'What's the bad news?' Addison Doug said.

'Not bad, necessarily,' Dr Fein said. 'I've had computations run since our discussion, and it would appear - by that I mean it is statistically probable but still unverified for a certainty - that you are right, Addison. You are in a closed time loop.'

Addison Doug exhaled raggedly. You nowhere autocratic mother, he thought. You probably knew all along.

'However,' Dr Fein said excitedly, stammering a little, 'I also calculate - we jointly do, largely through Cal Tech - that the greatest likelihood of maintaining the loop is to implode on reentry. Do you understand, Addison? If you lug all those rusty VW parts back and implode, then your statistical chances of closing the loop forever is greater than if you simply reenter and all goes well.'

Addison Doug said nothing.

'In fact, Addi - and this is the severe part that I have to stress - implosion at reentry, especially a ma.s.sive, calculated one of the sort we seem to see shaping up - do you grasp all this, Addi? Am I getting through to you? For Chrissake, Addi? Virtually guarantees guarantees the locking in of an absolutely unyielding loop such as you've got in mind. Such as we've all been worried about from the start.' A pause. 'Addi? Are you there?' the locking in of an absolutely unyielding loop such as you've got in mind. Such as we've all been worried about from the start.' A pause. 'Addi? Are you there?'

Addison Doug said, 'I want to die.'

'That's your exhaustion from the loop. G.o.d knows how many repet.i.tions there've been already of the three of you-'

'No,' he said and started to hang up.

'Let me speak with Benz and Crayne,' Dr Fein said rapidly. 'Please, before you go ahead with reentry. Especially Benz; I'd like to speak with him in particular. Please, Addison. For their sake; your almost total exhaustion has-'

He hung up. Left the phone booth, step by step.

As he climbed back into the car, he heard their two alert receivers still buzzing. 'General Toad said the automatic call for us would keep your two receivers doing that for a while,' he said. And shut the car door after him. 'Let's take off.'

'Doesn't he want to talk to us?' Benz said.

Addison Doug said, 'General Toad wanted to inform us that they have a little something for us. We've been voted a special Congressional Citation for valor or some d.a.m.n thing like that. A special medal they never voted anyone before. To be awarded posthumously.'

'Well, h.e.l.l - that's about the only way it can be awarded,' Crayne said.

Merry Lou, as she started up the engine, began to cry.

'It'll be a relief,' Crayne said presently, as they returned b.u.mpily to the freeway, 'when it's over.'

It won't be long now, Addison Doug's mind declared.

On their wrists the emergency alert receivers continued to put out their combined buzzing.

'They will nibble you to death,' Addison Doug said. 'The endless wearing down by various bureaucratic voices.'

The others in the car turned to gaze at him inquiringly, with uneasiness mixed with perplexity.

'Yeah,' Crayne said. 'These automatic alerts are really a nuisance.' He sounded tired. As tired as I am, Addison Doug thought. And, realizing this, he felt better. It showed how right he was.

Great drops of water struck the windshield; it had now begun to rain. That pleased him too. It reminded him of that most exalted of all experiences within the shortness of his life: the funeral procession moving slowly down Pennsylvania Avenue, the flag-draped caskets. Closing his eyes he leaned back and felt good at last. And heard, all around him once again, the sorrow-bent people. And, in his head, dreamed of the special Congressional Medal. For weariness, he thought. A medal for being tired.

He saw, in his head, himself in other parades too, and in the deaths of many. But really it was one death and one parade. Slow cars moving along the street in Dallas and with Dr King as well ... He saw himself return again and again, in his closed cycle of life, to the national mourning that he could not and they could not forget. He would be there; they would always be there; it would always be, and every one of them would return together again and again forever. To the place, the moment, they wanted to be. The event which meant the most to all of them.

This was his gift to them, the people, his country. He had bestowed upon the world a wonderful burden. The dreadful and weary miracle of eternal life.

The Pre-Persons

Past the grove of cypress trees Walter - he had been playing king of the mountain - saw the white truck, and he knew it for what it was. He thought, That's the abortion truck. Come to take some kid in for a postpartum down at the abortion place.

And he thought, Maybe my folks called it. For me.

He ran and hid among the blackberries, feeling the scratching of the thorns but thinking, It's better than having the air sucked out of your lungs. That's how they do it; they perform all the PPs on all the kids there at the same time. They have a big room for it. For the kids n.o.body wants.

Burrowing deeper into the blackberries, he listened to hear if the truck stopped; he heard its motor.

'I am invisible,' he said to himself, a line he had learned at the fifth-grade play of Midsummer Night's Dream Midsummer Night's Dream, a line Oberon, whom he had played, had said. And after that no one could see him. Maybe that was true now. Maybe the magic saying worked in real life; so he said it again to himself, 'I am invisible.' But he knew he was not. He could still see his arms and legs and shoes, and he knew they - everyone, the abortion truck man especially, and his mom and dad - they could see him too. If they looked.

If it was him they were after this time.

He wished he was a king; he wished he had magic dust all over him and a shining crown that glistened, and ruled fairyland and had Puck to confide to. To ask for advice from, even. Advice even if he himself was a king and bickered with t.i.tania, his wife.

I guess, he thought, saying something doesn't make it true.

Sun burned down on him and he squinted, but mostly he listened to the abortion truck motor; it kept making its sound, and his heart gathered hope as the sound went on and on. Some other kid, turned over to the abortion clinic, not him; someone up the road.

He made his difficult exit from the berry brambles shaking and in many places scratched and moved step by step in the direction of his house. And as he trudged he began to cry, mostly from the pain of the scratches but also from fear and relief.

'Oh, good Lord,' his mother exclaimed, on seeing him. 'What in the name of G.o.d have you been doing?'

He said stammeringly, 'I - saw - the abortion - truck.'

'And you thought it was for you?'

Mutely, he nodded.

'Listen, Walter,' Cynthia Best said, kneeling down and taking hold of his trembling hands, 'I promise, your dad and I both promise, you'll never be sent to the County Facility. Anyhow you're too old. They only take children up to twelve.'

'But Jeff Vogel-'

'His parents got him in just before the new law went into effect. They couldn't take him now, legally. They couldn't take you now. Look - you have a soul; the law says a twelve-year-old boy has a soul. So he can't go to the County Facility. See? You're safe. Whenever you see the abortion truck, it's for someone else, not you. Never for you. Is that clear? It's come for another younger child who doesn't have a soul yet, a pre-person.'

Staring down, not meeting his mother's gaze, he said, 'I don't feel like I got a soul; I feel like I always did.'

'It's a legal matter,' his mother said briskly. 'Strictly according to age. And you're past the age. The Church of Watchers got Congress to pa.s.s the law - actually they, those church people, wanted a lower age; they claimed the soul entered the body at three years old, but a compromise bill was put through. The important thing for you is that you are legally safe, however you feel inside; do you see?'

'Okay,' he said, nodding.

'You knew that.'

He burst out with anger and grief, 'What do you think it's like, maybe waiting every day for someone to come and put you in a wire cage in a truck and-'

'Your fear is irrational,' his mother said.

'I saw them take Jeff Vogel that day. He was crying, and the man just opened the back of the truck and put him in and shut the back of the truck.'

'That was two years ago. You're weak.' His mother glared at him. 'Your grandfather would whip you if he saw you now and heard you talk this way. Not your father. He'd just grin and say something stupid. Two years later, and intellectually you know you're past the legal maximum age! How-' She struggled for the word. 'You are being depraved depraved.'

'And he never came back.'

'Perhaps someone who wanted a child went inside the County Facility and found him and adopted him. Maybe he's got a better set of parents who really care for him. They keep them thirty days before they destroy them.' She corrected herself. 'Put them to sleep, I mean.'

He was not rea.s.sured. Because he knew 'put him to sleep' or 'put them to sleep' was a Mafia term. He drew away from his mother, no longer wanting her comfort. She had blown it, as far as he was concerned; she had shown something about herself or, anyhow, the source of what she believed and thought and perhaps did. What all of them did. I know I'm no different, he thought, than two years ago when I was just a little kid; if I have a soul now like the law says, then I had a soul then, or else we have no souls - the only real thing is just a horrible metallic-painted truck with wire over its windows carrying off kids their parents no longer want, parents using an extension of the old abortion law that let them kill an unwanted child before it came out: because it had no 'soul' or 'ident.i.ty', it could be sucked out by a vacuum system in less than two minutes. A doctor could do a hundred a day, and it was legal because the unborn child wasn't 'human'. He was a pre-person. Just like this truck now; they merely set the date forward as to when the soul entered.

Congress had inaugurated a simple test to determine the approximate age at which the soul entered the body: the ability to formulate higher math like algebra. Up to then, it was only body, animal instincts and body, animal reflexes and responses to stimuli. Like Pavlov's dogs when they saw a little water seep in under the door of the Leningrad laboratory; they 'knew' but were not human.

I guess I'm human, Walter thought, and looked up into the gray, severe face of his mother, with her hard eyes and rational grimness. I guess I'm like you, he thought. Hey, it's neat to be a human, he thought; then you don't have to be afraid of the truck coming.

'You feel better,' his mother observed. 'I've lowered your threshold of anxiety.'

'I'm not so freaked,' Walter said. It was over; the truck had gone and not taken him.

But it would be back in a few days. It cruised perpetually.

Anyhow he had a few days. And then the sight of it - if only I didn't know they suck the air out of the lungs of the kids they have there, he thought. Destroy them that way. Why? Cheaper, his dad had said. Saves the taxpayers money.

He thought then about taxpayers and what they would look like. Something that scowled at all children, he thought. That did not answer if the child asked them a question. A thin face, lined with watch-worry grooves, eyes always moving. Or maybe fat; one or the other. It was the thin one that scared him; it didn't enjoy life nor want life to be. It flashed the message, 'Die, go away, sicken, don't exist.' And the abortion truck was proof - or the instrument - of it.

'Mom,' he said, 'how do you shut a County Facility? You know, the abortion clinic where they take the babies and little kids.'

'You go and pet.i.tion the county legislature,' his mother said.

'You know what I'd do?' he said. 'I'd wait until there were no kids in there, only county employees, and I'd firebomb it.'

'Don't talk like that!' his mother said severely, and he saw on her face the stiff lines of the thin taxpayer. And it frightened him; his own mother frightened him. The cold and opaque eyes mirrored nothing, no soul inside, and he thought, It's you who don't have a soul It's you who don't have a soul, you and your skinny messages not-to-be. Not us.

And then he ran outside to play again.

A bunch more kids had seen the truck; he and they stood around together, talking now and then, but mostly kicking at rocks and dirt, and occasionally stepping on a bad bug.

'Who'd the truck come for?' Walter said.

'Fleischhacker. Earl Fleischhacker.'

'Did they get him?'

'Sure, didn't you hear the yelling?'

'Was his folks home at the time?'

'Naw, they split earlier on some shuck about "taking the car in to be greased".'

' They They called the truck?' Walter said. called the truck?' Walter said.

'Sure, it's the law; it's gotta be the parents. But they were too chickens.h.i.t to be there when the truck drove up. s.h.i.t, he really yelled; I guess you're too far away to hear, but he really yelled.'

Walter said, 'You know what we ought to do? Firebomb the truck and snuff the driver.'

All the other kids looked at him contemptuously. 'They put you in the mental hospital for life if you act out like that.'

'Sometimes for life,' Pete Bride corrected. 'Other times they "build up a new personality that is socially viable".'

'Then what should we do?' Walter said.

'You're twelve; you're safe.'

'But suppose they change the law.' Anyhow it did not a.s.suage his anxiety to know that he was technically safe; the truck still came for others and still frightened him. He thought of the younger kids down at the Facility now, looking through the Cyclone fence hour by hour, day after day, waiting and marking the pa.s.sage of time and hoping someone would come in and adopt them.

'You ever been down there?' he said to Pete Bride. 'At the County Facility? All those really little kids, like babies some of them, just maybe a year old. And they don't even know what's in store.'

'The babies get adopted,' Zack Yablonski said. 'It's the old ones that don't stand a chance. They're the ones that get you; like, they talk to people who come in and put on a good show, like they're desirable. But people know they wouldn't be there if they weren't - you know, undesirable.'

'Let the air out of the tires,' Walter said, his mind working.

'Of the truck? Hey, and you know if you drop a mothball in the gas tank, about a week later the motor wears out. We could do that.'

Ben Blaire said, 'But then they'd be after us.'

'They're after us now,' Walter said.

'I think we ought to firebomb the truck,' Harry Gottlieb said, 'but suppose there're kids in it. It'll burn them up. The truck picks up maybe- s.h.i.t, I don't know. Five kids a day from different parts of the county.'

'You know they even take dogs too?' Walter said. 'And cats; you see the truck for that only about once a month. The pound truck it's called. Otherwise it's the same; they put them in a big chamber and suck the air out of their lungs and they die. They'd do that even to animals! Little animals!'

'I'll believe that when I see it,' Harry Gottlieb said, derision on his face, and disbelief. 'A truck that carries off dogs.'

He knew it was true, though. Walter had seen the pound truck two different times. Cats, dogs, and mainly us, he thought glumly. I mean, if they'd start with us, it's natural they'd wind up taking people's pets, too; we're not that different. But what kind of a person would do that, even if it is the law? 'Some laws are made to be kept, and some to be broken,' he remembered from a book he had read. We ought to firebomb the pound truck first, he thought; that's the worst, that truck.

Why is it, he wondered, that the more helpless a creature, the easier it was for some people to snuff it? Like a baby in the womb; the original abortions, 'pre-partums', or 'pre-persons' they were called now. How could they defend themselves? Who would speak for them? All those lives, a hundred by each doctor a day ... and all helpless and silent and then just dead. The f.u.c.kers, he thought. That's why they do it; they know they can do it; they get off on their macho power. And so a little thing that wanted to see the light of day is vacuumed out in less than two minutes. And the doctor goes on to the next chick.

There ought to be an organization, he thought, similar to the Mafia. Snuff the snuffers, or something. A contract man walks up to one of those doctors, pulls out a tube, and sucks the doctor into it, where he shrinks down like an unborn baby. An unborn baby doctor, with a stethoscope the size of a pinhead ... He laughed, thinking of that.

Children don't know. But children know everything, knew too much. The abortion truck, as it drove along, played a Good Humor Man's jingle: Jack and Jill Went up the hill To fetch a pail of water A tape loop in the sound system of the truck, built especially by Ampex for GM, blared that out when it wasn't actively nearing a seize. Then the driver shut off the sound system and glided along until he found the proper house. However, once he had the unwanted child in the back of the truck, and was either starting back to the County Facility or beginning another pre-person pick-up, he turned back on Jack and Jill Went up the hill To fetch a pail of water Thinking of himself, Oscar Ferris, the driver of truck three, finished, 'Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.' What the h.e.l.l's a crown? Ferris wondered. Probably a private part. He grinned. Probably Jack had been playing with it, or Jill, both of them together. Water, my a.s.s, he thought. I know what they went off into the bushes for. Only, Jack fell down, and his thing broke right off. 'Tough luck, Jill,' he said aloud as he expertly drove the four-year-old truck along the winding curves of California Highway One.

Kids are like that, Ferris thought. Dirty and playing with dirty things, like themselves.

This was still wild and open country, and many stray children scratched about in the canyons and fields; he kept his eye open, and sure enough - off to his right scampered a small one, about six, trying to get out of sight. Ferris at once pressed the b.u.t.ton that activated the siren of the truck. The boy froze, stood in fright, waited as the truck, still playing 'Jack and Jill', coasted up beside him and came to a halt.

'Show me your D papers,' Ferris said, without getting out of the truck; he leaned one arm out the window, showing his brown uniform and patch; his symbols of authority.