TRUE NAMES "The story is a marvelous mixture of hard-science SF and sword-and-sorcery imagery. Vinge positsthat in a direct neurocybernetic interface, the information would be analogized by the brain intosymbols it is comfortable with. The "place" in which the Coven "meets," for example, is or seems to bea castle, guarded by a program which manifests itself as a firebreathing dragon, sitting in a magmamoat, wear- ing an asbestos T-shirt. Fail to satisfy it, and it will "kill" you, dumping you back into thereal world--a fate most Wizards seem to regard as very little better than death.

"Vinge set himself about fifteen challenges in this story, any one of which might have wrecked alesser writer, and pulled them all off with appalling ease. No point in listing them all--but the mostimportant one to my mind is this: he succeeded in making me feel, for over an hour, what it is like to bemore than human. That is one of SF's major challenges, and it is bloody hard to do.

"Do not miss this ingenious and truly original story--it is one of those that, when you're done, youwish the author were present so you could applaud..

Analog Magazine To my sister, Patricia Vinge, with Love.

In the once upon a time days of the First Age of Magic, the prudent sorcerer regarded his own truename as his most valued possession but also the greatest threat to his continued good health, for--thestories go--once an enemy, even a weak unskilled enemy, learned the sorcerer's true name, then rou-tine and widely known spells could destroy or enslave even the most powerful. As times passed, andwe graduated to the Age of Reason and thence to the first and second industrial revolutions, suchnotions were discredited. Now it seems that the Wheel has turned full circle (even if there never reallywas a First Age) and we are back to worrying about true names again: The first hint Mr. Slippery had that his own True Name might be known--and, for that matter,known to the Great Enemy--came with the appearance of two black Lincolns humming up the long dirtdriveway that stretched through the dripping pine forest down to Road 29. Roger Pollack was in hisgarden weeding, had been there nearly the whole morning, enjoying the barely perceptible drizzle andthe overcast, and trying to find the initiative to go inside and do work that actually makes money. Helooked up the mo- ment the intruders turned, wheels squealing, into his driveway. Thirty secondspassed, and the cars came out of the third-generation forest to pull up beside and behind Pollack'sHonda. Four heavy-set men and a hard-looking female piled out, started purposefully across his well-tended cabbage patch, crushing ten- der young plants with a disregard which told Roger that this wasno social call.

Pollack looked wildly around, considered making a break for the woods, but the others had spreadout and he was grabbed and frog-marched back to his house. (Fortunately the door had been leftunlocked. Roger had the feeling that they might have knocked it down rather than ask him for the key.)He was shoved abruptly into a chair. Two of the heaviest and least collegiate-looking of his visitorsstood on either side of him. Pollack's protests--now just being voiced-- brought no response. Thewoman and an older man poked around among his sets. "Hey, I remember this, Al: It's the script for1965. See?" The woman spoke as she flipped through the holo-scenes that decorated the interior wall.

The older man nodded. "I told you. He's written more popular games than any three men and evenmore than some agencies. Roger Pollack is some- thing of a genius..

They're novels, damn you, not games! Old irritation flashed unbidden into Roger's mind. Aloud:"Yeah, but most of my fans aren't as persistent as you all..

"Most of your fans don't know that you are a criminal, Mr. Pollack..

"Criminal? I'm no criminal--but I do know my rights. You FBI types must identify yourselves, giveme a phone call, and--.

The woman smiled for the first time. It was not a nice smile. She was about thirty-five, hatchet-faced, her hair drawn back in the single braid favored by military types. Even so it could have been anicer smile. Pollack felt a chill start up his spine. "Perhaps that would be true, if we were the FBI or ifyou were not the scum you are. But this is a Welfare Depart- ment bust, Pollack, and you aresuspected--putting it kindly--of interference with the instrumentalities of National and individualsurvival..

She sounded like something out of one of those asinine scripts he occasionally had to work on forgovernment contracts. Only now there was nothing to laugh about, and the cold between hisshoulder- blades spread. Outside the drizzle had become a misty rain sweeping across the NorthernCalifornia forests. Normally he found that rain a comfort, but now it just added to the gloom. Still, ifthere was any chance he could wriggle out of this, it would be worth the effort. "Okay, so you havelicense to hassle innocents, but sooner or later you're going to discover that I am innocent and thenyou'll find out what hostile media coverage can really be like." And thank God I backed up my fileslast night. With luck, all they'll find is some out-of-date stock-market schemes.

"You're no innocent, Pollack. An honest citizen is content with an ordinary data set like yoursthere." She pointed across the living room at the forty-by- fifty-centimeter data set. It was the great-grandchild of the old CRTs. With color and twenty-line-per- millimeter resolution, it was the standardof govern- ment offices and the more conservative industries. There was a visible layer of dust onPollack's model. The femcop moved quickly across the living room and poked into the drawers underthe picture window. Her maroon business suit revealed a thin and angu- lar figure. "An honest citizenwould settle for a stan- dard processor and a few thousand megabytes of fast storage." With somesuperior intuition she pulled open the center drawer--right under the marijuana plants to reveal at leastfive hundred cubic centimeters of optical memory, neatly racked and threaded through to the nextdrawer which held correspondingly power- ful CPUs. Even so, it was nothing compared to the gear hehad buried under the house.

She drifted out into the kitchen and was back in a moment. The house was a typical airdroppedbunga- low, small and easy to search. Pollack had spent most of his money on the land and his ...

hobbies. "And finally," she said, a note of triumph in her voice, "an honest citizen does not need oneof these!" She had finally spotted the Other World gate. She waved the electrodes in Pollack's face.

"Look, in spite of what you may want, all this is still legal. In fact, that gadget is scarcely morepower- ful than an ordinary games interface." That should be a good explanation, considering that hewas a novelist.

The older man spoke almost apologetically, "I'm afraid Virginia has a tendency to play cat andmouse, Mr. Pollack. You see, we know that in the Other World you are Mr. Slippery..

"Oh..

There was a long silence. Even "Virginia" kept her mouth shut. This had been, of course, RogerPollack's great fear. They had discovered Mr. Slippery's True Name and it was Roger Andrew PollackTIN/SSAN 0959-34-2861, and no amount of evasion, tricky programming, or robot sources could everagain pro- tect him from them. "How did you find out?.

A third cop, a technician type, spoke up. "It wasn't easy. We wanted to get our hands on someonewho was really good, not a trivial vandal--what your Cov- en would call a lesser warlock." Theyounger man seemed to know the jargon, but you could pick that up just by watching the daily paper.

"For the last three months, DoW has been trying to find the iden- tity of someone of the caliber ofyourself or Robin Hood, or Erythrina, or the Slimey Limey. We were having no luck at all until weturned the problem around and began watching artists and novelists. We figured at least a fraction ofthem must be attracted to vandal activities. And they would have the talent to be good at it. Yourparticipation novels are the best in the world." There was genuine admiration in his voice. One meetsfans in the oddest places, "so you were one of the first people we looked at. Once we suspected you,it was just a matter of time before we had the evidence..

It was what he had always worried about. A suc- cessful warlock cannot afford to be successful inthe real world. He had been greedy; he loved both realms too much.

The older cop continued the technician's almost diffident approach. "In any case, Mr. Pollack, Ithink you realize that if the Federal government wants to concentrate all its resources on theapprehension of a single vandal, we can do it. The vandals' power comes from their numbers ratherthan their power as individuals..

Pollack repressed a smile. That was a common belief--or faith--within government. He had snoopedon enough secret memos to realize that the Feds really believed it, but it was very far from true. He wasnot nearly as clever as someone like Erythrina. He could only devote fifteen or twenty hours a week toSIG activities. Some of the others must be on welfare, so complete was their presence on the OtherPlane. The cops had nailed him simply because he was a relatively easy catch.

"So you have something besides jail planned for me?.

"Mr. Pollack, have you ever heard of the Mailman?.

"You mean on the Other Plane?.

"Certainly. He has had no notoriety in the, uh, real world as yet..

For the moment there was no use lying. They must know that no member of a SIG or coven wouldever give his True Name to another member. There was no way he could betray any of the others--hehoped.

"Yeah, he's the weirdest of the werebots..

"Werebots?.

"Were-robots, like werewolves--get it? They don't really mesh with coven imagery. They wantsome new mythos, and this notion that they are humans who can turn into machines seems to suitthem. It's too dry for me. This Mailman, for instance, never uses real time communication. If you wantanything from him, you usually have to wait a day or two for each response--just like the old-timehardcopy mail service." "That's the fellow. How impressed are you by him?" "Oh, we've been aware ofhim for a couple years, but he's so slow that for a long time we thought he was some clown on asimple data set. Lately, though, he's pulled some really--" Pollack stopped short, re- membering justwho he was gossiping with.

"--some really tuppin stunts, eh, Pollack?" The ferncop "Virginia" was back in the conversation.

She pulled up one of the roller chairs, till her knees were almost touching his, and stabbed a finger athis chest. "You may not know just how tuppin. You vandals have caused Social Security Recordsenormous prob- lems, and Robin Hood cut IRS revenues by three percent last year. You and yourfriends are a greater threat than any foreign enemy. Yet you're nothing compared to this Mailman..

Pollack was rocked back. It must be that he had seen only a small fraction of the Mailman's japes.

"You're actually scared of him," he said mildly.

Virginia's face began to take on the color of her suit. Before she could reply, the older cop spoke.

"Yes, we are scared. We can scarcely cope with the Robin Hoods and the Mr. Slipperys of the world.

Fortunately, most vandals are interested in personal gain or in proving their cleverness. They realizethat if they cause too much trouble, they could no doubt be identified. I suspect that tens ofthousands of cases of Welfare and Tax fraud are undetected, com- mitted by little people with simpleequipment who succeed because they don't steal much--perhaps just their own income tax liability--and don't wish the notoriety which you, uh, warlocks go after. If it weren't for their petty individualism,they would be a greater threat than the nuclear terrorists.

"But the Mailman is different: he appears to be ideologically motivated. He is very knowledgeable,very powerful. Vandalism is not enough for him; he wants control..." The Feds had no idea how long ithad been going on, at least a year. It never would have been discovered but for a few departments inthe Federal Screw Standards Commission which kept their principal copy records on paper.

Discrepancies showed up between those records and the decisions rendered in the name of the FSSC.

Inquiries were made; computer records were found at variance with the hardcopy. More inquiries. Byluck more than anything else, the investigators discovered that deci- sion modules as well as datawere different from the hardcopy backups. For thirty years government had depended on automatedcentral planning, shifting more and more from legal descriptions of decision algorithms to programrepresentations that could work directly with data bases to allocate resources, suggest legislation,outline military strategy.

The take-over had been subtle, and its extent was unknown. That was the horror of it. It was noteven clear just what groups within the Nation (or without) were benefitting from the changedinterpretations of Federal law and resource allocation. Only the deci- sion modules in the olderdepartments could be di- rectly checked, and some thirty percent of them showed tampering. "...andthat percentage scares us as much as anything, Mr. Pollack. It would take a large team of techniciansand lawyers months to suc- cessfully make just the changes that we have de- tected..

"What about the military?" Pollack thought of the Finger of God installations and the thousands ofmis- siles pointed at virtually every country on Earth. If Mr. Slippery had ever desired to take over theworld, that is what he would have gone for. To hell with pussy-footing around with Social Securitychecks.

"No. No penetration there. In fact, it was his at- tempt to infiltrate--" the older cop glancedhesitantly at Virginia, and Pollack realized who was the boss of this operation, "--NSA that revealedthe culprit to be the Mailman. Before that it was anonymous, totally without the ego-flaunting we seein big-time vandals. But the military and NSA have their own systems. Impractical though that is, itpaid off this time." Pollack nodded. The SIG steered clear of the military, and especially of NSA.

"But if he was able to slide through DoW and Department of Justice defenses so easy, you reallydon't know how much a matter of luck it was that he didn't also succeed with his first try on NSA .... Ithink I understand now. You need help. You hope to get some member of the Coven to work on thisfrom the inside..

"It's not a hope, Pollack," said Virginia. "It's a certainty. Forget about going to jail. Oh, we couldput you away forever on the basis of some of Mr. Slippery's pranks. But even if we don't do that, wecan take away your license to operate. You know what that means..

It was not a question, but Pollack knew the answer nevertheless: ninety-eight percent of the jobsin mod- em society involved some use of a data set. Without a license, he was virtually unemployable--and that left Welfare, the prospect of sitting in some urbapt count- ing flowers on the wall. Virginiamust have seen the defeat in his eyes. "Frankly, I am not as confident as Ray that you are all thatsharp. But you are the best we could catch. NSA thinks we have a chance of finding the Mailman'strue identity if we can get an agent into your coven. We want you to continue to attend covenmeetings, but now your chief goal is not mischief but the gathering of information about the Mailman.

You are to recruit any help you can without revealing that you are working for the government-- youmight even make up the story that you suspect the Mailman of being a government plot. (I'm sure yousee he has some of the characteristics of a Fed- eral agent working off a conventional data set.) Aboveall, you are to remain alert to contact from us, and give us your instant cooperation in anything we re-quire of you. Is all this perfectly clear, Mr. Pollack?.

He found it difficult to meet her gaze. He had never really been exposed to extortion before. Therewas something ... dehumanizing about being used so. "Yeah," he finally said.

"Good." She stood up, and so did the others. "If you behave, this is the last time you'll see us inperson..

Pollack stood too. "And afterward, if you're... satis- fied with my performance?" Virginia grinned,and he knew he wasn't going to like her answer. "Afterward, we can come back to considering yourcrimes. If you do a good job, I would have no objection to your retaining a standard data set, maybesome of your interactive graphics. But I'll tell you, if it weren't for the Mailman, nabbing Mr. Slipperywould make my month. There is no way I'd risk your continuing to abuse the System..

Three minutes later, their sinister black Lincolns were halfway down the drive, disappearing intothe pines. Pollack stood in the drizzle watching till long after their sound had faded to nothing. He wasbarely aware of the cold wet across his shoulders and down his back. He looked up suddenly, feelingthe rain in his face, wondering if the Feds were so clever that they had taken the day into account: themilitary's recon satellites could no doubt monitor their cars, but the civilian satellites the SIG hadaccess to could not penetrate these clouds. Even if some other member of the SIG did know Mr.

Slippery's True Name, they would not know that the Feds had paid him a visit.

Pollack looked across the yard at his garden. What a difference an hour can make.

By late afternoon, the overcast was gone. Sunlight glinted off millions of waterdrop jewels in thetrees. Pollack waited till the sun was behind the tree line, till all that was left of its passage was a goldband across the taller trees to the east of his bungalow. Then he sat down before his equipment andprepared to ascend to the Other Plane. What he was undertak- ing was trickier than anything he hadtried before, and he wanted to take as much time as the Feds would tolerate. A week of thought andresearch would have suited him more, but Virginia and her pals were clearly too impatient for that.

He powered up his processors, settled back in his favorite chair, and carefully attached the Portal'sfive sucker electrodes to his scalp. For long minutes noth- ing happened: a certain amount of self-denial--or at least self-hypnosis--was necessary to make the ascent. Some experts recommended drugsor sensory isola- tion to heighten the user's sensitivity to the faint, ambiguous signals that could beread from the Portal. Pollack, who was certainly more experienced than any of the pop experts, hadfound that he could make it simply by staring out into the trees and listening to the wind-surf thatswept through their upper branches.

And just as a daydreamer forgets his actual sur- roundings and sees other realities, so Pollackdrifted, detached, his subconscious interpreting the status of the West Coast communication and dataservices as a vague thicket for his conscious mind to inspect, inter- rogate for the safest path to anintermediate haven. Like most exurb data-commuters, Pollack rented the standard optical links: Bell,Boeing, Nippon Electric. Those, together with the local West Coast data companies, gave him morethan enough paths to proceed with little chance of detection to any accept- ing processor on Earth. Inminutes, he had traced through three changes of carrier and found a place to do his intermediatecomputing. The comsats rented processor time almost as cheaply as ground stations, and anautomatic payment transaction (through sev- eral dummy accounts set up over the last several years)gave him sole control of a large data space within milliseconds of his request. The whole process wasalmost at a subconscious level--the proper func- tioning of numerous routines he and others had de-vised over the last four years. Mr. Slippery (the other name was avoided now, even in his thoughts)had achieved the fringes of the Other Plane. He took a quick peek through the eyes of a low-resolutionweather satellite, saw the North American continent spread out below, the terminator sweepingthrough the West, most of the plains clouded over. One never knew when some apparently irrelevantinformation might help--and though it could all be done automati- cally through subconscious access,Mr. Slippery had always been a romantic about spaceflight.

He rested for a few moments, checking that his indirect communication links were working and thatthe encryption routines appeared healthy, untampered with. (Like most folks, honest citizens orwarlocks, he had no trust for the government standard encryp- tion routines, but preferred theschemes that had leaked out of academia--over NSA's petulant objec- tions-during the last fifteenyears.) Protected now against traceback, Mr. Slippery set out for the Coven itself. He quickly pickedup the trail, but this was never an easy trip, for the SIG members had no interest in being bothered bythe unskilled.

In particular, the traveler must be able to take advantage of subtle sensory indications, and see inthem the environment originally imagined by the SIG. The correct path had the aspect of a narrow rowof stones cutting through a gray-greenish swamp. The air was cold but very moist. Weird, toweringplants dripped audibly onto the faintly iridescent water and the broad lilies. The subconscious knewwhat the stones represented, handled the chaining of routines from one information net to another,but it was the conscious mind of the skilled traveler that must make the decisions that could lead tothe gates of the Coven, or to the symbolic "death" of a dump back to the real world. The basic gamewas a distant relative of the ancient Adventure that had been played on computer systems for morethan forty years, and a nearer rela- tive of the participation novels that are still widely sold. There weretwo great differences, though. This game was more serious, and was played at a level of complexityimpossible without the use of the EEG input/output that the warlocks and the popular data basescalled Portals.

There was much misinformation and misunder- standing about the Portals. Oh, responsible databases like the LA Times and the CBS News made it clear that there was nothing supernatural aboutthem or about the Other Plane, that the magical jargon was at best a romantic convenience and atworst obscuran- tism. But even so, their articles often missed the point and were both tooconservative and too extrava- gant. You might think that to convey the full sense imagery of theswamp, some immense bandwidth would be necessary. In fact, that was not so (and if it were, the Fedswould have quickly been able to spot warlock and werebot operations). A typical Portal link wasaround fifty thousand baud, far narrower than even a flat video channel. Mr. Slippery could feel thedamp seeping through his leather boots, could feel the sweat starting on his skin even in the cold air,but this was the response of Mr. Slippery's imagina- tion and subconscious to the cues that wereactually being presented through the Portal's electrodes. The interpretation could not be arbitrary orhe would be dumped back to reality and would never find the Coven; to the traveler on the OtherPlane, the detail was there as long as the cues were there. And there is nothing new about thissituation. Even a poor writer if he has a sympathetic reader and an engag- ing plot--can evokecomplete internal imagery with a few dozen words of description. The difference now is that theimagery has interactive significance, just as sensations in the real world do. Ultimately, the magicjargon was perhaps the closest fit in the vocab- ulary of millenium Man.

The stones were spaced more widely now, and it took all Mr. Slippery's skill to avoid falling intothe noisome waters that surrounded him. Fortunately, after another hundred meters or so, the trail roseout of the water, and he was walking on shallow mud. The trees and brush grew in close around him,and large spider webs glistened across the trail and be- tween some of the trees along the side.

Like a yo-yo from some branch high above him, a red-banded spider the size of a man's fistdescended into the space right before the traveler's face. "Beware, beware," the tiny voice issued fromdripping mandibles. "Beware, beware," the words were repeated, and the creature swung back andforth, nearer and farther from Mr. Slippery's face. He looked carefully at the spider's banded abdomen.

There were many species of deathspider here, and each required a different response if a traveler wasto survive. Finally he raised the back of his hand and held it level so that the spider could crawl ontoit. The creature raced up the damp fabric of his jacket to the open neck. There it whispered somethingvery quietly.

Mr. Slippery listened, then grabbed the animal be- fore it could repeat the message and threw it tothe left, at the same time racing off into the tangle of webs and branches on the other side of the trail.

Something heavy and wet slapped into the space where he had been, but he was already gone--racingat top speed up the incline that suddenly appeared before him.

He stopped when he reached the crest of the hill. Beyond it, he could see the solemn, massivefortress that was the Coven's haven. It was not more than five hundred meters away, illuminated asthe swamp had been by a vague and indistinct light that came only partly from the sky. The trailleading down to it was much more open than the swamp had been, but the traveler proceeded asslowly as before: the sprites the warlocks set to keep eternal guard here had the nasty--thoughpreprogrammed habit of changing the rules in new and deadly ways.

The trail descended, then began a rocky, winding climb toward the stone and iron gates of thecastle. The ground was drier here, the vegetation sparse. Leathery snapping of wings sounded abovehim, but Mr. Slippery knew better than to look up. Thirty meters from the moat, the heat became morethan uncomfortable. He could hear the lava popping and hissing, could see occasional dollops of firesplatter up from the liquid to scorch what vegetation still lived. A pair of glowing eyes set in a coal-black head rose briefly from the moat. A second later, the rest of the creature came surging into view,cascading sparks and lava down upon the traveler. Mr. Slippery raised his hand just so, and the lethalspray separated over his head to land harmlessly on either side of him. He watched with apparent calmas the creature descended ancient stone steps to confront him.

Alan--that was the elemental's favorite name-- peered nearsightedly, his head weaving faintly fromside to side as he tried to recognize the traveler. "Ah, I do believe we are honored with the presence ofMr. Slippery, is it not so?" he finally said. He smiled, an open grin revealing the glowing interior of hismouth. His breath did not show flame but did have the penetrating heat of an open kiln. He rubbed hisclawed hands against his asbestos T-shirt as though anxious to be proved wrong. Away from hismagma moat, the dead black of his flesh lightened, trying to contain his body heat. Now he lookedalmost reptilian.

"Indeed it is. And come to bring my favorite little gifts." Mr. Slippery threw a leaden slug into theair and watched the elemental grab it with his mouth, his eyes slitted with pleasure--melt-in-your-mouth pleasure. They traded conversation, spells, and coun- terspells for several minutes. Alan'sprincipal job was to determine that the visitor was a known member of the Coven, and he ordinarily didthis with little tests of skill (the magma bath he had tried to give Mr. Slippery) and by asking the visitorquestions about previous activities within the castle. Alan was a per- sonality simulator, of course.

Mr. Slippery was sure that there had never been a living operator behind that toothless, glowing smile.

But he was certainly one of the best, probably the product of many hun- dreds of blocks of psylispprogramming, and certainly superior to the little "companionship" programs you can buy nowadays,which generally become repeti- tive after a few hours of conversation, which don't grow, and whichare unable to counter weird re- sponses. Alan had been with the Coven and the cas- tle since beforeMr. Slippery had become a member, and no one would admit to his creation (though Wi- ley J. wassuspected). He hadn't even had a name until this year, when Erythrina had given him that asbestosAlan Turing T-shirt.

Mr. Slippery played the game with good humor, but care. To "die" at the hands of Alan would be apainful experience that would probably wipe a lot of unbacked memory he could ill afford to lose. Suchdeath had claimed many petitioners at this gate, folk who would not soon be seen on this plane again.

Satisfied, Alan waved a clawed fist at the watchers in the tower, and the gate--ceramic bound inwol- fram clasps--was rapidly lowered for the visitor. Mr. Slippery walked quickly across, trying toignore the spitting and bubbling that he heard below him. Alan-- now all respectful--waited till he wasin the castle courtyard before doing an immense belly-flop back into his magma swimming hole.

Most of the others, with the notable exception of Erythrina, had already arrived. Robin Hood,dressed in green and looking like Errol Flynn, sat across the hall in very close conversation with aremarkably good-looking female (but then they could all be re- markably good-looking here) whoseemed unsure whether to project blonde or brunette. By the fireplace, Wiley J. Bastard, the SlimeyLimey, and DON.MAC were in animated discussion over a pile of maps. And in the comer, shadedfrom the fireplace and appar- ently unused, sat a classic remote printing terminal. Mr. Slippery tried toignore that teleprinter as he crossed the hall.

"Ah, it's Slip." DON.MAC looked up from the maps and gestured him closer. "Take a look here atwhat the Limey has been up to..

"Hmm?" Mr. Slippery nodded at the others, then leaned over to study the top map. The margins ofthe paper were aging vellum, but the "map" itself hung in three dimensions, half sunk into the paper. Itwas a typical banking defense and cash-flow plot--that is, typical for the SIG. Most banks had no suchclever ways of visualizing the automated protection of their assets. (For that matter, Mr. Slipperysuspected that most banks still looked wistfully back to the days of credit cards and COBOL.) Thiswas the sort of thing Robin Hood had developed, and it was surprising to see the Limey involved in it.

He looked up question- ingly. "What's the jape?.

"It's a reg'lar double-slam, Slip. Look at this careful, an' you'll see it's no ord'n'ry protection map.

Seems like what you blokes call the Mafia has taken over this banking net in the Maritime states. Theymust be usin' Portals to do it so slick. Took me a devil of a time to figure out it was them as done it. Haha! but now that I have... look here, you'll see how they've been launderin' funds, embezzlin' fromstraight accounts.

"They're ever so clever, but not so clever as to know about Slimey." He poked a finger into themap and a trace gleamed red through the maze. "If they're lucky, they'll discover this tap next autumn,when they find themselves maybe three billion dollars short, and not a single sign of where it alldisappeared to..

The others nodded. There were many covens and SIGs throughout this plane. Theirs, The Coven,was widely known, had pulled off some of the most publi- cized pranks of the century. Many of theothers were scarcely more than social clubs. But some were old- style criminal organizations whichused this plane for their own purely pragmatic and opportunistic reasons. Usually such groupsweren't too difficult for the war- locks to victimize, but it was the Slimey Limey who seemed tospecialize in doing so.

"But, geez, Slimey, these guys play rough, even rougher than the Great Enemy." That is, the Feds.

"If they ever figure out who you really are, you'll die the True Death for sure..

"I may be slimy, but I ain't crazy. There's no way I could absorb three billion dollars--or even threemillion--without being discovered. But I played it like Robin over there: the money got spread aroundthree million ordinary accounts here and in Europe, one of which just happens to be mine..

Mr. Slippery's ears perked up. "Three million accounts, you say? Each with a sudden little surplus.

I'll bet I could come close to finding your True Name from that much, Slimey..

The Limey made a faffling gesture. "It's actually a wee bit more complicated. Face it, chums, noneof you has ever come close to sightin' me, an' you know more than any Mafia..

That was true. They all spent a good deal of their time in this plane trying to determine the others'True Names. It was not an empty game, for the knowledge of another's True Name effectively madehim your slave--as Mr. Slippery had already discovered in an unpleasantly firsthand way. So thewarlocks constantly probed one another, devised immense pro- grams to sieve government-personnelrecords for the idiosyncracies that they detected in each other. At first glance, the Limey should havebeen one of the easiest to discover: he had plenty of mannerisms. His Brit accent was dated and brokedown every so often into North American. Of all the warlocks, he was the only one neither handsomenor grotesque. His face was, in fact, so ordinary and real that Mr. Slippery had suspected that it mightbe his true appearance and had spent several months devising a scheme that searched secret and USand common Europe photo files for just that appearance. It had been for nothing, and they had alleventually reached the conclusion that the Limey must be doubly or triply deceptive.

Wiley J. Bastard grinned, not too impressed. "It's nice enough, and I agree that the risks areprobably small, Slimey. But what do you really get? An ego boost and a little money. But we," hegestured inclusively, "are worth more than that. With a little cooperation, we could be the mostpowerful people in the real world. Right, DON?.

DON.MAC nodded, smirking. His face was really the only part of him that looked human or hadmuch flexibility of expression--and even it was steely gray. The rest of DON's body was modeled afterthe stan- dard Plessey-Mercedes all-weather robot.

Mr. Slippery recognized the reference. "So you're working with the Mailman now, too, Wiley?" Heglanced briefly at the teleprinter. "Yup..

"And you still won't give us any clue what it's all about?.

Wiley shook his head. "Not unless you're serious about throwing in with us. But you all know this:DON was the first to work with the Mailman, and he's richer than Croesus now..

DON.MAC nodded again, that silly smile still on his face.

"Hmmm." It was easy to get rich. In principle, the Limey could have made three billion dollars offthe Mob in his latest caper. The problem was to become that rich and avoid detection and retribution.

Even Robin Hood hadn't mastered that trick--but appar- ently DON and Wiley thought the Mailmanhad done that and more. After his chat with Virginia, he was willing to believe it. Mr. Slippery turnedto look more closely at the teleprinter. It was humming faintly, and as usual it had a good supply ofpaper. The paper was torn neatly off at the top, so that the only mes- sage visible was the Mailman'sasterisk prompt. It was the only way they ever communicated with this most mysterious of theirmembers: type a message on the device, and in an hour or a week the machine would rattle and beat,and a response of up to several thousand words would appear. In the beginning, it had not been verypopular--the idea was cute, but the delays made conversation just too damn dull. He could rememberseeing meters of Mailman output lying sloppily on the stone floor, mostly unread. But now, every oneof the Mailman's golden words was eagerly sopped up by his new apprentices, who very carefullyremoved every piece of output, leaving no clues for the rest of them to work with.

"Ery!" He looked toward the broad stone stairs that led down from the courtyard. It was Erythrina,the Red Witch. She swept down the stairs, her costume shimmering, now revealing, now obscuring.

She had a spectacular figure and an excellent sense of design, but of course that was not what wasremarkable about her. Erythrina was the sort of person who knew much more than she ever said, eventhough she always seemed easy to talk to. Some of her adventures--though unadvertised--were in aclass with Robin Hood's. Mr. Slippery had known her well for a year; she was certainly the mostinteresting personality on this plane. She made him wish that all the secrets were unnecessary, thatTrue Names could be traded as openly as phone numbers. What was she really.

Erythrina nodded to Robin Hood, then proceeded down the hall to DON.MAC, who had originallyshouted greetings and now continued, "We've just been trying to convince Slimey and Slip that theyare wasting their time on pranks when they could have real power and real wealth..

She glanced sharply at Wiley, who seemed strangely irritated that she had been drawn into theconversation. "'We' meaning you and Wiley and the Mailman?.

Wiley nodded. "I just started working with them last week, Ery," as if to say, and you can't stopme.

"You may have something, DON. We all started out as amateurs, doing our best to make theSystem just a little bit uncomfortable for its bureaucratic masters. But we are experts now. Weprobably under- stand the System better than anyone on Earth. That should equate to power." It wasthe same thing the other two had been saying, but she could make it much more persuasive. Before hisencounter with the Feds, he might have bought it (even though he always knew that the day he gotserious about Coven activities and went after real gain would also be the day it ceased to be anenjoyable game and became an all-consuming job that would suck time away from the projects thatmade life entertaining).

Erythrina looked from Mr. Slippery to the Limey and then back. The Limey was an easygoing sort,but just now he was a bit miffed at the way his own pet project had been dismissed. "Not for me,thanky," he said shortly and began to gather up his maps.

She turned her green, faintly oriental eyes upon Mr. Slippery. "How about you, Slip? Have yousigned up with the Mailman?.

He hesitated. Maybe I should. It seemed clear that the Mailman's confederates were being let in onat least part of his schemes. In a few hours, he might be able to learn enough to get Virginia off hisback. And perhaps destroy his friends to boot; it was a hell of a bargain. God in Heaven, why did theyhave to get mixed up in this? Don't they realize what the Govern- ment will do to them, if they reallytry to take over, if they ever try to play at being more than vandals? "Not... not yet," he said finally.

"I'm awfully tempted, though..

She grinned, regular white teeth flashing against her dark, faintly green face. "I, too. What do yousay we talk it over, just the two of us?" She reached out a slim, dark hand to grasp his elbow. "Excuseus, gentlemen; hopefully, when we get back, you'll have a couple of new allies." And Mr. Slippery felthimself gently propelled toward the dark and musty stairs that led to Erythrina's private haunts.

Her torch burned and glowed, but there was no smoke. The flickering yellow lit their path for scantmeters ahead. The stairs were steep and gently curving. He had the feeling that they must do acomplete circle every few hundred steps: this was an immense spiral cut deep into the heart of theliving rock. And it was alive. As the smell of mildew and rot increased, as the dripping from the ceilinggrew subtly louder and the puddles in the worn steps deeper, the walls high above their heads tookon shapes, and those shapes changed and flowed to follow them. Erythrina protected her part of thecastle as thoroughly as the castle itself was guarded against the outside world. Mr. Slippery had nodoubt that if she wished, she could trap him permanently here, along with the lizards and the rocksprites. (Of course he could always "escape" simply by falling back into the real world, but until sherelented or he saw through her spells, he would not be able to access any other portion of the castle.)Working on some of their projects, he had visited her underground halls, but never anything thisdeep.

He watched her shapely form preceding him down, down, down. Of all the Coven (with thepossible exception of Robin Hood, and of course the Mailman), she was the most powerful. Hesuspected that she was one of the original founders. If only there were some way of convincing her(without revealing the source of his knowledge) that the Mailman was a threat. If only there was someway of getting her cooperation in nailing down the Mailman's True Name.

Erythrina stopped short and he bumped pleasantly into her. Over her shoulder, a high door endedthe passage. She moved her hand in a pattern hidden from Mr. Slippery and muttered some unlockingspell. The door split horizontally, its halves pulling apart with oiled and massive precision. Beyond, hehad the impression of spots and lines of red breaking a fur- ther darkness.

"Mind your step," she said and hopped over a murky puddle that stood before the high sill of thedoorway.

As the door slid shut behind them, Erythrina changed the torch to a single searing spot of whitelight, like some old-time incandescent bulb. The room was bright-lit now. Comfortable black leatherchairs sat on black tile. Red engraving, faintly glowing, was worked into the tile and the obsidian ofthe walls. In contrast to the stairway, the air was fresh and clean-- though still.

She waved him to a chair that faced away from the light, then sat on the edge of a broad desk. Thepoint light glinted off her eyes, making them unreadable. Erythrina's face was slim and fine-boned,almost Asian except for the pointed ears. But the skin was dark, and her long hair had the reddishtones unique to some North American blacks. She was barely smiling now, and Mr. Slippery wishedagain he had some way of getting her help.

"Slip, I'm scared," she said finally, the smile gone.

You're scared! For a moment, he couldn't quite believe his ears. "The Mailman?" he asked, hoping.

She nodded. "This is the first time in my life I've felt outgunned. I need help. Robin Hood may bethe most competent, but he's basically a narcissist; I don't think I could interest him in anythingbeyond his immediate gratifications. That leaves you and the Limey. And I think there's somethingspecial about you. We've done a couple things together," she couldn't help herself, and grinnedremembering. "They weren't real impressive, but somehow I have a feeling about you: I think youunderstand what things up here are silly games and what things are really important. If you thinksomething is really important, you can be trusted to stick with it even if the going gets a little...

bloody..

Coming from someone like Ery, the words had special meaning. It was strange, to feel both flatteredand frightened. Mr. Slippery stuttered for a moment, inarticulate. "What about Wiley J? Seems to meyou have special... influence over him..

"You knew... ?.

"Suspected..

"Yes, he's my thrall. Has been for almost six months. Poor Wiley tums out to be a life-insurancesalesman from Peoria. Like a lot of warlocks, he's rather a Thurberesque fellow in real life: timid, alwaysdream- ing of heroic adventures and grandiose thefts. Only nowadays people like that can realize theirdreams .... Anyway, he doesn't have the background, or the time, or the skill that I do, and I found hisTrue Name. I enjoy the chase more than the extortion, so I haven't leaned on him too hard; now I wishI had. Since he's taken up with the Mailman, he's been giving me the finger. Somehow Wiley thinksthat what they have planned will keep him safe even if I give his True Name to the cops!.

"So the Mailman actually has some scheme for winning political power in the real world?.

She smiled. "That's what Wiley thinks. You see, poor Wiley doesn't know that there are more usesfor True Names than simple blackmail. I know every- thing he sends over the data links, everything hehas been told by the Mailman..

"So what are they up to?" It was hard to conceal his eagerness. Perhaps this will be enough tosatisfy Virginia and her goons.

Erythrina seemed frozen for a moment, and he realized that she too must be using the low-altitudesatellite net for preliminary processing: her task had just been handed off from one comsat to a nearerbird. Ordinarily it was easy to disguise the hesitation. She must be truly upset.

And when she finally replied, it wasn't really with an answer. "You know what convinced Wileythat the Mailman could deliver on his promises? It was DON.MAC--and the revolution in Venezuela.

Appar- ently DON and the Mailman had been working on that for several months before Wiley joinedthem. It was to be the Mailman's first demonstration that con- trolling data and information servicescould be used to take permanent political control of a state. And Venezuela, they claimed, was perfect:it has enormous data-processing facilities--all just a bit obsolete, since they were bought when thecountry was at the peak of its boom time..

"But that was clearly an internal coup. The present leaders are local--.

"Nevertheless, DON is supposedly down there now, the real Jefe, for the first time in his life able tolive in the physical world the way we do in this plane. If you have your own country, you are nolonger small fry that must guard his True Name. You don't have to settle for crumbs..

"You said 'supposedly'..

"Slip, have you noticed anything strange about DON lately?.

Mr. Slippery thought back. DON.MAC had always been the most extreme of the werebots--afterthe Mailman. He was not an especially talented fellow, but he did go to great lengths to sustain theimage that he was both machine and human. His persona was always present in this plane, though atleast part of the time it was a simulator like Alan out in the magma moat. The simulation was fairlygood, but no one had yet produced a program that could really pass the Turing test: that is, fool a realhuman for any extended time. Mr. Slippery remembered the silly smile that seemed pasted on DON'sface and the faintly repetitive tone of his lobbying for the Mailman. "You think the real person behindDON is gone, that we have a zombie up there?.

"Slip, I think the real DON is dead, and I mean the True Death..

"Maybe he just found the real world more delight- ful than this, now that he owns such a big hunkof it?.

"I don't think he owns anything. It's just barely possible that the Mailman had something to dowith that coup; there are a number of coincidences be- tween what they told Wiley beforehand andwhat actually happened. But I've spent a lot of time float- ing through the Venezuelan data bases, andI think I'd know if an outsider were on the scene, directing the new order.

"I think the Mailman is taking us on one at a time, starting with the weakest, drawing us in farenough to learn our True Names--and then destroying us. So far he has only done it to one of us. I'vebeen watch- ing DON.MAC both directly and automatically since the coup, and there has never beena real person behind that facade, not once in two thousand hours. Wiley is next. The poor slob hasn'teven been told yet what country his kingdom is to be--evidence that the Mailman doesn't really havethe power he claims-- but even so, he's ready to do practically anything for the Mailman, and againstus.

"Slip, we have got to identify this thing, this Mailman, before he can get us..

She was even more upset than Virginia and the Feds. And she was right. For the first time, he feltmore afraid of the Mailman than the government agents. He held up his hands. "I'm convinced. Butwhat should we do? You've got the best angle in Wiley. The Mailman doesn't know you've got a tapthrough him, does he?.

She shook her head. "Wiley is too chicken to tell him, and doesn't realize that I can do this with hisTrue Name. But I'm already doing everything I can with that. I want to pool information, guesses, withyou. Between us maybe we can see something new." "Well for starters, it's obvious that theMailman's queer communication style--those long time delays--is a ploy. I know that fellow is listeningall the time to what's going on in the Coven meeting hall. And he commands a number of sprites in realtime." Mr. Slippery remembered the day the Mailman-- or at least his teleprinter--had arrived. Theimage of an American Van Lines truck had pulled up at the edge of the moat, nearly intimidating Alan.

The driver and loader were simulators, though good ones. They had answered all of Alan's questionscorrectly, then hauled the shipping crate down to the meeting hall. They hadn't left till the warlockssigned for the shipment and promised to "wire a wall outlet" for the device. This enemy definitelyknew how to arouse the curios- ity of his victims. Whoever controlled that printer seemed perfectlycapable of normal behavior. Perhaps it's someone we already know, like in the mysteries where themurderer masquerades as one of the victims. Robin Hood.

"I know. In fact, he can do many things faster than I. He must control some powerful processors.

But you're partly wrong: the living part of him that's behind it all really does operate with at least aone-hour turnaround time. All the quick stuff is programmed..

Mr. Slippery started to protest, then realized that she could be right. "My God, what could thatmean? Why would he deliberately saddle himself with that disadvantage?.

Erythrina smiled with some satisfaction. "I'm con- vinced that if we knew that, we'd have this guysighted. I agree it's too great a disadvantage to be a simple red herring. I think he must have sometime- delay problem to begin with, and--.

"--and he has exaggerated it?" But even if the Mailman were an Australian, the low satellite netmade delays so short that he would probably be indis- tinguishable from a European or a Japanese.

There was no place on Earth where... but there are places off Earth! The mass-transmit satellites werein syn- chronous orbit 120 milliseconds out. There were about two hundred people there. And furtherout, at L5, there were at least another four hundred. Some were near-permanent residents. A strangeidea, but still a possibility.

"I don't think he has exaggerated. Slip, I think the Mailman--not his processors and simulators, youunderstand--is at least a half-hour out from Earth, probably in the asteroid belt..

She smiled suddenly, and Mr. Slippery realized that his jaw must be resting on his chest. Except forthe Joint Mars Recon, no human had been anywhere near that far out. No human. Mr. Slippery felt hisordinary, everyday world disintegrating into sheer sci- ence fiction. This was ridiculous.

"I know you don't believe; it took me a while to. He's not so obvious that he doesn't add in sometime delay to disguise the cyclic variation in our relative positions. But it is a consistent explanationfor the delay. These last few weeks I've been sniffing around the classified reports on our asteroidprobes; there are definitely some mysterious things out there..

"Okay. It's consistent. But you're talking about an interstellar invasion. Even if NASA had thefunding, it would take them decades to put the smallest inter- stellar probe together--and decadesmore for the flight. Trying to invade anyone with those logistics would be impossible. And if thesealiens have a decent stardrive, why do they bother with deception? They could just move in andbrush us aside..

"Ah, that's the point, Slip. The invasion I'm think- ing of doesn't need any "stardrive," and it worksfine against any race at exactly our point of development. Right: most likely interstellar war is afantastically expensive business, with decade lead times. What better policy for an imperialistic, highlytechnological race than to lie doggo listening for evidence of young- er civilizations? When theydetect such, they send only one ship. When it arrives in the victims' solar system, the Computer Ageis in full bloom there. We in the Coven know how fragile the present system is; it is only fear ofexposure that prevents some war- locks from trying to take over. Just think how appeal- ing ournaivete must be to an older civilization that has thousands of years of experience at managing datasystems. Their small crew of agents moves in as close as local military surveillance permits and grad-ually insinuates itself into the victims' system. They eliminate what sharp individuals they detect inthat system--people like us--and then they go after the bureaucracies and the military. In ten or twentyyears, another fiefdom is ready for the arrival of the master race..

She lapsed into silence, and for a long moment they stared at each other. It did all hang togetherwith a weird sort of logic. "What can we do, then?.

"That's the question." She shook her head sadly, came across the room to sit beside him. Now thatshe had said her piece, the fire had gone out of her. For the first time since he had known her,Erythrina looked depressed. "We could just forsake this plane and stay in the real world. The Mailmanmight still be able to track us down, but we'd be of no more interest to him than anyone else. If wewere lucky, we might have years before he takes over." She straightened. "I'll tell you this: if we wantto live as warlocks, we have to stop him soon--within days at most. After he gets Wiley, he may dropthe con tac- tics for something more direct.

"If I'm right about the Mailman, then our best bet would be to discover his communication link.

That would be his Achilles' heel; there's no way you can hide in the crowd when you're beaming fromthat far away. We've got to take some real chances now, do things we'd never risk before. I figure thatif we work together, maybe we can lessen the risk that either of us is identified..

He nodded. Ordinarily a prudent warlock used only limited bandwidth and so was confined to akind of linear, personal perception. If they grabbed a few hundred megahertz of comm space, and abigger share of rented processors, they could manipulate and search files in a way that would boggleVirginia the femcop. Of course, they would be much more easily identifiable. With two of them,though, they might be able to keep it up safely for a brief time, confusing the government and theMailman with a multiplicity of clues. "Frankly, I don't buy the alien part. But the rest of what you saymakes sense, and that's what counts. Like you say, we're going to have to take some chances..

"Right!" She smiled and reached behind his neck to draw his face to hers. She was a very goodkisser. (Not everyone was. It was one thing just to look gorgeous, and another to project and respondto the many sensory cues in something as interactive as kissing.) He was just warming to this exerciseof their mutual abilities when she broke off. "And the best time to start is right now. The others thinkwe're sealed away down here. If strange things happen during the next few hours, it's less likely theMail- man will suspect us." She reached up to catch the light point in her hand. For an instant, bladesof harsh white slipped out from between her fingers; then all was dark. He felt faint air motion as herhands moved through another spell. There were words, distorted and unidentifiable. Then the lightwas back, but as a torch again, and a door--a second door--had opened in the far wall.

He followed her up the passage that stretched straight and gently rising as far as the torchlightshone. They were walking a path that could not be--or at least that no one in the Coven could havebelieved. The castle was basically a logical structure "fleshed" out with the sensory cues that allowedthe warlocks to move about it as one would a physical structure. Its moats and walls were part of thatlogical structure, and though they had no physical reality outside of the varying potentials inwhatever processors were running the program, they were proof against the movement of the equally"unreal" perceptions of the inhabitants of the plane. Erythrina and Mr. Slippery could have escapedthe deep room simply by falling back into the real world, but in doing so, they would have left a chainof unclosed processor links. Their departure would have been detected by every Coven member, evenby Alan, even by the sprites. An or- derly departure scheme, such as represented by this tunnel,could only mean that Erythrina was far too clever to need his help, or that she had been one of theoriginal builders of the castle some four years earlier (lost in the Mists of Time, as the Limey put it).

They were wild dogs now, large enough so as not likely to be bothered, small enough to bemistaken for the amateur users that are seen more and more in the Other Plane as the price of Portalsdeclines and the skill of the public increases. Mr. Slippery followed Erythrina down narrow paths,deeper and deeper into the swamp that represented commercial and govern- ment data space.

Occasionally he was aware of sprites or simulators watching them with hostile eyes from nests off tothe sides of the trail. These were idle creations in many cases--program units designed to infuriate oramuse later visitors to the plane. But many of them guarded information caches, or peep- holes intoother folks' affairs, or meeting places of other SIGs. The Coven might be the most sophisti- catedgroup of users on this plane, but they were far from being alone.

The brush got taller, bending over the trail to drip on their backs. But the water was clear here,spread in quiet ponds on either side of their path. Light came from the water itself, a pearlyluminescence that shone upward on the trunks of the waterbound trees and sparkled faintly in thedroplets of water in their moss and leaves. That light was the representa- tion of the really huge databases run by the govern- ment and the largest companies. It did not correspond to a specificgeographical location, but rather to the main East/West net that stretches through selectedinstallations from Honolulu to Oxford, taking advan- tage of the time zones to spread the user load.

"Just a little bit farther," Erythrina said over her shoulder, speaking in the beast language(encipher- ment) that they had chosen with their forms.

Minutes later, they shrank into the brush, out of the way of two armored hackers that proceededimpla- cably up the trail. The pair drove in single file, the impossibly large eight-cylinder engines ontheir bikes belching fire and smoke and noise. The one bringing up the rear carried an old-stylerecoilless rifle decor- ated with swastikas and chrome. Dim fires glowed through their blackened faceplates. The two dogs eyed the bikers timidly, as befitted their present disguise, but Mr. Slippery hadthe feeling he was looking at a couple of amateurs who were imaging beyond their station in life: thebikes' tires didn't always touch the ground, and the tracks they left didn't quite match the texture of themuck. Anyone could put on a heroic image in this plane, or appear as some dreadful monster. Theproblem was that there were always skilled users who were willing to cut such pretenders down tosize--perhaps even to destroy their access. It befitted the less experienced to appear small andinconspicuous, and to stay out of others' way.

(Mr. Slippery had often speculated just how the simple notion of using high-resolution EEGs asinput/output devices had caused the development of the "magical world" representation of dataspace. The Limey and Erythrina argued that sprites, reincarnation, spells, and castles were the naturaltools here, more natural than the atomistic twentieth-century notions of data structures, programs,files, and communica- tions protocols. It was, they argued, just more conve- nient for the mind to usethe global ideas of magic as the tokens to manipulate this new environment. They had a point; in fact,it was likely that the govern- ments of the world hadn't caught up to the skills of the better warlockssimply because they refused to indulge in the foolish imaginings of fantasy. Mr. Slip- pery lookeddown at the reflection in the pool beside him and saw the huge canine face and lolling tongue lookingup at him; he winked at the image. He knew that despite all his friends' high intellectual arguments,there was another reason for the present state of affairs, a reason that went back to the Moon Landerand Adventure games at the "dawn of time": it was simply a hell of a lot of fun to live in a world asmalleable as the human imagination.) Once the riders were out of sight, Erythrina moved back across the path to the edge of the pondand peered long and hard down between the lilies, into the limpid depths. "Okay, let's do some cross-correla- tion. You take the JPL data base, and I'll take the Harvard Multispectral Patrol. Start with datacoming off space probes out to ten AUs. I have a suspicion the easiest way for the Mailman todisguise his trans- missions is to play trojan horse with data from a NASA spacecraft..

Mr. Slippery nodded. One way or another, they should resolve her alien invasion theory first.

"It should take me about half an hour to get in place. After that, we can set up for the correlation.

Hmmm ... if something goes wrong, let's agree to meet at Mass Transmit 3," and she gave a passwordscheme. Clearly that would be an emergency situation. If they weren't back in the castle within three orfour hours, the others would certainly guess the existence of her secret exit.

Erythrina tensed, then dived into the water. There was a small splash, and the lilies bobbed gentlyin the expanding ring waves. Mr. Slippery looked deep, but as expected, there was no further sign ofher. He padded around the side of the pool, trying to identify the special glow of the JPL data base.

There was thrashing near one of the larger lilies, one that he recognized as obscuring the NSAconnec- tions with the East/West net. A large bullfrog scram- bled out of the water onto the pad andturned to look at him. "Aha! Gotcha, you sonofabitch!.

It was Virginia; the voice was the same, even if the body was different. "Shhhhhh!" said Mr.

Slippery, and looked wildly about for signs of eavesdroppers. There were none, but that did not meanthey were safe. He spread his best privacy spell over her and crawled to the point closest to the lily.

They sat glaring at each other like some characters out of La Fontaine: The Tale of the Frog and Dog.

How dearly he would love to leap across the water and bite off that fat little head. Unfortunately thevictory would be a bit temporary. "How did you find me?" Mr. Slippery growled. If people asinexperienced as the Feds could trace him down in his disguise, he was hardly safe from the Mailman.

"You forget," the frog puffed smugly. "We know your Name. It's simple to monitor your homeproces- sor and follow your every move..

Mr. Slippery whined deep in his throat. In thrall to a frog. Even Wiley has done better than that.

"Okay, so you found me. Now what do you want?.

"To let you know that we want results, and to get a progress report..

He lowered his muzzle till his eyes were even with Virginia's. "Heh heh. I'll give you a progressreport, but you're not going to like it." And he proceeded to explain Erythrina's theory that theMailman was an alien invasion.

"Rubbish," spoke the frog afterward. "Sheer fantasy! You're going to have to do better than that,Pol er, Mister..

He shuddered. She had almost spoken his Name. Was that a calculated threat or was she simply asstupid as she seemed? Nevertheless, he persisted. "Well then, what about Venezuela?" He related theevidence Ery had that the coup in that country was the Mailman's work.

This time the frog did not reply. Its eyes glazed over with apparent shock, and he realized that Vir-ginia must be consulting people at the other end. Almost fifteen minutes passed. When the frog'seyes cleared, it was much more subdued. "We'll check on that one. What you say is possible. Justbarely possible. If true... well, if it's true, this is the biggest threat we've had to face this century..

And you see that I am perhaps the only one who can bail you out. Mr. Slippery relaxed slightly. Ifthey only realized it, they were thralled to him as much as the reverse--at least for the moment. Then here- membered Erythrina's plan to grab as much power as they could for a brief time and try to use thatadvan- tage to flush the Mailman out. With the Feds on their side, they could do more than Ery hadever imagined. He said as much to Virginia.

The frog croaked, "You ... want ... us ... to give you carte blanche in the Federal data system.

Maybe you'd like to be President and Chair of the JCS, to boot?.

"Hey, that's not what I said. I know it's an extraor- dinary suggestion, but this is an extraordinarysituation. And in any case, you know my Name. There's no way I can get around that..

The frog went glassy-eyed again, but this time for only a couple of minutes. "We'll get back to youon that. We've got a lot of checking to do on the rest of your theories before we commit ourselves toanything. Till further notice, though, you're grounded..

"Wait!" What would Ery do when he didn't show? If he wasn't back in the castle in three or fourhours, the others would surely know about the secret exit.

The frog was implacable. "I said, you're grounded, Mister. We want you back in the real worldimmedi- ately. And you'll stay grounded till you hear from us. Got it?.

The dog slumped. "Yeah..

"Okay." The frog clambered heavily to the edge of the sagging lily and dumped itself ungracefullyinto the water. After a few seconds, Mr. Slippery followed.

Coming back was much like waking from a deep daydream; only here it was the middle of the night.

Roger Pollack stood, stretching, trying to get the kinks out of his muscles. Almost four hours hehad been gone, longer than ever before. Normally his concentration began to fail after two or threehours. Since he didn't like the thought of drugging up, this put a definite limit on his endurance in theOther Plane.

Beyond the bungalow's picture window, the pines stood silhouetted against the Milky Way. Hecranked open a pane and listened to the night birds trilling out there in the trees. It was near the end ofspring; he liked to imagine he could see dim polar twilight to the north. More likely it was just CrescentCity. Pol- lack' leaned close to the window and looked high into the sky, where Mars sat close toJupiter. It was hard to think of a threat to his own life from as far away as that.

Pollack backed up the spells acquired during this last session, powered down his system, andstumbled off to bed.

The following morning and afternoon seemed the longest of Roger Pollack's life. How would theyget in touch with him? Another visit of goons and black Lincolns? What had Erythrina done when hedidn't make contact? Was she all right.

And there was just no way of checking. He paced back and forth across his tiny living room, thenovel- plots that were his normal work forgotten. Ah, but there is a way. He looked at his old data setwith dawning recognition. Virginia had said to stay out of the Other Plane. But how could they objectto his using a simple data set, no more efficient than mil- lions used by office workers all over theworld.

He sat down at the set, scraped the dust from the handpads and screen. He awkwardly enteredlong- unused call symbols and watched the flow of news across the screen. A few queries and hediscovered that no great disasters had occurred overnight, that the insurgency in Indonesia seemedtemporarily abated. (Wiley J. was not to be king just yet.) There were no reports of big-time datavandals biting the dust.

Pollack grunted. He had forgotten how tedious it was to see the world through a data set, evenwith audio entry. In the Other Plane, he could pick up this sort of information in seconds, as casuallyas an ordi- nary mortal might glance out the window to see if it is raining. He dumped the last twenty-four hours of the world bulletin board into his home memory space and began checking through it.

The bulletin board was ideal for untraceable reception of messages: any- one on Earth could leave amessage--indexed by subject, target audience, and source. If a user copied the entire board, and thensearched it, there was no outside record of exactly what information he was interested in. There werealso simple ways to make nearly untraceable entries on the board.

As usual, there were about a dozen messages for Mr. Slippery. Most of them were from fans; theCov- en had greater notoriety than any other vandal SIG. A few were for other Mr. Slipperys. Withfive billion people in the world, that wasn't surprising.

And one of the memos was from the Mailman; that's what it said in the source field. Pollackpunched the message up on the screen. It was in caps, with no color or sound. Like all messagesdirectly from the Mailman, it looked as if it came off some incredibly ancient I/O device: YOU COULD HAVE BEEN RICH. YOU COULD HAVE RULED. INSTEAD YOU CONSPIRED AGAINST ME. I KNOW ABOUT THE SECRET EXIT. I KNOW ABOUT YOUR DOGGY DE- PARTURE. YOU AND THE RED ONE ARE DEAD NOW. IF YOU EVER SNEAK BACK ONTO THIS PLANE, IT WILL BE THE TRUE DEATH--I AM THAT CLOSE TO KNOWING YOUR NAMES.

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WATCH FOR ME IN THE NEWS, SUCKER.

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Bluff, thought Roger. He wouldn't be sending out warnings if he has that kind of power. Still,there was a dropping sensation in his stomach. The Mail- man shouldn't have known about the dogdisguise. Was he onto Mr. Slippery's connection with the Feds? If so, he might really be able to findSlippery's True Name. And what sort of danger was Ery in? What had she done when he missed therendezvous at Mass Transmit 3.

A quick search showed no messages from Erythrina. Either she was looking for him in the OtherPlane, or she was as thoroughly grounded as he.

He was still stewing on this when the phone rang. He said, "Accept, no video send." His data setcleared to an even gray: the caller was not sending video either.

"You're still there? Good." It was Virginia. Her voice sounded a bit odd, subdued and tense.

Perhaps it was just the effect of the scrambling algorithms. He prayed she would not trust thatscrambling. He had never bothered to make his phone any more secure than average. (And he hadseen the schemes Wiley J. and Robin Hood had devised to decrypt thousands of commercial phonemessages in real- time and monitor for key phrases, signaling them when anything interesting wasdetected. They couldn't use the technique very effectively, since it took an enormous amount ofprocessor space, but the Mail- man was probably not so limited.) Virginia continued, "No names, okay? We checked out what you told us and... it looks like you'reright. We can't be sure about your theory about his origin, but what you said about the internationalsituation was verified." So the Venezuela coup had been an outside take-over. "Furthermore, we thinkhe has in- filtrated us much more than we thought. It may be that the evidence we had of unsuccessfulmeddling was just a red herring." Pollack recognized the fear in her voice now. Apparently the Fedssaw that they were up against something catastrophic. They were caught with their countermeasuresdown, and their only hope lay with unreliables like Pollack.

"Anyway, we're going ahead with what you sug- gested. We'll provide you two with the resourcesyou requested. We want you in the Other ... place as soon as possible. We can talk more there..

"I'm on my way. I'll check with my friend and get back to you there." He cut the connection withoutwaiting for a reply. Pollack sat back, trying to savor this triumph and the near-pleading in the cop'svoice. Somehow, he couldn't. He knew what a hard case she was; anything that could make her crawlwas more hellish than anything he wanted to face.

His first stop was Mass Transmit 3. Physically, MT3 was a two-thousand-tonne satellite insynchro- nous orbit over the Indian Ocean. The Mass Trans- mits handled most of the planet'snoninteractive communications (and in fact that included a lot of transmission that most peopleregarded as interactive-- such as human/human and the simpler human/com- puter conversations).

Bandwidth and processor space was cheaper on the Mass Transmits because of the 240- to 900-millisecond time delays that were involved.

As such, it was a nice out-of-the-way meeting place, and in the Other Plane it was represented as afive- meter-wide ledge near the top of a mountain that rose from the forests and swamps that stood forthe lower satellite layer and the ground-based nets. In the distance were two similar peaks, clear inpale sky.

Mr. Slippery leaned out into the chill breeze that swept the face of the mountain and looked downpast the timberline, past the evergreen forests. Through the unnatural mists that blanketed thoserealms, he thought he could see the Coven's castle.

Perhaps he should go there, or down to the swamps. There was no sign of Erythrina. Only spritesin the forms of bats and tiny griffins were to be seen here. They sailed back and forth over him,sometimes soar- ing far higher, toward the uttermost peak itself.

Mr. Slippery himself was in an extravagant winged man form, one that subtly projected amateurism,one that he hoped would pass the inspection of the enemy's eyes and ears. He fluttered clumsilyacross the ledge toward a small cave that provided some shelter from the whistling wind. Fine, wind-dropped snow lay in a small bank before the entrance. The insects he found in the cave were no morethan what they seemed-- amateur transponders.

He turned and started back toward the drop-off; he was going to have to face this alone. But as hepassed the snowbank, the wind swirled it up and tiny crys- tals stung his face and hands and nose.

Trap! He jumped backward, his fastest escape spell coming to his lips, at the same time cursinghimself for not establishing the spell before. The time delay was just too long; the trap lived here atMT3 and could react faster than he. The little snow-devil dragged the crys- tals up into a swirlingcolumn of singing motes that chimed in near-unison, "W-w-wait-t-t!.

The sound matched deep-set recognition patterns; this was Erythrina's work. Three hundredmillisec- onds passed, and the wind suddenly picked up the rest of the snow and whirled into a moresubstantial, taller column. Mr. Slippery realized that the trap had been more of an alarm, set to bringEry if he should be recognized here. But her arrival was so quick that she must already have been atwork somewhere in this plane.

"Where have you been-n-n!" The snow-devil's chime was a combination of rage and concern.

Mr. Slippery threw a second spell over the one he recognized she had cast. There was no help forit: he would have to tell her that the Feds had his Name. And with that news, Virginia's confirmationabout Venezuela and the Feds' offer to help.

Erythrina didn't respond immediately--and only part of the delay was light lag. Then the swirlingsnow flecks that represented her gusted up around him. "So you lose no matter how this comes out,eh? I'm sorry, Slip..

Mr. Slippery's wings drooped. "Yeah. But I'm begin- ning to believe it will be the True Death for usall if we don't stop the Mailman. He really means to take over ... everything. Can you imagine what itwould be like if all the governments' wee megalomaniacs got replaced by one big one?.

The usual pause. The snow-devil seemed to shud- der in on itself. "You're right; we've got to stophim even if it means working for Sammy Sugar and the entire DoW." She chuckled, a near-inaudiblechiming. "Even if it means that they have to work for us." She could laugh; the Feds didn't know herName. "How did your Federal Friends say we could plug into their system?" Her form was changingagain--to a solid, winged form, an albino eagle. The only red she al- lowed herself was in the eyes,which gleamed with inner light.

"At the Laurel end of the old arpa net. We'll get something near carte blanche on that and on theDoJ domestic intelligence files, but we have to enter through one physical location and with just thepass- word scheme they specify." He and Erythrina would have more power than any vandals inhistory, but they would be on a short leash, nevertheless.

His wings beat briefly, and he rose into the air. After the usual pause, the eagle followed. Theyflew almost to the mountain's peak, then began the long, slow glide toward the marshes below, thechill air whistling around them. In principle, they could have made the transfer to the Laurel terminusvirtually instantaneously. But it was not mere romanticism that made them move so cautiously--asmany a nov- ice had discovered the hard way. What appeared to the conscious mind as a search forair currents and clear lanes through the scattered clouds was a mani- festation of the almost-subconscious working of pro- grams that gradually transferred processing from rented space on MT3to low satellite and ground- based stations. The game was tricky and time- consuming, but it made itvirtually impossible for others to trace their origin. The greatest danger of detection would probablyoccur at Laurel, where they would be forced to access the system through a sin- gle input device.

The sky glowed momentarily; seconds passed, and an airborne fist slammed into them frombehind. The shock wave sent them tumbling taft over wing toward the forests below. Mr. Slipperystraightened his cha- otic flailing into a head-first dive. Looking back which was easy to do in hispresent attitude he saw the peak that had been MT3 glowing red, steam rising over descendingavalanches of lava. Even at this distance, he could see tiny motes swirling above the inferno.

(Attackers looking for the prey that had fled?) Had it come just a few seconds earlier, they would havehad most of their processing still locked into MT3 and the disaster--whatever it really was--wouldhave knocked them out of this plane. It wouldn't have been the True Death, but it might well havegrounded them for days.

On his right, he glimpsed the white eagle in a controlled dive; they had had just enough communi-cations established off MT3 to survive. As they fell deeper into the humid air of the lowlands, Mr.

Slip- pery dipped into the news channels: word was al- ready coming over the LA Times of the flukeaccident in which the Hokkaido aerospace launching laser had somehow shone on MT3's optics. Thelaser had shone for microseconds and at reduced power; the damage had been nothing like a Finger ofGod, say. No one had been hurt, but wideband communica- tions would be down. for some time, andseveral hun- dred million dollars of information traffic was stalled. There would be investigations and alot of very irate customers.

It had been no accident, Mr. Slippery was sure. The Mailman was showing his teeth, revealinginfil- tration no one had suspected. He must guess what his opponents were up to.

They leveled out a dozen meters above the pine forest that bordered the swamps. The air aroundthem was thick and humid, and the faraway mountains were almost invisible. Clouds had moved in,and a storm was on the way. They were now securely locked into the low-level satellite net, butthousands of new users were clamoring for entry, too. The loss of MT3 would make the Other Plane aturbulent place for several weeks, as heavy users tried to shift their traf- fic here.

He swooped low over the swamp, searching for the one particular pond with the one particularlylarge water lily that marked the only entrance Virginia would permit them. There! He banked off to theside, Erythrina following, and looked for signs of the Mail- man or his friends in the mucky clearingsthat sur- rounded the pond.

But there was little purpose in further caution. Flying about like this, they would be clearly visibleto any ambushers waiting by the pond. Better to move fast now that we're committed. He signaled thered- eyed eagle, and they dived toward the placid water. That surface marked the symbolic transitionto obser- vation mode. No longer was he aware of a winged form or of water coming up and aroundhim. Now he was interacting directly with the I/O protocols of a computing center in the vicinity ofLaurel, Maryland. He sensed Ery poking around on her own. This wasn't the arpa entrance. He slipped"sideways" into an old-fashioned government office complex. The "feel" of the 1990-style data setswas unmistakable. He was fleetingly aware of memos written and edited, reports hauled in and out ofstorage. One of the vandals' favorite sports and one that even the moderately skilled could indulge in--was to infiltrate one of these office complexes and simulate higher level input to make absurd andimpossible demands on the local staff.

This was not the time for such games, and this was still not the entrance. He pulled away from theoffice complex and searched through some old directories. Arpa went back more than half a century,the first of the serious data nets, now (figuratively) gathering dust. The number was still there,though. He sig- naled Erythrina, and the two of them presented them- selves at the log-in point andprovided just the codes that Virginia had given him.

... and they were in. They eagerly soaked in the megabytes of password keys and access data thatVirginia's people had left there. At the same time, they were aware that this activity was beingmonitored. The Feds were taking an immense chance leaving this material here, and they were going todo their best to keep a rein on their temporary vandal allies.

In fifteen seconds, they had learned more about the inner workings of the Justice Department andDoW than the Coven had in fifteen months. Mr. Slippery guessed that Erythrina must be busy plot-ting what she would do with all that data later on. For him, of course, there was no future in it. Theydrifted out of the arpa "vault" into the larger data spaces that were the Department of Justice files. Hecould see that there was nothing hidden from them; random archive retrievals were all being honoredand with a speed that would have made deception impos- sible. They had subpoena power andclearances and more.

"Let's go get 'im, Slip." Erythrina's voice seemed hollow and inhuman in this underimaged realm.

(How long would it be before the Feds started to make their data perceivable analogically, as on theOther Plane? It might be a little undignified, but it would revolu- tionize their operation--which, fromthe Coven's standpoint, might be quite a bad thing.) Mr. Slippery "nodded." Now they had more than enough power to undertake the sort of work theyhad planned. In seconds, they had searched all the locally available files on off-planet transmissions.

Then they dove out of the DoJ net, Mr. Slippery to Pasadena and the JPL planetary probe archives,Erythrina to Cam- bridge and the Harvard Multispectral Patrol.

It should take several hours to survey these records, to determine just what transmissions mightbe cover for the alien invasion that both the Feds and Erythrina were guessing had begun. But Mr.

Slippery had barely started when he noticed that there were dozens of processors within reach that hecould just grab with his new Federal powers. He checked carefully to make sure he wasn't upsetting airtraffic control or hospital life support, then quietly stole the computing resources of several hundredunknowing users, whose data sets automatically switched to other resources. Now he had more powerthan he ever would have risked taking in the past. On the other side of the continent, he was awarethat Erythrina had done something similar.

In three minutes, they had sifted through five years' transmissions far more thoroughly than theyhad origi- nally planned.

"No sign of him," he sighed and "looked" at Erythrina. They had found plenty of irregular sourcesat Harvard, but there was no orbital fit. All transmis- sions from the NASA probes checked outlegitimately.

"Yes." Her face, with its dark skin and slanting eyes, seemed to hover beside him. Apparently withher new power, she could image even here. "But you know, we haven't really done much more thanthe Feds could--given a couple months of data set work .... I know, it's more than we had planned todo. But we've barely used the resources they've opened to us..

It was true. He looked around, feeling suddenly like a small boy let loose in a candy shop: hesensed enormous data bases and the power that would let him use them. Perhaps the cops had notintended them to take advantage of this, but it was obvious that with these powers, they could do asearch no enemy could evade. "Okay," he said finally, "let's pig it..

Ery laughed and made a loud snuffling sound. Carefully, quickly, they grabbed noncritical data-processing facilities along all the East/West nets. In seconds, they were the biggest users in NorthAmerica. The drain would be clear to anyone monitoring the System, though a casual user mightnotice only in- creased delays in turnaround. Modem nets are at least as resilient as old-time powernets--but like power nets, they have their elastic limit and their breaking point. So far, at least, he andErythrina were far short of those.

--but they were experiencing what no human had ever known before, a sensory bandwidththousands of times normal. For seconds that seemed without end, their minds were filled with a jumbleverging on pain, data that was not information and information that was not knowledge. To hear tenmillion simulta- neous phone conversations, to see the continent's entire video output, should havebeen a white noise. Instead it was a tidal wave of detail rammed through the tiny aperture of theirminds. The pain increased, and Mr. Slippery panicked. This could be the True Death, some kind ofsensory burnout-- Erythrina's voice was faint against the roar, "Use everything, not just the inputs!" And he had justenough sense left to see what she meant. He con- trolled more than raw data now; if he could masterthem, the continent's computers could process this avalanche, much the way parts of the human brainpreprocess their input. More seconds passed, but now with a sense of time, as he struggled todistribute his very consciousness through the System.

Then it was over, and he had control once more. But things would never be the same: the humanthat had been Mr. Slippery was an insect wandering in the cathedral his mind had become. Theresimply was more there than before. No sparrow could fall without his knowledge, via air traffic control;no check could be cashed without his noticing over the bank communication net. More than threehundred mil- lion lives swept before what his senses had become.

Around and through him, he felt the other occu- pant--Erythrina, now equally grown. They lookedat each other for an unending fraction of a second, their communication more kinesthetic than verbal.

Finally she smiled, the old smile now deep with meanings she could never image before. "Pity the poorMail- man now!.

Again they searched, but now it was through all the civil data bases, a search that could only bedreamed of by mortals. The signs were there, a near invisible system of manipulations hidden amongmore routine crimes and vandalisms. Someone had been at work within the Venezuelan system, at leastat the North American end. The trail was tricky to follow-- their enemy seemed to have at least some oftheir own powers--but they saw it lead back into the laby- rinths of the Federal bureaucracy: resourcesdiverted, individuals promoted or transferred, not quite accord- ing to the automatic regulations thatshould govern. These were changes so small they were never guessed at by ordinary employees andonly just sensed by the cops. But over the months, they added up to an instability that neither of thetwo searchers could quite understand except to know that it was planned and that it did the statusquo no good.

"He's still too sharp for us, Slip. We're all over the civil nets and we haven't seen any living sign ofhim; yet we know he does heavy processing on Earth or in low orbit..

"So he's either off North America, or else he has penetrated the ... military..

"I bet it's a little of both. The point is, we're going to have to follow him..

And that meant taking over at least part of the US military system. Even if that was possible, itcertainly went far beyond what Virginia and her friends had intended. As far as the cops wereconcerned, it would mean that the threat against the government was tripled. So far he hadn't detectedany objections to their searching, but he was aware of Virginia and her superiors deep in some kind ofbunker at Langley, intently watching a whole wall full of monitors, trying to figure out just what hewas up to and if it was time to pull the plug on him.

Erythrina was aware of his objections almost as fast as he could bring them to mind. "We don'thave any choice, Slip. We have to take control. The Feds aren't the only thing watching us. If we don'tget the Mailman on this try, he is sure as hell going to get US..

That was easy for her to say. None of her enemies yet knew her True Name. Mr. Slippery hadsomehow to survive two enemies. On the other hand, he sus- pected that the deadlier of thoseenemies was the Mailman. "Only one way to go and that's up, huh? Okay, I'll play..

They settled into a game that was familiar now, grabbing more and more computing facilities, butnow from common Europe and Asia. At the same time, they attacked the harder problem--infiltratingthe various North American military nets. Both pro- jects were beyond normal humans or any group ofnormal humans, but by now their powers were greater than any single civil entity in the world.

The foreign data centers yielded easily, scarcely more than minutes' work. The military was a differ-ent story. The Feds had spent many years and hun- dreds of billions of dollars to make the militarycommand and control system secure. But they had not counted on the attack from all directions thatthey faced now; in moments more, the two searchers found themselves on the inside of the NSAcontrol system- -and under attack! Impressions of a dozen sleek, deadly forms converging on them, and suddenloss of control over many of the processors he depended on. He and Erythrina flailed out wildly,clumsy giants hacking at fast-moving hawks. There was imagery here, as detailed as on the OtherPlane. They were fighting people with some of the skills the warlocks had developed--and a lot morepower. But it was still an uneven contest. He and Erythrina had too much experience and too muchsheer processing mass be- hind them. One by one, the fighters flashed into incandescent destruction.

He realized almost instantly that these were not the Mailman's tools. They were powerful, but theyfought as only moderately skilled warlocks might. In fact, they had encountered the most secretdefense the government had for its military command and control. The civilian bureaucracies hadstuck with obsolete data sets and old-fashioned dp languages, but the cutting edge of the military isalways more willing to experiment. They had developed something like the warlocks' system. Perhapsthey didn't use magical jargon to describe their computer/human symbiosis, but the techniques andthe attitudes were the same. These swift-moving fighters flew against a background imagery that waslike an olive drab Other Plane.

Compared to his present power, they were nothing. Even as he and Erythrina swept the defendersout of the "sky," he could feel his consciousness expanding further as more and more of the militarysystem was absorbed into their pattern. Every piece of space junk out to one million kilometers floatedin crystal detail before his attention; in a fraction of a second he sorted through it all, searching forsome evidence of alien intelligence. No sign of the Mailman.

The military and diplomatic communications of the preceding fifty years showed before the light oftheir minds. At the same time as they surveyed the satel- lite data, Mr. Slippery and Erythrina sweptthrough these bureaucratic communications, looking carefully but with flickering speed at everyrequisition for toilet paper, every "declaration" of secret war, every travel voucher, every one of thetrillions of pieces of "paper" that made it possible for the machinery of state to creak forward. Andhere the signs were much clearer: large sections were subtly changed, giving the same feeling theeye's blind spot gives, the feeling that nothing is really obscured but that some things are simplygone. Some of the distortions were immense. Under their microscopic yet global scrutiny, it wasobvious that all of Venezuela, large parts of Alaska, and most of the economic base for the lowsatellite net were all controlled by some single interest that had little connection with the properowners. Who their enemy was was still a mystery, but his works loomed larger and larger around them.

In a distant corner of what his mind had become, tiny insects buzzed with homicidal fury, tinyinsects who knew Mr. Slippery's True Name. They knew what he and Erythrina had done, and rightnow they were more scared of the two warlocks than they had ever been of the Mailman. As he andEry continued their search, he listened to the signals coming from the Langley command post,followed the helicopter gunships that were dispatched toward a single rural bungalow in NorthernCalifornia--and changed their encrypted commands so that the sortie dumped its load of death on anuninhabited stretch of the Pacific.

Still with a tiny fraction of his attention, Mr. Slippery noticed that Virginia--actually her superiors,who had long since taken over the operation--knew of this defense. They were still receiving real-timepictures from military satellites.

He signaled a pause to Erythrina. For a few seconds, she would work alone while he dealt withthese per- sistent antagonists. He felt like a man attacked by several puppies: they were annoying andcould cause substantial damage unless he took more trouble than they were worth. They had to bestopped without causing themselves injury.

He should freeze the West Coast military and any launch complexes that could reach his body.

Beyond that, it would be a good idea to block recon satellite transmission of the California area. Andof course, he'd better deal with the Finger of God installations that were above the California horizon.

Already he felt one of those heavy lasers, sweeping along in its ten-thousand-kilometer orbit, go intoaiming mode and begin charging. He still had plenty of time--at least two or three seconds--before theweapons laser reached its lowest discharge threshold. Still, this was the most immediate threat. Mr.

Slippery sent a ten- dril of consciousness into the tiny processor aboard the Finger of God satellite-- --and withdrew, bloodied. Someone was already there. Not Erythrina and not the little militarywarlocks. Someone too great for even him to overpower.

"Ery! I've found him!" It came out a scream. The laser's bore was centered on a spot thousands ofkilometers below, a tiny house that in less than a second would become an expanding ball of plasma atthe end of a columnar explosion descending through the atmosphere.

Over and over in that last second, Mr. Slippery threw himself against the barrier he felt around thetiny military processor--with no success. He traced its control to the lower satellite net, to biggerproces- sors that were equally shielded. Now he had a feel for the nature of his opponent. It was notthe direct imagery he was used to on the Other Plane; this was more like fighting blindfolded. He couldsense the other's style. The enemy was not revealing any more of himself than was necessary to keepcontrol of the Finger of God for another few hundred milliseconds.

Mr. Slippery slashed, trying to cut the enemy's communications. But his opponent was strong,much stronger--he now realized--than himself. He was vaguely aware of the other's connections to thecom- puting power in those blind-spot areas he and Eryth- rina had discovered. But for all that power,he was almost the enemy's equal. There was something miss- ing from the other, some critical elementof imagina- tion or originality. If Erythrina would only come, they might be able to stop him.

Milliseconds separated him from the True Death. He looked desperately around. Where is she.

Military Status announced the discharge of an Or- bital Weapons Laser. He cowered even as hisquick- ened perceptions counted the microseconds that remained till his certain destruction, even ashe no- ticed a ball of glowing plasma expanding about what had been a Finger of God--the Finger thathad been aimed at him.

He could see now what had happened. While he and the other had been fighting, Erythrina hadcommandeered another of the weapons satellites, one already very near discharge threshold, anddestroyed the threat to him.

Even as he realized this, the enemy was on him again, this time attacking conventionally, trying todestroy Mr. Slippery's communications and process- ing space. But now that enemy had to fight bothErythrina and Mr. Slippery. The other's lack of imagi- nation and creativity was beginning to tell, andeven with his greater strength, they could feel him slowly, slowly losing resources to his weakeropponents. There was something familiar about this enemy, something Mr. Slippery was sure he couldsee, given time.

Abruptly the enemy pulled away. For a long mo- ment, they held each other's sole attention, likecats waiting for the smallest sign of weakness to launch back into combat--only here the new attackcould come from any of ten thousand different directions, from any of the communications nodes thatformed their bodies and their minds.

From beside him, he felt Erythrina move forward, as though to lock the other in her green-eyedgaze. "You know who we have here, Slip?" He could tell that all her concentration was on this enemy,that she almost vibrated with the effort. "This is our old friend DON.MAC grown up to super size, anddoing his best to disguise himself..

The other seemed to tense and move even further in upon himself. But after a moment, he beganimaging. There stood DON.MAC, his face and Plessey- Mercedes body the same as ever. DON.MAC,the first of the Mailman's converts, the one Erythrina was sure had been killed and replaced with asimulator. "And all the time he's been the Mailman. The last person we would suspect, the Mailman'sfirst victim..

DON rolled forward half a meter, his motors keening, his hydraulic fists raised. But he did not denywhat Mr. Slippery said. After a moment he seemed to relax. "You are very ... clever. But then, you twohave had help; I never thought you and the cops would cooperate. That was the one combination thathad any chance against the 'Mailman.'" He smiled, a familiar automatic twitch. "But don't you see? It'sa combination with lethal genes. We three have much more in common than you and the government.

"Look around you. If we were warlocks before, we are gods now. Look!" Without letting the centerof their attention wander, the two followed his gaze. As before, the myriad aspects of the lives ofbillions spread out before them. But now, many things were changed. In their struggle, the three hadusurped virtually all of the connected processing power of the human race. Video and phonecommunications were frozen. The public data bases had lasted long enough to notice that somethinghad gone terribly, terribly wrong. Their last headlines, generated a second be- fore the climax of thebattle, were huge banners announcing GREATEST DATA OUTAGE OF ALL TIME. Nearly a billionpeople watched blank data sets, feeling more panicked than any simple power blackout could evermake them. Already the accumu- lation of lost data and work time would cause a major recession.

"They are lucky the old arms race is over, or else independent military units would probably haveal- ready started a war. Even if we hand back control this instant, it would take them more than a yearto get their affairs in order." DON.MAC smirked, the same expression they had seen the day beforewhen he was bragging to the Limey. "There have been few deaths yet. Hospitals and aircraft havesome stand- alone capability..

Even so ... Mr. Slippery could see thousands of aircraft stacked up over major airports fromLondon to Christchurch. Local computing could never coordi- nate the safe landing of them all beforesome ran out of fuel.

"We caused all that--with just the fallout of our battle," continued DON. "If we chose to do themharm, I have no doubt we could exterminate the human race." He detonated three warheads in theirsilos in Utah just to emphasize his point. With doz- ens of video eyes, in orbit and on the ground, Mr.

Slippery and Erythrina watched the destruction sweep across the launch sites. "Consider: how are wediffer- ent from the gods of myth? And like the gods of myth, we can rule and prosper, just so long aswe don't fight among ourselves." He looked expectantly from Mr. Slippery to Erythrina. There was afrown on the Red One's dark face; she seemed to be concen- trating on their opponent just as fiercelyas ever.

DON.MAC turned back to Mr. Slippery. "Slip, you especially should see that we have no choicebut to cooperate. They know your True Name. Of the three of us, your life is the most fragile,depending on protecting your body from a government that now considers you a traitor. You wouldhave died a dozen times over during the last thousand seconds if you hadn't used your new powers.

"And you can't go back. Even if you play Boy Scout, destroy me, and return all obedient--eventhen they will kill you. They know how dangerous you are, perhaps even more dangerous than I. Theycan't afford to let you exist..

And megalomania aside, that made perfect and chilling sense. As they were talking, a fraction ofMr. Slippery's attention was devoted to confusing and obstructing the small infantry group that hadbeen air-dropped into the Arcata region just before the government lost all control. Their superiorshad real- ized how easily he could countermand their orders, and so the troops were instructed toignore all outside direction until they had destroyed a certain Roger Pollack. Fortunately they weredepending on city di- rectories and orbit-fed street maps, and he had been keeping them going incircles for some time now. It was a nuisance, and sooner or later he would have to decide on a morepermanent solution.

But what was a simple nuisance in his present state would be near-instant death if he returned tohis normal self. He looked at Erythrina. Was there any way around DON's arguments.

Her eyes were almost shut, and the frown had deepened. He sensed that more and more of herresources were involved in some pattern analysis. He wondered if she had even heard whatDON.MAC said. But after a moment her eyes came open, and she looked at the two of them. Therewas triumph in that look. "You know, Slip, I don't think I have ever been fooled by a personalitysimulator, at least not for more than a few minutes..

Mr. Slippery nodded, puzzled by this sudden change in topic. "Sure. If you talk to a simulator longenough, you eventually begin to notice little inflexibilities. I don't think we'll ever be able to write aprogram that could pass the Turing test..

"Yes, little inflexibilities, a certain lack of imagina- tion. It always seems to be the tipoff. Of courseDON here has always pretended to be a program, so it was hard to tell. But I was sure that for the lastfew months there has been no living being behind his mask...

"... and furthermore, I don't think there is any- body there even now." Mr. Slippery's attentionsnapped back to DON.MAC. The other smirked at the accusa- tion. Somehow it was not the rightreaction. Mr. Slippery remembered the strange, artificial flavor of DON's combat style. In this short anencounter, there could be no really hard evidence for her theory. She was using her intuition andwhatever deep analysis she had been doing these last few seconds. "But that means we still haven'tfound the Mailman." "Right. This is just his best tool. I'll bet the Mail- man simply used the pattern hestole from the mur- dered DON.MAC as the basis for this automatic defense system we've beenfighting. The Mailman's time lag is a very real thing, not a red herring at all. Somehow it is the wholesecret of who he really is.

"In any case, it makes our present situation a lot easier." She smiled at DON.MAC as though hewere a real person. Usually it was easier to behave that way toward simulators; in this case, there wasa good deal of triumph in her smile. "You almost won for your master, DON. You almost had usconvinced. But now that we know what we are dealing with, it will be easy to--.

Her image flicked out of existence, and Mr. Slip- pery felt DON grab for the resources Erycontrolled. All through near-Earth space, they fought for the weapon systems she had held till aninstant before.

And alone, Mr. Slippery could not win. Slowly, slowly, he felt himself bending before the other'sforce, like some wrestler whose bones were breaking one by one under a murderous opponent. It wasall he could do to prevent the DON construct from blast- hag his home; and to do that, he had to giveup progressively more computing power.

Erythrina was gone, gone as though she had never been. Or was she? He gave a sliver of hisattention to a search, a sliver that was still many times more powerful than any mere warlock. That tinypiece of consciousness quickly noticed a power failure in south- ern Rhode Island. Many powerfailures had devel- oped during the last few minutes, consequent to the data failure. But this one wasstrange. In addition to power, comm lines were down and even his interven- tion could not bring themto life. It was about as thoroughly blacked out as a place could be. This could scarcely be an accident.

... and there was a voice, barely telephone quality and almost lost in the mass of other data he wasprocessing. Erythrina! She had, via some incredibly tortuous detour, retained a communication pathto the outside.

His gaze swept the blacked-out Providence suburb. It consisted of new urbapts, perhaps onehundred thousand units in all. Somewhere in there lived the human that was Erythrina. While she hadbeen con- centrating on DON.MAC, he must have been work- ing equally hard to find her True Name.

Even now, DON did not know precisely who she was, only enough to black out the area she lived in.

It was getting hard to think; DON.MAC was sys- tematically dismantling him. The lethal intent wasclear: as soon as Mr. Slippery was sufficiently reduced, the Orbital Lasers would be turned on hisbody, and then on Erythrina's. And then the Mailman's faithful servant would have a planetarykingdom to turn over to his mysterious master.

He listened to the tiny voice that still leaked out of Providence. It didn't make too much sense. Shesounded hysterical, panicked. He was surprised that she could speak at all; she had just suffered--inlosing all her computer connections--something roughly analogous to a massive stroke. To her, theworld was now seen through a keyhole, incomplete, unknown and dark.

"There is a chance; we still have a chance," the voice went on, hurried and slurred. "An oldmilitary communication tower north of here. Damn. I don't know the number or grid, but I can see itfrom where I'm sitting. With it you could punch through to the roof antenna ... has plenty ofbandwidth, and I've got some battery power here... but hurry..

She didn't have to tell him that; he was the guy who was being eaten alive. He was almost immobi-lized now, the other's attack squeezing and stifling where it could not cut and tear. He spasmedagainst DON's strength and briefly contacted the comm tow- ers north of Providence. Only one ofthem was in line of sight with the blacked-out area. Its steerable an- tenna was very, very narrowbeam.

"Ery, I'm going to need your house number, maybe even your antenna id..

A second passed, two--a hellish eon for Mr. Slippery. In effect, he had asked her for her TrueName--he who was already known to the Feds. Once he re- turned to the real world, there would be noway he could mask this information from them. He could imagine her thoughts: never again to be free.

In her place, he would have paused too, but-- "Ery! It's the True Death for both of us if you don't. He's got me!.

This time she barely hesitated. "D-Debby Charteris, 4448 Grosvenor Row. Cut off like this, I don'tknow the antenna id. Is my name and house enough?.

"Yes. Get ready!.

Even before he spoke, he had already matched the name with an antenna rental and aligned themilitary antenna on it. Return contact came as he turned his attention back to DON.MAC. With luck,the enemy was not aware of their conversation. Now he must be distracted.

Mr. Slippery surged against the other, breaking communications nodes that served them both.

DON shuddered, reorganizing around the resources that were left, then moved in on Mr. Slipperyagain. Since DON had greater strength to begin with, the maneu- ver had cost Mr. Slipperyproportionately more. The enemy had been momentarily thrown off balance, but now the end wouldcome very quickly.

The spaces around him, once so rich with detail and colors beyond color, were fading now,replaced by the sensations of his true body straining with animal fear in its little house in California.

Contact with the greater world was almost gone. He was scarcely aware of it when DON turned theFinger of God back upon him-- Consciousness, the superhuman consciousness of before, returned almost unsensed,unrecognized till awareness brought surprise. Like a strangling victim back from oblivion, Mr. Slipperylooked around dazedly, not quite realizing that the struggle continued.

But now the roles were reversed. DON.MAC had been caught by surprise, in the act of finishingoff what he thought was his only remaining enemy. Erythrina had used that surprise to goodadvantage, coming in upon her opponent from a Japanese data center, destroying much of Don'shigher reasoning centers before the other was even aware of her. Large, unclaimed processing unitslay all about, and as DON and Erythrina continued their struggle, Mr. Slippery quietly absorbedeverything in reach.

Even now, DON could have won against either one of them alone, but when Mr. Slippery threwhimself back into the battle, they had the advantage. DON.- MAC sensed this too, and with abrazenness that was either mindless or genius, returned to his original appeal. "There is still time! TheMailman will still forgive you..

Mr. Slippery and Erythrina ripped at their enemy from both sides, disconnec.ting vast blocks ofcommu- nications, processing and data resources. They de- nied the Mass Transmits to him, and oneby one put the low-level satellites out of synch with his data accesses. DON was confined to landlines, tied into a single military net that stretched from Washington to Denver. He was flailing,randomly using whatever instruments of destruction were still available. All across the midsection ofthe US, silo missiles deto- nated, ABM lasers swept back and forth across the sky. The world hadbeen stopped short by the begin- ning of their struggle, but the ending could tear it to pieces.

The damage to Mr. Slippery and Erythrina was slight, the risk that the random strokes would seri-ously damage them small. They ignored occasional slashing losses and concentrated single-mindedlyon dismantling DON.MAC. They discovered the object code for the simulator that was DON, andzeroed it. DON--or his creator--was clever and had planted many copies, and a new one awakenedevery time they destroyed the running copy. But as the minutes passed, the simulator found itselfwith less and less to work with. Now it was barely more than it had been back in the Coven.

"Fools! The Mailman is your natural ally. The Feds will kill you! Don't you underst--.

The voice stopped in midshriek, as Erythrina ze- roed the currently running simulator. No othertook up the task. There was a silence, an ... absence ... throughout. Erythrina glanced at Mr. Slippery,and the two continued their search through the enemy's territory. This data space was big, and therecould be many more copies of DON hidden in it. But without the resources they presently held, thesimulator could have no power. It was clear to both of them that no effective ambush could be hiddenin these unmoving ruins.

And they had complete copies of DON.MAC to study. It was easy to trace the exact extent of hisinfection of the system. The two moved systematically, changing what they found so that it wouldbehave as its original programmers had intended. Their work was so thorough that the Feds mightnever realize just how extensively the Mailman and his henchman had infiltrated them, just how closehe had come to total control.

Most of the areas they searched were only slightly altered and required only small changes. Butdeep within the military net, there were hundreds of tril- lions of bytes of program that seemed to haveno intelligible function yet were clearly connected with DON's activities. It was apparently objectcode, but it was so huge and so ill organized that even they couldn't decide if it was more than hashnow. There was no possibility that it had any legitimate function; after a few moments' consideration,they randomized it.

At last it was over. Mr. Slippery and Erythrma stood alone. They controlled all connectedprocessing facilities in near-Earth space. There was no place within that volume that any furtherenemies could be lurking. And there was no evidence that there had ever been interference frombeyond.

It was the first time since they had reached this level that they had been able to survey the worldwithout fear. (He scarcely noticed the continuing, pitiful attempts of the American military to kill hisreal body.) Mr. Slippery looked around him, using all his millions of perceptors. The Earth floatedserene. Viewed in the visible, it looked like a thousand pic- tures he had seen as a human. But in theultraviolet, he could follow its hydrogen aura out many thou- sands of kilometers. And the high-energy detectors on satellites at all levels perceived the radiation belts in thousands of energy levels,oscillating in the solar wind. Across the oceans of the world, he could feel the warmth of the currents,see just how fast they were moving. And all the while, he monitored the millions of tiny voices thatwere now coming back to life as he and Erythrina carefully set the human race's communicationsystem back on its feet and gently prodded it into function. Every ship in the seas, every aircraft nowmaking for safe landing, ev- ery one of the loans, the payments, the meals of an entire race registeredclearly on some part of his consciousness. With perception came power; almost everything he saw, hecould alter, destroy, or enhance. By the analogical rules of the covens, there was only one valid wordfor themselves in their present state: they were gods.

"... we could rule," Erythrina's voice was hushed, self-frightened. "It might be tricky at first,assuring our bodies protection, but we could rule..

"There's still the Mailman--.

She seemed to wave a hand, dismissingly. "Maybe, maybe not. It's true we still are no closer toknowing who he is, but we do know that we have destroyed all his processing power. We would haveplenty of warn- ing if he ever tries to reinsinuate himself into the System." She stared at him intently,and it wasn't until some time later that he recognized the faint clues in her behavior and realized thatshe was hold- ing something back.

What she said was all so clearly true; for as long as their bodies lived, they could rule. And whatDON.- MAC had said also seemed true: they were the great- est threat the "forces of law and order.

had ever faced, and that included the Mailman. How could the Feds afford to let them be free, howcould they even afford to let them live, if the two of them gave up the power they had now? But--"Alot of people would have to die if we took over. There are enough inde- pendent military entities lefton Earth that we'd have to use a good deal of nuclear blackmail, at least at first..

"Yeah," her voice was even smaller than before, and the image of her face was downcast: "Duringthe last few seconds I've done some simulating on that. We'd have to take out four, maybe six, majorcities. If there are any command centers hidden from us, it could be a lot worse than that. And we'dhave to develop our own human secret-police forces as folks began to operate outside our system ....

Damn. We'd end up being worse than the human-based govern- ment..

She saw the same conclusion in his face and grinned lopsidedly. "You can't do it and neither can I.

So the State wins again..

He nodded, "reached" out to touch her briefly. They took one last glorious minute to soak in thehigher reality. Then, silently, they parted, each to seek his own way downward.

It was not an instantaneous descent to ordinary humanity. Mr. Slippery was careful to prepare asafe exit. He created a complex set of misdirections for the army unit that was trying to close in on hisphysical body; it would take them several hours to find him, far longer than necessary for the govern-ment to call them off. He set up preliminary negotia- tions with the Federal programs that had beendoing their best to knock him out of power, telling them of his determination to surrender if grantedsafe pas- sage and safety for his body. In a matter of seconds he would be talking to humans again,perhaps even Virginia, but by then a lot of the basic ground rules would be automatically in operation.

As per their temporary agreements, he closed off first one and then another of the capabilities thathe had so recently acquired. It was like stopping one's ears, then blinding one's eyes, but somehowmuch worse since his very ability to think was being deliber- ately given up. He was like somelobotomy patient (victim) who only vaguely realizes now what he has lost. Behind him the Federalforces were doing their best to close off the areas he had left, to protect themselves from any changeof heart he might have.

Far away now, he could sense Erythrina going through a similar procedure, but more slowly. Thatwas strange; he couldn't be sure with his present faculties, but somehow it seemed that she was delib-erately lagging behind and doing something more complicated than was strictly necessary to returnsafely to normal humanity. And then he remembered that strange look she had given him while sayingthat they had not figured out who the Mailman was.

One could rule as easily as two.

The panic was sudden and overwhelming, all the more terrible for the feeling of being betrayed byone so trusted. He struck out against the barriers he had so recently allowed to close in about him, butit was too late. He was already weaker than the Feds. Mr. Slippery looked helplessly back into thegathering dimness, and saw...

... Ery coming down toward the real world with him, giving up the advantage she had held all alone.

Whatever problems had slowed her must have had nothing to do with treachery. And somehow hisfeel- ing of relief went beyond the mere fact of death avoided--Ery was still what he had alwaysthought her.

.

.

.

He was seeing a lot of Virginia lately, though of course not socially. Her crew had set up offices inArcata, and twice a week she and one of her goons would come up to the house. No doubt it was oneof the few government operations carried out face-to- face. She or her superiors seemed to realize thatanything done over the phone might be subject to trickery. (Which was true, of course. Given severalweeks to himself, Pollack could have put together a robot phone connection and--using false ids andpri- ority permits--been on a plane to Djakarta.) There were a lot of superficial similarities between these meetings and that first encounter theprevious spring: Pollack stepped to the door and watched the black Lincoln pulling up the drive. As always, thevehicle came right into the carport. As always, the driver got out quickly, eyes flickering coldly acrossPollack. As always, Virginia moved with military precision (in fact, he had discovered, she had beenpromoted out of the Army to her present job in DoW intelligence). The two walked purposefullytoward the bungalow, ignor- ing the summer sunlight and the deep wet green of the lawn and pines.

He held the door open for them, and they entered with silent arrogance. As always.

He smiled to himself. In one sense nothing had changed. They still had the power of life and deathover him. They could still cut him off from every- thing he loved. But in another sense ...

"Got an easy one for you today, Pollack," she said as she put her briefcase on the coffee table andenabled its data set. "But I don't think you're going to like it..

"Oh?" He sat down and watched her expectantly.

"The last couple of months, we've had you destroy- ing what remains of the Mailman and gettingthe National program and data bases back in operation..

Behind everything, there still stood the threat of the Mailman. Ten weeks after the battle--the War,as Virginia called it--the public didn't know any more than that there had been a massive vandalism ofthe System. Like most major wars, this had left ruination in everyone's camp. The US government andthe economy of the entire world had slid far toward chaos in the months after that battle. (In fact,without his work and Erythrina's, he doubted if the US bureau- cracies could have survived theMailman War. He didn't know whether this made them the saviors or the betrayers of America.) Butwhat of the enemy? His power was almost certainly destroyed. In the last three weeks Mr. Slipperyhad found only one copy of the program kernel that had been DON.MAC, and that had been innonexecutable form. But the man--or the beings--behind the Mailman was just as anony- mous asever. In that, Virginia, the government, and Pollack were just as ignorant as the general public.

"Now," Virginia continued, "we've got some smaller problems--mopping-up action, you might callit. For nearly two decades, we've had to live with the tuppin vandalism of irresponsible individualswho put their petty self-interest ahead of the public's. Now that we've got you, we intend to put a stopto that: "We want the True Names of all abusers currently on the System, in particular the members of thisso-called coven you used to be a part of..

He had known that the demand would eventually come, but the knowledge made this moment noless unpleasant. "I'm sorry, I can't..

"Can't? Or won't? See here, Pollack, the price of your freedom is that you play things our way.

You've broken enough laws to justify putting you away forever. And we both know that you are sodangerous that you ought to be put away. There are people who feel even more strongly than that,Pollack, people who are not as soft in the head as I am. They simply want you and your girl friend inProvidence safely dead." The speech was delivered with characteristic flat bluntness, but she didn'tquite meet his eyes as she spoke. Ever since he had returned from the battle, there had been a faintdiffidence behind her bluster.

She covered it well, but it was clear to Pollack that she didn't know if she should fear him or respecthim--or both. In any case, she seemed to recognize a basic mystery in him; she had more imaginationthan he had originally thought. It was a bit amusing, for there was very little special about RogerPollack, the man. He went from day to day feeling a husk of what he had once been and trying toimagine what he could barely remember.

Roger smiled almost sympathetically. "I can't and I won't, Virginia. And I don't think you will harmme for it--Let me finish. The only thing that frightens your bosses more than Erythrina and me is thepossi- bility that there may be other unknown persons-- maybe even the Mailman, back from whereverhe has disappeared to--who might be equally powerful. She and I are your only real experts on thistype of subversion. I bet that even if they could, your people wouldn't train their own clean-cut,braided types as replacements for us. The more paranoid a security organization is, the less likely it isto trust anyone with this sort of power. Mr. Slippery and Erythrina are the known factors, the expertswho turned back from the brink. Our restraint was the only thing that stood between the Powers ThatBe and the Powers That Would Be..

Virginia was speechless for a moment, and Pollack could see that this was the crux of her changedattitude toward him. All her life she had been taught that the individual is corrupted by power: shebog- gled at the notion that he had been offered mastery of all mankind--and had refused it.

Finally she smiled, a quick smile that was gone almost before he noticed it. "Okay. I'll pass on whatyou say. You may be right. The vandals are a long- range threat to our basic American freedoms, butday to day, they are a mere annoyance. My superiors-- the Department of Welfare--are probablywilling to fight them as we have in the past. They'll tolerate your, uh, disobedience in this singlematter as long as you and Erythrina loyally protect us against the superhuman threats..

Pollack felt a great sense of relief. He had been so afraid DoW would be willing to destroy him forthis refusal. And since the Feds would never be free of their fear of the Mailman, he and DebbyCharteris-- Erythrina--would never be forced to betray their friends.

"But," continued the cop, "that doesn't mean you get to ignore the covens. The most likely placefor superhuman threats to resurface is from within them. The vandals are the people with the most realexperi- ence on the System--even the Army is beginning to see that. And if a superhuman typeoriginates outside the covens, we figure his ego will still make him show off to them, just as with theMailman.

"In addition to your other jobs, we want you to spend a couple of hours a week with each of themajor covens. You'll be one of the 'boys'--only now you're under responsible control, watching for anysign of Mailman-type influence..

"I'll get to see Ery again!.

"No. That rule still stands. And you should be grateful. I don't think we could tolerate your exis-tence if there weren't two of you. With only one in the Other Plane at a time, we'll always have aweapon in reserve. And as long as we can keep you from meeting there, we can keep you fromscheming against us. This is serious, Roger: if we catch you two or your surrogates playing around inthe Other Plane, it will be the end..

"Hmm..

She looked hard at him for a moment, then ap- peared to take that for acquiescence. The next half-hour was devoted to the details of this week's assign- ments. (It would have been easier to feed him allthis when he was in the Other Plane, but Virginia--or at least DoW--seemed wedded to the past.) Hewas to continue the work on Social Security Records and the surveillance of the South American datanets. There was an enormous amount of work to be done, at least with the limited powers the Fedswere willing to give him. It would likely be October before the welfare machinery was working properlyagain. But that would be in time for the elections.

Then, late in the week, they wanted him to visit the Coven. Roger knew he would count the hours;it had been so long.

Virginia was her usual self, intense and all business, until she and her driver were ready to leave.

Standing in the carport, she said almost shyly, "I ran your Anne Boleyn last week... It's really verygood..

"You sound surprised..

"No. I mean yes, maybe I was. Actually I've run it several times, usually with the viewpointcharacter set to Anne. There seems to be a lot more depth to it than other participation games I'veread. I've got the feeling that if I am clever enough, someday I'll stop Henry and keep my head !.

Pollack grinned. He could imagine Virginia, the hard-eyed cop, reading Anne to study thepsychology of her client-prisoner--then gradually getting caught up in the action of the novel. "It ispossible..

In fact, it was possible she might turn into a rather nice human being someday.

But by the time Pollack was starting back up the walk to his house, Virginia was no longer on hismind. He was going back to the Coven.

A chill mist that was almost rain blew across the hillside and obscured the far distance in shiftingpatches. But even from here, on the ridge above the swamp, the castle looked different: heavier,stronger, darker.

Mr. Slippery started down the familiar slope. The frog on his shoulder seemed to sense his uneaseand its clawlets bit tighter into the leather of his jacket. Its beady yellow eyes turned this way andthat, re- cording everything. (Altogether, that frog was much improved--almost out of amateur statusnowadays.) The traps were different. In just the ten weeks since the War, the Coven had changed them morethan in the previous two years. Every so often, he shook the gathering droplets of water from his faceand peered more closely at a bush or boulder by the side of the path. His advance was slow,circuitous, and interrupted by invocations of voice and hand.

Finally he stood before the towers. A figure of black and glowing red climbed out of the magmamoat to meet him. Even Alan had changed: he no longer had his asbestos T-shirt, and there was nohumor in his sparring with the visitor. Mr. Slippery had to stare upward to look directly at his massivehead. The elemental splashed molten rock down on them, and the frog scampered between his neckand collar, its skin cold and slimy against his own. The passwords were different, the questioningmore hostile, but Mr. Slippery was a match for the tests and in a matter of minutes Alan retreatedsullenly to his steam- ing pool, and the drawbridge was lowered for their entrance.

The hall was almost the same as before: perhaps a bit drier, more brightly lit. There were certainlymore people. And they were all looking at him as he stood in the entranceway. Mr. Slippery gave histraveling jacket and hat to a liveried servant and started down the steps, trying to recognize the faces,trying to under- stand the tension and hostility that hung in the air.

"Slimey!" The Limey stepped forward from the crowd, a familiar grin splitting his bearded face.

"Slip! Is that really you?" (Not entirely a rhetorical question, under the circumstances.) Mr. Slippery nodded, and after a moment, the other did, too. The Limey almost ran across thespace that separated them, stuck out his hand, and clapped the other on the shoulder. "Come on,come on! We have rather a lot to talk about !.

As if on cue, the others turned back to their conver- sations and ignored the two friends as theywalked to one of the sitting rooms that opened off the main hall. Mr. Slippery felt like a man returningto his old school ten years after graduation. Almost all the faces were different, and he had the feelingthat he could never belong here again. But this was only ten weeks, not ten years.

The Slimey Limey shut the heavy door, and the sounds from the main room were muted. He wavedSlip to a chair and made a show of mixing them some drinks. "They're all simulators, aren't they?" Slipsaid quietly. "Uh?" The Limey broke off his stream of chatter and shook his head glumly. "Not all. I'verecruited four or five apprentices. They do their best to make the place look thriving and occupied.

You may have noticed various improvements in our security..

"It looks stronger, but it's more appearance than fact..

Slimey shrugged. "I really didn't expect it to fool the likes of you..

Mr. Slippery leaned forward. "Who's left from the old group, Slimey?.

"DON's gone. The Mailman is gone. Wiley J. Bas- tard shows up a couple of times a month, buthe's not much fun anymore. I think Erythrina's still on the System, but she hasn't come by. I thoughtyou were gone until today..

"What about Robin Hood?.

"Gone..

That accounted for all the top talents. Virginia the Frog hadn't been giving away all that muchwhen she excused him from betraying the Coven. Slip won- dered if there was any hint of smugness inthe frog's fixed and lipless smile. "What happened?.

The other sighed. "There's a depression on down in the real world, in case you hadn't noticed; andit's being blamed on us vandals.

"--I know, that could scarcely explain Robin's disap- pearance, only the lesser ones. Slip, I thinkmost of our old friends are either dead Truly Dead--or very frightened that if they come back into thisPlane, they will become Truly Dead..

This felt very much like history repeating itself. "How do you mean?.

The Limey leaned forward. "Slip, it's quite obvious the government's feeding us lies about whatcaused the depression. They say it was a combination of programming errors and the work of'vandals.' We know that can't be true. No ordinary vandals could cause that sort of damage. Rightafter the crash, I looked at what was left of the Feds' data bases. What- ever ripped things up wasmore powerful than any vandal. ... And I've spoken with--p'raps I should say interrogated Wiley. Ithink what we see in the real world and on this plane is in fact the wreckage of a bloody major war..

"Between?.

"Creatures as far above me as I am above a chimp. The names we know them by are the Mailman,Erythrina... and just possibly Mr. Slippery..

"Me?" Slip tensed and sent out probes along the communications links which he perceived hadcre- ated the image before him. Even though on a leash, Mr. Slippery was far more powerful than anynormal warlock, and it should have been easy to measure the power of this potential opponent. Butthe Limey was a diffuse, almost nebulous presence. Slip couldn't tell if he were facing an opponent inthe same class as himself; in fact, he had no clear idea of the other's strength, which was even moreominous.

The Limey didn't seem to notice. "That's what I thought. Now I doubt it. I wager you were used likeWiley and possibly DON--by the other combatants. And I see that now you're in someone's thrall..

His finger stabbed at the yellow-eyed frog on Mr. Slippery's shoulder, and a sparkle of whiskey flewinto the creature's face. Virginia--or whoever was controlling the beast--didn't know what to do, andthe frog froze momentarily, then recovered its wits and emitted a pale burst of flame.

The Limey laughed. "But it's no one very competent. The Feds is my guess. What happened? Didthey sight your True Name, or did you just sell out?.

"The creature's my familiar, Slimey. We all have our apprentices. If you really believe we're theFeds, why did you let us in?.

The other shrugged. "Because there are enemies and enemies, Slip. Beforetime, we called thegovern- ment the Great Enemy. Now I'd say they are just one in a pantheon of nasties. Those of uswho survived the crash are a lot tougher, a lot less frivolous. We don't think of this as all a wry gameanymore. And we're teaching our apprentices a lot more systematically. It's not near so much fun. Nowwhen we talk of traitors in the Coven, we mean real, life-and-death treachery.

"But it's necessary. When it comes to it, if we little people don't protect ourselves, we're going tobe eaten up by the government or... certain other creatures I fear even more..

The frog shifted restively on Mr. Slippery's shoulder, and he could imagine Virginia getting readyto de- liver some speech on the virtue of obeying the laws of society in order to reap its protection. Hereached across to pat its cold and pimply back; now was not the time for such debate.

"You had one of the straightest heads around here, Slip. Even if you aren't one of us anymore, Idon't reckon you're an absolute enemy: You and your ... friend may have certain interests in commonwith us. There are things you should know about--if you don't already. An' p'raps there'll be timesyou'll help us similarly..

Slip felt the Federal tether loosen. Virginia must have convinced her superiors that there wasactually help to be had here. "Okay. You're right. There was a war. The Mailman was the enemy. Helost and now we're trying to put things back together..

"Ah, that's just it, old man. I don't think the war is over. True, all that remains of the Mailman'scon- structs are 'craterfields' spread through the govern- ment's program space. But something like himis still very much alive." He saw the disbelief in Mr. Slippery's face. "I know, you an' your friends aremore powerful than any of us. But there are many of us--not just in the Coven--and we have learned alot these past ten weeks. There are signs, so light an' fickle you might call 'em atmosphere, that tell ussomething like the Mailman is still alive. It doesn't quite have the tex- ture of the Mailman, but it'sthere..

Mr. Slippery nodded. He didn't need any special explanations of the feeling. Damn! If I weren't ona leash, I would have seen all this weeks ago, instead of finding it out secondhand. He thought backto those last minutes of their descent from godhood and felt a chill. He knew what he must ask now,and he had a bad feeling about what the answer might be. Some- how he had to prevent Virginia fromhearing that answer. It would be a great risk, but he still had a few tricks he didn't think DoW knew of.

He probed back along the links that went to Arcata and D.C., feeling the interconnections and theredundancy checks. If he was lucky, he would not have to alter more than a few hundred bits of theinformation that would flow down to them in the next few seconds. "So who do you think is behindit?.

"For a while, I thought it might be you. Now I've seen you and, uh, done some tests, I know you'remore powerful than in the old days and probably more powerful than I am now, but you're nosuperman.

"Maybe I'm in disguise..

"Maybe, but I doubt it." The Limey was coming closer to the critical words that must be disguised.

Slip began to alter the redundancy bits transmitted through the construct of the frog. He would haveto fake the record both before and after those words if the deception was to escape detectioncompletely. "No, there's a certain style to this presence. A style that reminds me of our old friend,REorbyitnh rHio- noad." The name he said, and the name Mr. Slippery heard, was "Erythrina." Thename blended impercep- tibly in its place, the name the frog heard, and reported, was "Robin Hood..

"Hmm, possible. He always seemed to be power hungry." The Limey's eyebrows went upfractionally at the pronoun "he." Besides, Robin had been a fan- tastically clever vandal, not a powergrabber. Slimey's eyes flickered toward the frog, and Mr. Slippery prayed that he would play along.

"Do you really think this is as great a threat as the Mailman?.

"Who knows? The presence isn't as widespread as the Mailman's, and since the crash no more ofus have disappeared. Also, I'm not sure that... he... is the only such creature left. Perhaps the originalMail- man is still around..

And you can't decide who it is that I'm really trying to fool, can you.

The discussion continued for another half-hour, a weird three-way fencing match with just twoactive players. On the one hand, he and the Limey were trying to communicate past the frog, and onthe other, the Slimey Limey was trying to decide if per- haps Slip was the real enemy and the frog apotential ally. The hell of it was, Mr. Slippery wasn't sure himself of the answer to that puzzle.

Slimey walked him out to the drawbridge. For a few moments, they stood on the graven ceramicplat- ing and spoke. Below them, Alan paddled back and forth, looking up at them uneasily. The mistwas a light rain now, and a constant sizzling came from the molten rock.

Finally Slip said, "You're right in a way, Slimey. I am someone's thrall. But I will look for RobinHood. If you're right, you've got a couple of new allies. If he's too strong for us, this might be the lastyou see of me..

The Slimey Limey nodded, and Slip hoped he had gotten the real message: He would take on Eryall by himself. "Well then, let's hope this ain't good-bye, old man." Slip walked back down into thevalley, aware of the Limey's not unsympathetic gaze on his back.

How to find her, how to speak with her? And survive the experience, that is. Virginia had forbid-den him--literally on pain of death--from meeting with Ery on this plane. Even if he could do so, itwould be a deadly risk for other reasons. What had Ery been doing in those minutes she dallied, whenshe had fooled him into descending back to the hu- man plane before her? At the time, he had feared itwas a betrayal. Yet he had lived and had forgotten the mystery. Now he wondered again. It wasimpossible for him to understand the complexity of those minutes. Perhaps she had weakened herselfat the beginning to gull him into starting the descent, and perhaps then she hadn't been quite strongenough to take over. Was that possible? And now she was slowly, secretly building back her powers,just as the Mail- man had done? He didn't want to believe it, and he knew if Virginia heard hissuspicions, the Feds would kill her immediately. There would be no trial, no deep investigation.

Somehow he must get past Virginia and confront Ery--confront her in such a way that he could de-stroy her if she were a new Mailman. And there is a way! He almost laughed: it was absurd andabsurdly simple, and it was the only thing that might work. All eyes were on this plane, where magicand power flowed easily to the participants. He would attack from beneath, from the lowly magiclessreal world.

But there was one final act of magic he must slip past Virginia, something absolutely necessary fora real world confrontation with Erythrina.

He had reached the far ridge and was starting down the hillside that led to the swamps. Evenpreoccupied, he had given the right signs flawlessly. The guardian sprites were not nearly so vigilantto- ward contructs moving away from the castle. As the wet brush closed in about them, the familiarred and black spider--or its cousin--swung down from above.

"Beware, beware," came the tiny voice. From the flecks of gold across its abdomen, he knew theright response: left hand up and flick the spider away. Instead Slip raised his right hand and struck atthe creature.

The spider hoisted itself upward, screeching faintly, then dropped toward Slip's neck--to landsquarely on the frog. A free-for-all erupted as the two scrambled across the back of his neck, paleflame jousting against venom. Even as he moved to save the frog, Mr. Slip- pery melted part of hisattention into a data line that fed a sporting goods store in Montreal. An order was placed and laterthat day a certain very special pack- age would be in the mail to the Boston International Rail Terminal.

Slip made a great show of dispatching the spider, and as the frog settled back on his shoulder, hesaw that he had probably fooled Virginia. That he had expected. Fooling Ery would be much thedeadlier, chancier thing.

If this afternoon were typical, then July in Provi- dence must be a close approximation to Hell.

Roger Pollack left the tube as it passed the urbapt block and had to walk nearly four hundred meters toget to the tower he sought. His shirt was soaked with sweat from just below the belt line right up tohis neck. The contents of the package he had picked up at the airport train station sat heavily in hisright coat pocket, tapping against his hip with every step, reminding him that this was high noon inmore ways than one.

Pollack quickly crossed the blazing concrete plaza and walked along the edge of the shadow thatwas all the tower cast in the noonday sun. All around him the locals swarmed, all ages, seeminglyunfazed by the still, moist, hot air. Apparently you could get used to practically anything.

Even an urbapt in summer in Providence. Pollack had expected the buildings to be moredepressing. Workers who had any resources became data com- muters and lived outside the cities. Ofcourse, some of the people here were data-set users too and so could be characterized as datacommuters. Many of them worked as far away from home as any exurb dweller. The difference wasthat they made so little money (when they had a job at all) that they were forced to take advantage ofthe economies of scale the urbapts provided.

Pollack saw the elevator ahead but had to detour around a number of children playing stickball inthe plaza. The elevator was only half-full, so a wave from him was all it took to keep it grounded till hecould get aboard.

No one followed him on, and the faces around him were disinterested and entirely ordinary. Pollackwas not fooled. He hadn't violated the letter of Virginia's law; he wasn't trying to see Erythrina on thedata net. But he was going to see Debby Charteris, which came close to being the same thing. Heimagined the Feds debating with themselves, finally deciding it would be safe to let the two godlingsget together if it were on this plane where the State was still the ultimate, all-knowing god. He andDebby would be observed. Even so, he would somehow discover if she were the threat the Limey saw.

If not, the Feds would never know of his suspicions. But if Ery had betrayed them all and meant to setherself up in place of--or in league with--the Mailman, then in the next few minutes one of them woulddie.

The express slid to a stop with a deceptive gentle- ness that barely gave a feeling of lightness.

Pollack paid and got off.

Floor 25 was mainly shopping mall. He would have to find the stairs to the residential apts betweenFloors 25 and 35. Pollack drifted through the mall. He was beginning to feel better about the wholething. I'm still alive, aren't I? If Ery had really become what the Limey and Slip feared, then heprobably would have had a little "accident" before now. All the way across the continent he sat withhis guts frozen, thinking how easy it would be for someone with the Mailman's power to destroy an airtransport, even without resort- ing to the military's lasers. A tiny change in naviga- tion or traffic-control directions, and any number of fatal incidents could be arranged. But nothing had happened,which meant that either Ery was innocent or that she hadn't noticed him. (And that second possibilitywas unlikely if she were a new Mailman. One impression that remained stronger than any other fromhis short time as godling was the omniscience of it all.) It turned out the stairs were on the other side of the mall, marked by a battered sign reminiscent ofold-time highway markers: FOOTS > 26-30. The place wasn't really too bad, he supposed, eyeing thestained but durable carpet that covered the stairs. And the hallways coming off each landing remindedhim of the motels he had known as a child, before the turn of the century. There was very little trashvisible, the people moving around him weren't poorly dressed, and there was only the faintest spice ofdisinfectant in the air. Apt module 28355, where Debbie Charteris lived, might be high-class. It didhave an exterior view, he knew that. Maybe Erythrina--Debbie--liked living with all these other people.

Surely, now that the government was so interested in her, she could move anywhere she wished.

But when he reached it, he found floor 28 no different from the others he had seen: carpeted hall-way stretching away forever beneath dim lights that showed identical module doorways dwindling inperspective. What was Debbie/Erythrina like that she would choose to live here.

"Hold it." Three teenagers stepped from behind the slant of the stairs. Pollack's hand edged towardhis coat pocket. He had heard of the gangs. These three looked like heavies, but they were well andconserva- tively dressed, and the small one actually had his hair in a braid. They wanted very much tobe thought part of the establishment.

The short one flashed something silver at him. "Building Police." And Pollack remembered thenews stories about Federal Urban Support paying young- sters for urbapt security: "A project thatsaves money and staff, while at the same time giving our urban youth an opportunity for responsiblecitizenship..

Pollack swallowed. Best to treat them like real cops. He showed them his id. "I'm from out of state.

I'm just visiting..

The other two closed in, and the short one laughed. "That's sure. Fact, Mr. Pollack, Sammy's littlegadget says you're in violation of Building Ordinance." The one on Pollack's left waved a faintlybuzzing cylinder across Pollack's jacket, then pushed a hand into the jacket and withdrew Pollack'spistol, a lightweight ceramic slug-gun perfect for hunting hikes--and which should have been perfectfor getting past a building's weapon detectors.

Sammy smiled down at the weapon, and the short one continued, "Thing you didn't know, Mr.

Pollack, is Federal law requires a metal tag in the butt of these cram guns. Makes 'em easy to detect..

Until the tag was removed. Pollack suspected that some- how this incident might never be reported.

The three stepped back, leaving the way clear for Pollack. "That's all? I can go?.

The young cop grinned. "Sure. You're out-of-towner. How could you know?.

Pollack continued down the hall. The others did not follow. Pollack was fleetingly surprised: maybethe FUS project actually worked. Before the turn of the century, goons like those three would have atleast robbed him. Instead they behaved something like real cops.

Or maybe--and he almost stumbled at this new thought--they all work for Ery now. That might bethe first symptom of conquest: the new god would simply become the government. And he--the lastthreat to the new order--was being granted one last audience with the victor.

Pollack straightened and walked on more quickly. There was no turning back now, and he wasdamned if he would show any more fear. Besides, he thought with a sudden surge of relief, it was outof his control now. If Ery was a monster, there was nothing he could do about it; he would not have totry to kill her. If she were not, then his own survival would be proof, and he need think of nocomplicated tests of her innocence.

He was almost hurrying now. He had always wanted to know what the human being beyondErythrina was like; sooner or later he would have had to do this anyway. Weeks ago he had lookedthrough all the official directories for the state of Rhode Island, but there wasn't much to find: Lindaand Deborah Charteris lived at 28355 Place on 4448 Grosvenor Row. The public directory didn't evenshow their "interests and occupations..

28313, 315, 317 ....

His mind had gone in circles, generating all the things Debby Charteris might turn out to be. Shewould not be the exotic beauty she projected in the Other Plane. That was too much to hope for; butthe other possibilities vied in his mind. He had lived with each, trying to believe that he could acceptwhatever turned out to be the case: Most likely, she was a perfectly ordinary looking person who lived in an urbapt to save enoughmoney to buy high-quality processing equipment and rent dense comm lines. Maybe she wasn'tgood-looking, and that was why the directory listing was relatively secretive.

Almost as likely, she was massively handicapped. He had seen that fairly often among thewarlocks whose True Names he knew. They had extra medical welfare and used all their free money forequipment that worked around whatever their problem might be--paraplegia, quadriplegia, multiplesense loss. As such, they were perfectly competitive on the job market, yet old prejudices often keptthem out of normal society. Many of these types retreated into the Other Plane, where one couldcompletely control one's appearance.

And then, since the beginning of time, there had been the people who simply did not like reality,who wanted another world, and if given half a chance would live there forever. Pollack suspected thatsome of the best warlocks might be of this type. Such people were content to live in an urbapt, tospend all their money on processing and life-support equipment, to spend days at a time in the OtherPlane, never moving, never exercising their real world bodies. They grew more and more adept, moreand more knowledge- able--while their bodies slowly wasted. Pollack could imagine such a personbecoming an evil thing and taking over the Mailman's role. It would be like a spider sitting in its web,its victims all humanity. He remembered Ery's contemptuous attitude on learning he never used drugsto maintain concentration and so stay longer in the Other Plane. He shuddered.

And there, finally, and yet too soon, the numbers 28355 stood on the wall before him, the faint halllight glistening off their bronze finish. For a long moment, he balanced between the fear and the wish.

Finally he reached forward and tapped the door buzzer.

Fifteen seconds passed. There was no one nearby in the hall. From the corner of his eye, he couldsee the "cops" lounging by the stairs. About a hundred meters the other way, an argument was goingon. The contenders rounded the faraway corner and their voices quieted, leaving him in near silence.

There was a click, and a small section of the door became transparent, a window (more likely aholo) on the interior of the apt. And the person beyond that view would be either Deborah or LindaCharteris.

"Yes?" The voice was faint, cracking with age. Pollack saw a woman barely tall enough to come upto the pickup on the other side. Her hair was white, visibly thin on top, especially from the angle hewas viewing.

"I'm... I'm looking for Deborah Charteris..

"My granddaughter. She's out shopping. Down- stairs in the mall, I think." The head bobbed, afaintly distracted nod.

"Oh. Can you tell me--" Deborah, Debby. It sud- denly struck him what an old-fashioned name thatwas, more the name of a grandmother than a grand- daughter. He took a quick step to the door andlooked down through the pane so that he could see most of the other's body. The woman wore an old-fashioned skirt and blouse combination of some brilliant red material.

Pollack pushed his hand against the immovable plastic of the door. "Ery, please. Let me in..

The pane blanked as he spoke, but after a moment the door slowly opened. "Okay." Her voice wastired, defeated. Not the voice of a god boasting victory.

The interior was decorated cheaply and with what might have been good taste except for thegarish excesses of red on red. Pollack remembered reading somewhere that as you age, colorsensitivity decreases. This room might seem only mildly bright to the per- son Erythrina had turnedout to be.

The woman walked slowly across the tiny apt and gestured for him to sit. She was frail, her backcurved in a permanent stoop, her every step considered yet tremulous. Under the apt's window, henoticed an elaborate GE processor system. Pollack sat and found himself looking slightly upward intoher face.

"Slip--or maybe I should call you Roger here--you always were a bit of a romantic fool." Shepaused for breath, or perhaps her mind wandered. "I was begin- ning to think you had more sensethan to come out here, that you could leave well enough alone..

"You ... you mean, you didn't know I was coming?" The knowledge was a great loosening in hischest.

"Not until you were in the building." She turned and sat carefully upon the sofa.

"I had to see who you really are," and that was certainly the truth. "After this spring, there is noone the likes of us in the whole world..

Her face cracked in a little smile. "And now you see how different we are. I had hoped you neverwould and that someday they would let us back to- gether on the Other Plane .... But in the end, itdoesn't really matter." She paused, brushed at her temple, and frowned as though forgettingsomething, or remembering something else.

"I never did look much like the Erythrina you know. I was never tall, of course, and my hair wasnever red. But I didn't spend my whole life selling life insurance in Peoria, like poor Wiley..

"You... you must go all the way back to the begin- ning of computing..

She smiled again, and nodded just so, a manner- ism Pollack had often seen on the Other Plane.

"Almost, almost. Out of high school, I was a keypunch operator. You know what a keypunch is?.

He nodded hesitantly, visions of some sort of ma- chine press in his mind.

"It was a dead-end job, and in those days they'd keep you in it forever if you didn't get out underyour own power. I got out of it and into college quick as I could, but at least I can say I was in thebusiness during the stone age. After college, I never looked back; there was always so muchhappening. In the Nasty Nineties, I was on the design of the ABM and FoG control programs. Thewhole team, the whole of DoD for that matter, was trying to program the thing with procedurallanguages; it would take 'em a thou- sand years and a couple of wars to do it that way, and they werebeginning to realize as much. I was respon- sible for getting them away from CRTs, for getting intoreally interactive EEG programming--what they call portal programming nowadays. Sometimes ...

sometimes when my ego needs a little help, I like to think that if I had never been born, hundreds ofmillions more would have died back then, and our cities would be glassy ponds today.

"... And along the way there was a marriage ..." her voice trailed off again, and she sat smiling atmemories Pollack could not see.

He looked around the apt. Except for the processor and a fairly complete kitchenette, there was nospe- cial luxury. What money she had must go into her equipment, and perhaps in getting a room witha real exterior view. Beyond the rising towers of the Grosve- nor complex, he could see the nest ofcomm towers that had been their last-second salvation that spring. When he looked back at her, hesaw that she was watching him with an intent and faintly amused ex- pression that was very familiar.

"I'll bet you wonder how anyone so daydreamy could be the Erythrina you knew in the OtherPlane." "Why, no," he lied. "You seem perfectly lucid to me..

"Lucid, yes. I am still that, thank God. But I know-- and no one has to tell me--that I can't support atrain of thought like I could before. These last two or three years, I've found that my mind can wander,can drop into reminiscence, at the most inconvenient times. I've had one stroke, and about all 'themiracles of modern medicine' can do for me is predict that it will not be the last one.

"But in the Other Plane, I can compensate. It's easy for the EEG to detect failure of attention. I'vewritten a package that keeps a thirty-second backup; when distraction is detected, it forces attentionand reloads my short-term memory. Most of the time, this gives me better concentration than I've everhad in my life. And when there is a really serious wandering of attention, the package can interpolatefor a num- ber of seconds. You may have noticed that, though perhaps you mistook it for poorcommunications coordination..

She reached a thin, blue-veined hand toward him. He took it in his own. It felt so light and dry, butit returned his squeeze. "It really is me--Ery--inside, Slip..

He nodded, feeling a lump in his throat.

"When I was a kid, there was this song, something about us all being aging children. And it's sovery, very true. Inside I still feel like a youngster. But on this plane, no one else can see....

"But I know, Ery. We knew each other on the Other Plane, and I know what you truly are. Both ofus are so much more there than we could ever be here." This was all true: even with the restrictionsthey put on him now, he had a hard time understand- ing all he did on the Other Plane. What he hadbecome since the spring was a fuzzy dream to him when he was down in the physical world. Some-times he felt like a fish trying to imagine what a man in an airplane might be feeling. He never spoke ofit like this to Virginia and her friends: they would be sure he had finally gone crazy. It was far beyondwhat he had known as a warlock. And what they had been those brief minutes last spring had beenequally far beyond that.

"Yes, I think you do know me, Slip. And we'll be ... friends as long as this body lasts. And when I'mgone--.

"I'll remember; I'll always remember you, Ery." She smiled and squeezed his hand again. "Thanks.

But that's not what I was getting at.... " Her gaze drifted off again. "I figured out who the Mailman wasand I wanted to tell you..

Pollack could imagine Virginia and the other DoW eavesdroppers hunkering down to their spyequipment. "I hoped you knew something." He went on to tell her about the Slimey Limey's detectionof Mailman- like operations still on the System. He spoke carefully, knowing that he had twoaudiences.

Ery--even now he couldn't think of her as Debby-- nodded. "I've been watching the Coven.

They've grown, these last months. I think they take them- selves more seriously now. In the old days,they never would have noticed what the Limey warned you about. But it's not the Mailman he saw,Slip..

"How can you be sure, Ery? We never killed more than his service programs and his simulators--like DON.MAC. We never found his True Name. We don't even know if he's human or some science-fictional alien..

"You're wrong, Slip. I know what the Limey saw, and I know who the Mailman is--or was," shespoke quietly, but with certainty. "It turns out the Mailman was the greatest cliche of the ComputerAge, maybe of the entire Age of Science..

"Huh?.

"You've seen plenty of personality simulators in the Other Plane. DON.MAC--at least as he wasrewrit- ten by the Mailman--was good enough to fool normal warlocks. Even Alan, the Coven'selemental, shows plenty of human emotion and cunning." Pollack thought of the new Alan, soferocious and intimidating. The Turing T-shirt was beneath his dignity now. "Even so, Slip, I don'tthink you've ever believed you could be permanently fooled by a simulation, have you?.

"Wait. Are you trying to tell me that the Mailman was just another simulator? That the time lag wasjust to obscure the fact that he was a simulator? That's ridiculous. You know his powers were morethan human, almost as great as ours became." "But do you think you could ever be fooled?" "Frankly,no. If you talk to one of those things long enough, they display a repetitiveness, an inflexibility that'sa giveaway. I don't know; maybe someday there'll be programs that can pass the Turing test. Butwhat- ever it is that makes a person a person is terribly complicated. Simulation is the wrong way toget at it, because being a person is more than symptoms. A program that was a person would useenormous data bases, and if the processors running it were the sort we have now, you certainlycouldn't expect real-time interaction with the outside world." And Pollack sud- denly had a glimmer ofwhat she was thinking.

"That's the critical point, Slip: if you want real- time interaction. But the Mailman--the sentient,con- versational part--never did operate real time. We thought the lag was a communications delaythat showed the operator was off-planet, but really he was here all the time. It just took him hours ofprocessing time to sustain seconds of self-awareness..

Pollack opened his mouth, but nothing came out. It went against all his intuition, almost againstwhat religion he had, but it might just barely be possible. The Mailman had controlled immenseresources. All his quick time reactions could have been the work of ordinary programs and simulatorslike DON.MAC. The only evidence they had for his humanity were those teleprinter conversationswhere his responses were spread over hours.

"Okay, for the sake of argument, let's say it's possible. Someone, somewhere had to write the origi-nal Mailman. Who was that?.

"Who would you guess? The government, of course. About ten years ago. It was an NSA teamtrying to automate system protection. Some brilliant people, but they could never really get it off theground. They wrote a developmental kernel that by itself was not especially effective or aware. It wasdesigned to live within large systems and gradually grow in power and awareness, independent ofwhat policies or mis- takes the operators of the system might make.

"The program managers saw the Frankenstein analogy--or at least they saw a threat to their per-sonal power--and quashed the project. In any case, it was very expensive. The program executedslowly and gobbled incredible data space..

"And you're saying that someone conveniently left a copy running all unknown?.

She seemed to miss the sarcasm. "It's not that unlikely. Research types are fairly careless--outsideof their immediate focus. When I was in FoG, we lost thousands of megabytes 'between the cracks' ofour data bases. And back then, that was a lot of memory. The development kernel is not very large.

My guess is a copy was left in the system. Remember, the kernel was designed to live untended if itever started executing. Over the years it slowly grew--both be- cause of its natural tendencies andbecause of the increased power of the nets it lived in..

Pollack sat back on the sofa. Her voice was tiny and frail, so unlike the warm, rich tones he remem-bered from the Other Plane. But she spoke with the same authority.

Debby's--Erythrina's--pale eyes stared off beyond the walls of the apt, dreaming. "You know, theyare right to be afraid," she said finally. "Their world is ending. Even without us, there would still be theLimey, the Coven--and someday most of the human race..

Damn. Pollack was momentarily tongue-tied, trying desperately to think of something to mollify thethreat implicit in Ery's words. Doesn't she understand that DoW would never let us talk unbugged.

Doesn't she know how trigger-happy scared the top Feds must be by now.

But before he could say anything, Ery glanced at him, saw the consternation in his face, andsmiled. The tiny hand patted his. "Don't worry, Slip. The Feds are listening, but what they're hearing istearful chitchat--you overcome to find me what I am, and me trying to console the both of us. Theywill never know what I really tell you here. They will never know about the gun the local boys took offyou..

"What?.

"You see, I lied a little. I know why you really came. I know you thought that I might be the newmonster. But I don't want to lie to you anymore. You risked your life to find out the truth, when youcould have just told the Feds what you guessed." She went on, taking advantage of his stupefiedsilence. "Did you ever wonder what I did in those last minutes this spring, after we surrendered--whenI lagged behind you in the Other Plane.

"It's true, we really did destroy the Mailman; that's what all that unintelligible data space weplowed up was. I'm sure there are copies of the kernel hidden here and there, like little cancers in theSystem, but we can control them one by one as they appear.

"I guessed what had happened when I saw all that space, and I had plenty of time to study whatwas left, even to trace back to the original research project. Poor little Mailman, like the monsters offiction he was only doing what he had been designed to do. He was taking over the System,protecting it from everyone--even its owners. I suspect he would have announced himself in the endand used some sort of nuclear blackmail to bring the rest of the world into line. But even though hisprograms had been run- ning for several years, he had only had fifteen or twenty hours of human typeself-awareness when we did him in. His personality programs were that slow. He never attained thelevel of consciousness you and I had on the System.

"But he really was self-aware, and that was the triumph of it all. And in those few minutes, I figuredout how I could adapt the basic kernel to accept any input personality. ... That is what I really wantedto tell you..

"Then what the Limey saw was--.

She nodded. "Me ....

She was grinning now, an open though conspirato- rial grin that was very familiar. "When BertrandRus- sell was very old, and probably as dotty as I am now, he talked of spreading his interests andattention out to the greater world and away from his own body, so that when that body died he wouldscarcely notice it, his whole consciousness would be so diluted through the outside world.

"For him, it was wishful thinking, of course. But not for me. My kernel is out there in the System.

Every time I'm there, I transfer a little more of myself. The kernel is growing into a true Erythrina, whois also truly me. When this body dies," she squeezed his hand with hers, "when this body dies, I willstill be, and you can still talk to me..

"Like the Mailman?.

"Slow like the Mailman. At least till I design faster processors....

"... So in a way, I am everything you and the Limey were afraid of. You could probably still stop me,Slip." And he sensed that she was awaiting his judgment, the last judgment any mere human wouldever be allowed to levy upon her.

Slip shook his head and smiled at her, thinking of the slow-moving guardian angel that she wouldbecome. Every race must arrive at this point in its history, he suddenly realized. A few years ordecades in which its future slavery or greatness rests on the goodwill of one or two persons. It couldhave been the Mailman. Thank God it was Ery instead.

And beyond those years or decades... for an instant, Pollack came near to understanding thingsthat had once been obvious. Processors kept getting faster, memories larger. What now took aplanet's resources would someday be possessed by everyone. Including himself.

Beyond those years or decades... were millennia. And Ery.

Vernor Vinge San Diego June 1979-January 1980 Afterword, by Marvin Minsky.

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