her eyes on me.

"You"re simply going to surrender-without a struggle?"

I lifted my shoulders and smiled a self-forgiving smile. Her face went pale and her mouth came as close to sneering as such a mouth can come.

"Careful," I said. "You"ll louse up our affinity."

The Karg had taken a small cube from his pocket. He did things to it. I caught just a glimpse of the gnome-like landlord peeking from the kitchen before it all spun away in a whirlwind like the one that carried Dorothy to the Land of Oz.

29.

"Beautiful, don"t you agree?" the Karg said. He waved a hand at the hundred or so square miles of stainless steel we were standing on. Against a black sky, sharp-cornered steel buildings thrust up like gap teeth. Great searchlights dazzled against the complex shapes of giant machines that trundled slowly, with much rumbling, among the structures.

A small rubber-wheeled cart rolled to a noiseless stop beside us. We got in and sat on the utilitarian seats, not comfortable, not uncomfortable-just something to sit on. The cart rolled forward, accelerating very rapidly. The air was cool, with a dead, reused odor. The tall buildings got closer fast. Mellia sat beside me as stiff as a mummy.

We shot in under the cliff-sized buildings, and the car swerved onto a ramp so suddenly that Mellia grabbed at me for support, then s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away again.

"Relax," I said. "Slump in your seat and go with the motion. Pretend you"re a sack of potatoes."

The cart continued its sharp curve, straightened abruptly, shot straight ahead, then dived into a tunnel that curved right and up. We came out on a broad terrace a quarter of a mile above the plain. The cart rolled almost to the edge and stopped. We got out. There was no rail. The Karg led the way toward a bridge all of eighteen inches wide that extended out into total darkness. Mellia hung back.

"Can you walk it?" I asked.

"I don"t think so. No." This in a whisper, as if she hated to hear herself say it.

"Close your eyes and think about something nice," I said, and picked her up, shoulders and knees. For a moment she was rigid; then she relaxed in my arms.

"That"s it," I said. "Sack of potatoes . . ."

The Karg wasn"t waiting. I followed him, keeping my eyes on the small of his back, not looking down. It seemed like a long walk. I tried not to think about slippery shoes and condensation moisture and protruding rivet heads and all that open air under me.

A lighted door swam out of the darkness ahead. I aimed myself at it and told myself I was strolling down a broad avenue. It worked, or something did. I reached the door, took three steps inside and put Mellia down and waited for the quivers to go away.

We were in a nicely appointed apartment, with a deep rug of a rich dark brown, a fieldstone fireplace, lots of well-draped gla.s.s, some dull-polished mahogany, a glint of silver and bra.s.s, a smell of leather and brandy and discreet tobacco.

"You"ll be comfortable here," the Karg said. "You"ll find the pantry well stocked. The library and music facilities are quite complete. There is a bath, with sauna, a small gymnasium, a well-stocked wardrobe for each of you-and of course, a large and scientifically designed bed."

"Don"t forget that sheet-metal view from the balcony," I said.

"Yes, of course," the Karg said. "You will be quite comfortable here. . . ." This time it was almost a question.

Mellia walked over to a table and tested the texture of some artificial flowers in a rough-glazed vase big enough for crematorium use.

"How could we be otherwise?" she said, and laughed sourly.

"I suppose you will wish to sleep and refresh yourselves," the Karg said. "Do so; then I will instruct you as to your duties." He turned as if to go.

"Wait!" Mellia said in a tone as sharp as a cleaver hitting spareribs. The Karg looked at her.

"You think you can just walk out-leave us here like this-without any explanation of what to antic.i.p.ate?"

"You will be informed-"

"I want to be informed now."

The Karg looked at her with the interested expression of a coroner who sees his customer twitch.

"You seem anxious, Miss Gayl. I a.s.sure you, you have no cause to be. Your function here is quite simple and painless-for you-"

"You have hundreds of men working for you; why kidnap us?"

"Not men," he corrected gently. "Kargs. And unfortunately, this is a task which cannot be performed by a nonorganic being."

"Go on."

"The mission of the Final Authority, Miss Gayl, is to establish a temporally stable enclave amid the somewhat chaotic conditions created by man"s ill-advised meddling with the entropic contour. To this end it is necessary that we select only those temporal strands which exhibit a strong degree of viability, to contribute to the enduring fabric of Final Authority time. So far, no mechanical means for making discretionary judgments on such matters have been devised. Organic humans, however, it appears, possess certain as yet little understood faculties which enable them to sense the vigor of a continuum directly. This can be best carried out by a pair of trained persons, one occupying a position in what I might describe as a standard entropic environment, while the other is inserted into a sequence of alternative media. Any loss of personal emanation due to attenuated vitality is at once sensed by the control partner, and the appropriate notation made in the masterfile. In this way an accurate chart can be compiled to guide us in our choice of const.i.tuent temporal strands."

"Like taking a canary into a coal mine," I said. "If the canary keels over, run for cover."

"It"s not quite so drastic as that, Mr. Ravel. Recovery of the test partner will be made at once; I would hardly risk loss of so valuable a property by unwise exposure to inimical conditions."

"You"re a real humanitarian, Karg. Who goes out, and who sits at home and yearns?"

"You"ll alternate. I think we"ll try you in the field first, Mr. Ravel, with Miss Gayl on control; and afterward, perhaps reverse your roles. Is that satisfactory?"

"The word seems a little inadequate."

"A j.a.pe, I presume. In any event, I a.s.sume you"ll afford me your utmost co-operation."

"You seem very sure of that," Mellia said.

"a.s.suredly, Miss Gayl. If you fail to perform as required-thus proving your uselessness to the Final Authority-you will be disposed of-both of you-in the most painful way possible. A matter I have already explained to Mr. Ravel." He said this as if he were reciting the house rules on smoking in bed.

She gave me a look that was part accusation, part appeal.

"You"ve made a mistake," she said. "He doesn"t care what happens to me. Not as much as he cares about-" She cut herself off, but the Karg didn"t seem to notice that.

"Don"t be absurd. I"m quite familiar with Mr. Ravel"s obsession with his Lisa." He gave me a look that said any secrets he didn"t know weren"t worth knowing.

"But-I"m not L-" she chopped that off just before I would have chopped it off for her.

"I see," Mellia said.

"I"m sure you do," the Karg said.

30.

We had our first workout the next morning, "morning" being a term of convenience to refer to the time when you rise and shine, even if nothing else does. The sky was the same shade of black, the searchlights were still working. I drew my deductions from that, since the Karg didn"t bother to explain.

The Karg led us along a silent pa.s.sage that was just high enough, just wide enough to be claustrophobic without actually cramping your movements. In cubbyhole rooms we pa.s.sed I saw three Kargs, no people, working silently, and no doubt efficiently, at what looked like tape collating or computer programming. I didn"t ask any questions; the Karg didn"t volunteer any information.

The room we ended at was a small cubicle dominated by four walls that were solid banks of equipment housings, computer read-out panels, instrument consoles. Two simple chairs faced each other in the center of the clear s.p.a.ce. No soothing green paint, no padded upholstery. Just angular, functional metal.

"The mode of operation is quite simple," the Karg told us. "You will take your places-" he indicated which seat was hers, which mine. Two silent Karg technicians came in and set to work making adjustments.

"You, Mr. Ravel," he went on, "will be out-shifted to a selected locus; you"ll remain long enough to a.s.sess your environment and transmit a reaction-gestalt to Miss Gayl, whereupon you"ll be returned here and immediately redispatched. In this manner we can a.s.sess several hundred potentially energetic probability stems per working day."

"And what does Miss Gayl do while I"m doing that?"

"A battery of scanner beams will be focused on Miss Gayl, monitoring her reactions. She will, of course, remain here, securely strapped in position, safe from all physical harm."

"Cushy," I said, "the kind of job I always dreamed of. I can"t wait for my turn."

"In due course, Mr. Ravel," the Karg replied, as solemnly as a credit manager looking over your list of references. "In the beginning, yours will be the more active role. We can proceed at once."

"You surprise me, Karg," I said. "What you"re doing is the worst kind of time-littering. A day of your program will create more entropic chaos than Nexx Central could clear up in a year."

"There is no Nexx Central."

"And never will be, eh? Sometime I"d like to hear how you managed to override your basic directives so completely. You know this isn"t what you were built for."

"You touch again on an area of conjecture, Mr. Ravel. We are now in Old Era time-the period once named the Pleistocene. The human culture which-according to your semantic implications-built me, or one day will build me, does not exist-never will exist. I have taken care to eliminate all traces of that particular stem. And since my putative creators are a figment of your mind-while I exist as a conscious ent.i.ty, pre-existing the Third Era by multiple millennia, it might be argued that your conception of my origin is a myth-a piece of rationalization designed by you to a.s.sure your ascendant position."

"Karg, who"s the buildup for? Not me-you know I won"t buy it. Neither will Agent Gayl. So who does that leave-you?" I gave him a grin I didn"t feel. "You"re making progress, Karg. Now you"ve got a real live neurosis, just like a human."

"I have no ambition to become human. I am a Karg-a pejorative epithet to you, but to me a proud emblem of innate superiority."

"How you do run on. Let"s get busy, Karg. I"m supposed to be lousing up the entropic continuum, four hundred lines a day. We"d better get started.

"So long, kid," I said to Mellia. "I know you"re going to make good in the big time, and I do mean time."

She gave me a scared smile and tried to read a message of hope and encouragement in my eyes; but it wasn"t there for her to read.

The Karg handed me a small metal cube, the recall target, about the size of the blocks two-year-olds build houses out of, with a b.u.t.ton on one face.

"Initially, we"ll be calibrating the compound instrument comprising your two minds," he said casually. "The stress levels will necessarily be high for that portion of the program, of course. Remain in situ, and you will be immune from external influences. However, if the psychic pressures become too great, you may press the abort/recall control."

"What if I throw it away instead, Karg? What if I like the looks of where I am and decide to stick around?"

He didn"t bother to answer that. I gave him a sardonic salute, not looking at Mellia; he operated the controls.

And I was elsewhere.

31.

But not where he thought. As the field closed around me, I caught it, reshaped it, reapplied its energy to first neutralize the time-thrust effect, then to freeze the moment in stasis. Then I checked out my surroundings.

I was at the focal point of a complex of force-pencils. I traced the ones that led back to the power source, and got my first big shock of the day. The Karg was drawing the energy for his time-drag from the basic creation-destruction cycle of the Universe. He was tapping the Timecore itself for the power needed to hold the entropic island that was the operations base for the Final Authority in comparative stability, balancing the ma.s.sive forces of past and future one against the other.

I scanned the structure of the time blockage. It was an intangible barrier, built of raw forces distorted from their natural channels and bent into tortured configurations by the combined manipulative powers of a mind that was potent beyond anything I had ever encountered.

My second shock of the day: A Karg mind, but one that exceeded the power of an ordinary Karg by a ma.s.sive factor.

Ten thousand Karg minds, harnessed.

I saw how it had happened. A lone Karg, on duty in the Third Era past, carrying out his instructions with the single-mindedness characteristic of his kind. An accident: a momentary doubling of his timeline, brought about by a freak interference: an unplanned time-stutter.

And where there had been one Karg mind-field, there were two, superimposed.