Eschaton 1 – The Other End of Time

CHAPTER SIX

Dan

On the way home that night, Dannerman stopped to do what he should have done days earlier-put in his once-a-month hour's practice on the firing range at the YMCA. As long as he was there he put in another hour on the exercise machines to keep his muscle tone up. When he got home he was hot and sweaty, but the guns had to be cleaned.

His practiced fingers knew how to do that without much direction from his brain, so he put something on the screen to watch while he cleaned the weapons. He hesitated over the choice. One of his store of Elmer Rice plays, for the fun of it? Some of the briefing tapes Hilda had downloaded for him, for the sake of duty? He compromised on looping the two messages from space again; maybe they had something to do with his assignment, as the colonel had hinted, but anyway she'd stirred his curiosity.

He did the easiest weapon first, the registered twenty-shot, his eyes on the screen. Even slowed down to catch details, the first space message gave no more information than it had the first time he saw it, in the Neuereich. The universe expanded and collapsed; and that was that.

He paused before running the second message, because the stink of his bomb-bugger was getting to him. Once the chemicals in a bomb-bugger mixed they produced not only thrust for the bullets but a god-awful smell; he rinsed the whole weapon, tiring chamber and all, in water with neutralizer added, then carefully added enough of each chemical to top them off from the canisters hidden under his bed. Then he turned on the second message and began to clean his ankle gun.

He didn't get far. There were angry voices just outside his door. One was his landlady, Rita, in a bad mood; the other, whining and apologetic, belonged to one of the upstairs lodgers, Bert Germaine. When he opened the door, Rita diverted her attention from the lodger to Dannerman. "I didn't see you in the kitchen," she said accusingly. Then, wrinkling her nose, "What's that smell?"

"I guess it's the low-power loads they make you use on the YMCA range. Sorry about that."

She shrugged, turning back to look for the other lodger. But that conversation with the other lodger was over, because Germaine had taken advantage of her distraction to sneak away. "Little bastard," she said morosely. "I ought to kick his ass right out of my condo. Can't pay the rent, oh, no, but he always has a couple dollars for lottery tickets every day."

Dannerman took the hint. "Let me settle up."

"Oh, honey," she sighed, "I wasn't talking about you. You're the best goddam tenant I have, you know that. Only how can I make ends meet when I have to put up with deadbeats like Germaine?"

"Look at the bright side, Rita. Maybe he'll win his hundred million dollars, then he'll pay everything he owes all at once."

"Maybe pigs will fly. Dan," she said, looking him over, "when was the last time you got a haircut?" He shrugged. "You really ought to take more pride in your appearance, a good-looking young fellow like you. Which reminds me," she added. "There was a girl here looking for you."

"Oh?" he said, wondering: Colonel Hilda? Somebody from the office?

"Said her name was Anita. Said to tell you they missed you at the theater. Is she the one I used to see here sometimes, like a month or two ago? Not that I'm complaining about your having guests," she added hastily. "You pay your rent on time. I'm not going to worry if you have somebody visit you now and then, and one thing I will say for you, Dan, the ones I've seen have always looked pretty respectable. Not like the hookers that little bastard Germaine tries to sneak in. He's always got the money to pay them, you bet; and still he says he can't pay his rent!"

When he was safely locked in his room again Dannerman didn't start the tape again. He was thinking about Anita Berman.

That was not an enjoyable subject-not meaning Anita herself, who was about as enjoyable a female as he had ever dated, but the fact that he would soon have to do something about her. The troubling question was, do what? He didn't really want to break off their relationship. But she was beginning to sound serious, and that was something he couldn't afford.

Then Hilda's call came in on the coded line and he put Anita Berman out of his mind for the moment. He started in right away with the colonel. "Thanks a lot for setting me up this afternoon. You could've told me about it first."

"What for? I knew you could handle it. Now Jarvas is out of the way for a while, right?"

"I guess so. They were still at the hospital when 1 left."

"He's out," she said positively. "His arm's broken. So tomorrow morning you go in to your cousin and see if you can get his job."

"You broke his arm on purpose."

"Damn straight we did. So now his job's open, because what's the use of a bodyguard with a broken arm? Get it. Her bodyguard goes wherever she goes, so you can keep tabs on her when she's out of the observatory. Now, let's hear your report."

There wasn't much to say, until he got to his lunch with the lawyer. She scowled at that. "Him, too. Maybe we should sell tickets."

"You don't act surprised at what he said," he pointed out.

"You mean because this Dixler thinks your cousin's trying to make some money out of the Starlab? But we already knew all that, of course."

"Hell, Hilda, I didn't! So now that I know that much, how about telling me the rest?"

She shook her head. "Don't hassle me about that. What else?"

He hesitated. "One thing. I want to go back and visit at the theater. They're opening The Subway tomorrow night and I want to be there."

She frowned again. "Is that wise? The only reason we let you do that theater crap was because it made good cover on the Carpezzio job, and that's over for you. Don't get the two things mixed up."

"It's personal, Hilda."

She sighed and surrendered. "That goddam Berman woman, right? Well, I won't say no, but if there's any fallout it's your ass, Danno. All right, I've got some orders for you. We can't get through your cousin's encoding; we need a key. That Greek fellow-"

"Papathanassiou."

"That one. He probably has it, and I've got his data packet; I'll pass it on to you. Couple of others, too, but the Greek's is the one that looks good. You ought to be able to get something out of him."

"Blackmail him, you mean?"

"Whatever. And that Chinaman we were interested in, Jimmy Lin. He's coming back tomorrow morning, so you want to get on him, too." She reflected for a moment, peering past him.

"Did you clean your clothes after firing your bomb-bugger? Once you fire one of those things the stink stays, so everybody's going to know you've got a hideout gun."

"I will," he promised; then, "Hey! You've had me followed!" "Well, sure. If we didn't do that how would we know if anybody else was following you? You're clean, so far-and, don't forget, the first thing you do in the morning is see if you can go for Jarvas's job."

But, as it turned out, that wasn't an option. Somebody had forgotten to tell the bureau's arm-breakers that Jarvas was left-handed; and when Dannerman put his card in the turnstile at the observatory entrance the next morning his cousin Pat was ahead of him, and beside her, punching out the combination to summon an elevator, was Mick Jarvas, a translucent cast on his right arm.

"Morning," Dannerman said, trying not to grin.

"And good morning to you," his cousin said, smiling. She reached over to touch him on the shoulder-not affectionately, exactly, but a lot more amiably than before. "You surprised me yesterday, old Dan. For an English major, I mean," she said. "Listen, come see me this afternoon. I've got an errand for you to run."

"Sure thing, Pat." He might have asked what kind of an errand, but he didn't get the chance. As they stepped out of the car at their floor she almost bumped into a large, sand-colored man with short black hair who was waiting there.

"Why, Jimmy," she said. "I didn't expect you so early."

"I just dropped off some of my stuff. I have an appointment downtown to check in at the embassy in half an hour," the man said, holding the elevator door open.

"Well, I won't keep you," Pat said. "You know Mick Jarvas, of course? And this is my cousin, Dan Dannerman. Commander Jimmy Lin."

Dannerman hadn't had any clear idea of what he expected a Chinese astronaut to be like, but Jimmy Lin wasn't it. The man was taller than he had imagined, and a lot huskier; he wore a flowered Hawaiian shirt, and shoes that, Dannerman was pretty sure, would have cost him a month of his observatory pay. "Glad to know you, Commander," Dannerman said, automatically extending his hand.

But the People's Republic astronaut obviously didn't share the pleasure. He didn't accept Dannerman's hand. He didn't even speak to him. He gave him a long, hard look, then turned to Pat Adcock. "I'll be back before lunch," he said. "We can talk then."

"I've got a lunch date; make it this afternoon," she said, gazing after Lin as he let the elevator door close behind him. Then she turned to Dannerman with a mildly puzzled look. "He's usually chummier than that. You didn't forget to shower this morning, did you?" He shrugged. "Well, let's get to work; you can sort that out later."

Dannerman would have to sort that out, somehow, if he was going to carry out the colonel's orders, but it was going to be harder than he'd thought. He hadn't expected that kind of unprovoked hostility from Lin; and he was going to have to come up with something better than a broken wrong arm to get Jarvas out of the way. And then, as he checked his weapon with Jarvas, there was another curious thing. The bodyguard gave him a long look, partly abashed, partly pugnacious, but, though he seemed to want to say something, he didn't get it out.

There was one thing Dannerman could do, though. Hilda had kept her promise and transmitted the background packets on the observatory employees who had turned up in the sin file. Two of them were unlikely to help: the astrophysics grad student three weeks past her period and frantically sending faxes to her boyfriend, now in Sierra Leone; Harry Chesweiler, identified as a former member of the Man-Boy Love Association. But the packet on Christo Papathanassiou did look good. The old man had got himself picked up for questioning about a terrorist assassination back in the old country. That, Dannerman thought judiciously, could be made to work-whether or not Papathanassiou was actually guilty of anything.

Dannerman couldn't do anything about it for the first couple of hours that morning, because he was kept busy with his nominal observatory duties. And then, when he went looking for the Cypriot, Papathanassiou was nowhere to be found. He wasn't in his office. He wasn't in with Pat, or in the room of number crunchers all the scientists used to set up their mathematical models. When Dannerman looked into Rosaleen Artzybachova's cubicle he wasn't there, either, and the old lady herself was, incredibly, doing push-ups on the floor. "You want me?" she called, looking up at Dannerman.

"Actually I was looking for Dr. Papathanassiou."

"Try the canteen," she said; and that was where Dannerman found him, attacking a wedge of some unfamiliar kind of pastry smothered in heavy cream.

He looked defensive. "One has to keep one's blood sugar up," he said.

"Good idea," said Dannerman. "Mind if I join you?" And when he had a dish of sherbet for himself he said, "I was kind of hoping I'd run into you, Dr. Papathanassiou. I was looking at those tapes from space again last night-"

"Those odd-looking alien creatures? Yes?"

"And I just didn't understand about this Big Crunch."

"Ah," Papathanassiou said, gratified, "but really, it's very simple. The universe is expanding; in the future it will collapse again; that's all of it. Of course," he went on, "the mathematics is, yes, rather complex. Actually it was the subject of my dissertation in graduate school, did you know that?" Dannerman did, but saw no reason to say so. "It was necessary to use symplectic integrators to predict the next fifty quadrillion years of motion in only our own galaxy. You've heard of the three-body problem? What I had to solve was the two-hundred-billion-body problem."

He tittered. Dannerman pressed on. "But what I don't understand is, when the universe collapses again, what does it collapse to?"

"Ah." The astronomer ruminated for a moment, licking cream off his upper lip. "Well, you see, when everything has come together again great velocities and pressures are involved. First all matter is compressed. Then the atomic nuclei themselves are compressed. They become a new form of very dense matter which is stable-well, temporarily stable. Are you following me so far?"

Dannerman nodded, not entirely truthfully.

"Excellent. Interestingly, some workers once thought that sort of thing might happen in a particle accelerator. They called that state 'Lee-Wick matter,' and they feared it would be so dense that it would accrete everything else into it. Perhaps, do you see?, even turning the whole Earth into Lee-Wick matter." He wiped his lips with a napkin, grinning. "They were incorrect. No accelerator can reach those forces, though at the Crunch-"

"Yes?"

"Why, then," Papathanassiou said, nodding, "yes, perhaps it could be possible. Not in the form of Lee-Wick matter, no; one is pretty confident now that that doesn't exist after all. Rather it would be in the form of strange matter. That's to say, matter made from quarks-do you know what a quark is? Well, never mind; but strange matter would be very dense indeed, and it would keep on getting denser and denser. You cannot imagine how dense, Mr. Dannerman."

"Like a black hole?" he hazarded.

"Far denser than even a black hole. It would encompass the entire universe, you see, for as soon as it began to form it would transform everything around it into strange matter. Do you know our story of King Midas and his touch of gold? Like that. But only for a tiny fraction of a second, because such matter has a net positive charge-no electrons, you see-and so it tries to fly apart, like a bomb. Have I answered your question?"

"Well, yes." Dannerman cleared his throat. "That part of it, anyway. But it's funny you should mention a bomb."

Papathanassiou's cheerful expression faltered. "I beg your pardon?"

"Someone was asking about you," Dannerman lied. "He mentioned bombs? And a brother?"

The astronomer's smile was gone. "I don't understand. Who was this person?"

"I don't know. Greek, I think. You know that bar downstairs? 1 was having a cup of coffee, and he sat down next to me and asked if I knew you. Do you think I should mention it to Dr. Adcock?"

"Dear God, no!"

"I mean, so she can find this man and make him stop. He said some very unkind things about you, Dr. Papathanassiou."

"No! Please, no," the astronomer begged.

"Well," Dannerman began, then paused as his communicator beeped at him; there was an incoming call on the observatory system. In any case, he thought, that was a good place to stop; the hook had been planted, and it would be worthwhile to let Papathanassiou worry for a while. "I'd better take my call," he said. "Anyway, I won't say anything to her today. But I need to think this over; maybe you and I can talk again tomorrow? Here? I think that would be a good idea-and, oh, yes, thank you for explaining to me about the Big Crunch."

The call turned out to be Gerd Hausewitz from the Max-Planck Institut again, and he was looking aggrieved. "You promised to supply the specs for the Starlab mission," he reminded Dannerman.

"I know, Gerd. I've requested them."

"It is only that we supplied the data you asked for at once."

"I know you did. What can I tell you? I don't know how it is in your place, but here it takes time to get people to move."

"Yes, of course, Dannerman, but-" He looked over his shoulder and spoke more softly. "-my superiors are quite interested in this matter. They were not pleased that I delivered your material without at once receiving what we asked in return. This could be difficult for me here."

"I'll do what I can."

"Please, Dannerman."

"Yes, I promise," Dannerman said, half turning as he cut the contact. Someone was at his door and, surprisingly, it was the Chinese astronaut, PRC Space Corps Commander James Peng-tsu Lin.

He was wearing a propitiatory smile. "Hey, Dan," he said. "I owe you an apology."

"I beg your pardon?"

"No, really. I was pretty rude this morning, and I didn't mean to be-had to get down to the embassy and all that red tape, had a lot on my mind. So let's start over, okay?"

"Glad to, Commander Lin-"

"Just Jimmy, all right? Listen, what I was thinking, are you free for lunch? Looks like we're going to be working together for a while, and I like to get to know new people when they come to work here. Especially if they're Pat's cousin. They tell me there's some pretty fine ethnic food just around the corner-?"

"That'd be fine," Dannerman said, with pleasure. Whatever had turned Lin around was a mystery, but it was also a break: you didn't often get a subject volunteering to let you interrogate him. "I'll get my stuff and meet you at the elevator."

And then, as he picked up his twenty-shot weapon from Mick Jarvas, another little mystery solved itself. Jarvas was in the men's room, but when he came out he looked almost cheerful until he saw Dannerman waiting for him. Then he gave Dannerman that peculiar look again as he handed over the gun. He didn't let go of it.

"Is there something you want to say to me?" Dannerman asked, holding the barrel while Jarvas held the butt-he was glad to see the safety was firmly on.

Jarvas's eyes were on the ground, but Dannerman thought he muttered something. "What did you say?"

Jarvas looked up angrily. As he let go of the gun at last, he managed to get it out. "About that business in the street yesterday? I just said thanks."

Jimmy Lin was in the waiting room, busily chatting up the receptionist. In the elevator he said appreciatively, "I have to say your cousin Pat doesn't mind hiring other good-lookers. How'd you like to do the Twin Dragons Teasing the Phoenix with that Janice lady?"

"The what?"

The astronaut guffawed. "The Twin Dragons Teasing the Phoenix. It's an old Chinese expression. It's like, well, like when a lady has two gentleman paying attention to her at once." He grinned sidelong at Dannerman. "Just a joke, you know. Phew, what a mob." He led the way along the block to turn the corner, moving rapidly. When he noticed that Dannerman was lengthening his stride to keep up with him he said apologetically, "Sorry, I guess I'm always in a hurry. It's a genetic fault; my dad was the same way-except with the ladies, of course. Anyway, here's the place."

To the surprise of Dannerman, who had been preparing himself for Chinese food, the ethnic restaurant was not Oriental at all. What it was, was Tex-Mex. The place was almost as crowded as the sidewalk, but Lin had a whispered conversation with the waiter and money must have changed hands; they got an immediate table. "I hope you like this stuff, Dan. I guess I got an appetite for it in Houston. First time I was there this lady from El Paso introduced me to it, then I introduced her to the Jade Girl Playing the Flute. Aw," he said, grinning, lowering his voice as he glanced at the waitress who was hovering just out of earshot, "that doesn't mean anything to you, does it? It's another of those old Chinese expressions. One of these days I'll show you some books that were written by my great-great-I-don't-know-how-many-greats granddaddy, Peng-tsu. I got my middle name after him; the old man's kind of famous, in some circles, anyway. He was a Taoist sage two thousand years ago-I'd have to say, a pretty horny Taoist sage-and he wrote some dandy books on what he called 'healthful life.' His idea of health, though, was to prong the ladies as often as he could and make up a list of all the ways there are of doing it. Well, enough of my sordid family history. Let's go ahead and order, we don't want to keep that good-looking little cowgal over there waiting, and then you can tell me all about Dan Dannerman."

And that was the way it went. It didn't take Dannerman long to realize that the astronaut was as interested in pumping him as he was in finding out about the astronaut. They didn't talk shop. They talked the way long-lost friends talk when they catch up on each other's lives after years of separation. Jimmy Lin wasn't reticent about himself. Garrulous would've been more accurate; in the first half hour Dannerman learned that the Lins were a wealthy old Hong Kong family who moved to Beijing after the reunification and got even richer there, as the People's Republic discovered the wonders of entrepreneurialism. Jimmy Lin himself had been educated in America, of course. That, along with the fact that he spent a lot of his spare time in his father's place on Maui, accounted for his accent-free American English. Then, instead of going into the family business, he'd been accepted for astronaut training. "But," he said, sighing, "I'm no credit to my ancestors. The top brass fired me out of the astronaut corps a year ago-they had some damn political charge." He looked ruefully embarrassed. "What they called it was 'left-wing, right-wing zigzag deviationism,' if you can imagine that. But actually about half the corps got dumped at the same time for one pretext or another. My opinion, they just decided there wasn't any money to be made in space anymore, so they cut back. So now I have to scratch for work." But after every little datum he supplied about himself he paused inquiringly to give Dannerman a chance to supply a little quid for his quo. He was fascinated by Dannerman's interest in the little theater in Brooklyn. ("Coney Island! Wow! That's really what you call Off-Off-Off Broadway, isn't it? I didn't think anybody went to Coney Island anymore!") He was searching about Dannerman's years in Europe-Dannerman was glad he'd been thorough about covering his tracks with the Mad King Ludwigs-and sympathetic about the fact that, although Dannerman and Pat Adcock had inherited the same amount from Uncle Cubby, Pat had actually got hers and Dannerman's had shrunk to invisibility through inflation before he collected it.

But of the repair mission to Starlab he would say nothing at all. "The thing is, Dan," he said, all good-natured candor, "I'm in line to fly that bird. Provided I don't screw up with your cousin and, well, she just doesn't want it talked about yet." He glanced at his watch. "Well, this's been great, but we better get back to the office. I hear Pat's got a job for you to do this afternoon."

When Dannerman was summoned to his cousin's office, though, the first thing she said wasn't about the errand. It was "What the hell did you promise the Germans?"

He shrugged, less interested in the question than in the fact that Mick Jarvas was standing there beside her desk, looking truculent again. "They asked for information about the Starlab repair mission."

"They can't have it."

"All right," he said agreeably, "but can I give them a reason?"

"No. Well, hell, I guess you have to say something. Tell them we've got a problem, you don't know exactly what it is, but it'll all be cleared up in a week or so."

It seemed to Dannerman that his cousin had a lot in common with the colonel. He ventured, "Meaning when you get back from your Starlab trip?"

She glared at him. "Who told you I was going to Starlab? Just do your job," she ordered. "No, wait a minute, I didn't mean for you to go. I need something delivered to the Florida embassy. You're going to take it, and it's important. I'm sending Mick along with you, just in case."

Jarvas stirred. "I can handle it all by myself," he muttered.

She ignored him. To Dannerman she said, "Give me your belly bag." When he unsnapped it and handed it over, puzzled, she dumped the entire contents on her desk.

"Hey!" he said. There was personal stuff there, his cash card, his ID, the key cards for the office and the condo.

"Shut up," she said. She unlocked a drawer of her desk and took out a small, soft-sided leather satchel. She stuffed it into his belly bag; it fit, but just barely. She thought for a moment, then put his ID back.

"You can pick up the rest of your stuff when you get back, Dan. What I want you to do, take this bag to the Floridian embassy and give the bag to General Martin Delasquez personally. Nobody else, understand? No matter what they say. It's to be hand-delivered, and he's expecting it. Wait for him while he checks it out, and when he says it's okay you can come back here. Mick, give him his gun."

"Right, Pa-Dr. Adcock," the bodyguard rumbled, pulling the weapon out of his pocket. "Come on, Dannerman."

In the elevator he was fidgety, glaring at Dannerman. Just before they reached the ground floor he asked, "Do you know what this is about?"

"Don't have a clue."

"Neither do I. Listen. Maybe you're not as big a prick as I thought you were, but my orders are that that package stays in your belly bag until you hand it over to the guy it's meant for. No peeking. I don't want to have any trouble with you."

"You won't," Dannerman said, meaning it. He didn't want to cross Jarvas just when the man was being nearly human. In any case, he was hoping that the subway ride would give him a chance to engage Jarvas in conversation.

But that didn't happen. Jarvas was working at the business of being a bodyguard. He stayed close to Dannerman, keeping anyone else from touching him even on the subway, his good hand always near his own weapon, and he wasn't talkative. When the train speeded up to pass what some terrorist had done to the Fourteenth Street station, all lightless and covered in dark green radiation-proof foam, Jarvas crossed himself awkwardly with the arm that was in a cast. Dannerman considered mentioning to him, as a conversation opener, that he really had nothing to worry about, the residue from the terrorists' nuclear satchel bomb was no more dangerous than the general atmospheric levels-as long as you didn't linger there, of course. But as soon as he opened his mouth Jarvas gave him a warning scowl.

He closed his mouth again, and followed Jarvas meekly as they got out at Chambers Street.

The Floridians had their place on Embassy Row, just like the rich foreign countries. Theirs wasn't one of the big-money establishments-it wasn't anything like the Swedish embassy on the corner, twelve stories high and immaculately kept, and of course not a patch on the embassy of the United Koreas across the street. But then Florida was stretching a point to have an "embassy" at all, since it wasn't really an independent nation. At least not in name.

The Floridians took themselves as seriously as one, though. Both Jarvas and Dannerman had to turn over their guns even before they got to the scanners in the vestibule, and then Dannerman had to turn over his ankle gun as well. Jarvas gave him a scowl for that; at least, Dannerman thought with resignation, the scanners hadn't picked up the bomb-bugger. Then they had to sit for half an hour in a sort of barred quarantine chamber before a guard was available to escort them to the office of Major General Martin Delasquez Moreno. Jarvas sat like a stone, a scowl on his face. After a moment Dannerman decided to improve the time; he checked his mail, wiped it all, then accessed a news broadcast. But he had time only for a couple of items before the door guard leaned in and ordered no electronics.

Then they just sat.

When the armed guard came for Dannerman he pointed to Jarvas and said, "You stay."

"Hey! I've got my job-"

"Your job is stay here. Come on, you."

Leaving the fuming Jarvas behind was a surprise for Dannerman, but not altogether unwelcome. It occurred to him that, without Jarvas by his side, it was a chance to sneak a quick look into the leather bag; but it really wasn't, with the armed embassy guard watching every move.

When he got to the office of General Delasquez the man seemed surprisingly young-probably a relative of somebody high in Florida's government, Dannerman supposed. He was wearing the full dress uniform of a general of the Florida State Air Guard, and when he shooed the guard out with an offhand gesture the man was meek to obey. Delasquez closed the door. "Hand it over," he ordered; and then, when he had the leather bag in his hands, "Turn around. This is not your concern."

But by then what was in the satchel was no longer much of, secret to Dannerman, because he'd felt its contents as he took it out of his belly bag. It felt like a few dozen pebbles. It wasn't pebbles, though. When the general had finished his inspection and had locked the bag in a drawer and told him he could turn around again, he forgot to put the jeweler's loupe away, but by then Dannerman had figured out that they were gemstones, almost certainly the diamonds Jerry Dixler had mentioned Pat was buying.

"Wait," the general ordered, and keyed on his phone. Dannerman couldn't see the picture, but he knew his cousin's voice when she answered. "Your application has been received and is satisfactory, Dr. Adcock," the general said. "The documents will be processed immediately." And then, to Dannerman, "You can go."

With their errand completed, Jarvas loosened up a little. He listened almost politely as Dannerman answered his questions about what had happened in the general's office, then actually managed a grin. "Got that done, anyway; your cousin'll be happy about that." Then he stopped short in front of the Swedish embassy, eyeing the curbside vendors. "Hey, Dannerman, how about some candy? I've got kind of a sweet tooth."

"Not me, but go ahead." As he watched Jarvas haggling with the woman at the pushcart he wondered how Jarvas got away with his drug habit; the candy addiction was a tip-off, and so was the fact of his mood swings. In some ways Cousin Pat didn't seem to be as sharp as he'd thought. But it was good that Jarvas was mellower; maybe on the way back he would be more talkative.

The other good thing in his future, he thought, was that that night he could go back to the theater. He must have smiled, be-^-cause the guard outside the Swedish embassy gave him a suspicious look before going back to eyeing the vendors and loafers along the crowded sidewalk. Dannerman kept getting nudged as people bumped against him, but if any of them were pickpockets, as they likely were, he had nothing left in his belly bag worth picking.

He felt droplets of cold water hitting the back of his neck and looked up; the meticulous Swedes had permanent crews at work in hoists overhead, to keep the building washed down. Even so, they were just barely keeping ahead of the pollution. As he moved away he felt someone touch his arm. It was a young boy, no more than fifteen. "Vill herrn vaxla? Vagvisare?" he hissed.

Dannerman shook his head, but the boy persisted. "Vill ni knulla min syster? Renflicka, mycket vacker. "

Dannerman realized the boy had taken him for a Swedish tourist. "Asshole," Dannerman said cheerfully. "I don't want your sister, and besides I'm an American."

The boy changed gears without a blink. "Okay, sport, how about a little American happy time? Sticks, ampoules, mellow patches, I can get you anything you want."

"No sale." And then, as Jarvas came toward them, munching on caramel popcorn, he said, "You can try my buddy there. He might be in the market for some dope."

It was a light impulse, and he regretted it. The boy took one look at the expression on Jarvas's face, and then dodged across the street to try his luck with the Koreans. And all the way back in the subway Jarvas stood cold and angry beside Dannerman, and wouldn't say a word.