THE WRONG END OF TIME BY JOHN BRUNNER

“Go on!” she encouraged.

He gave her a blank, helpless stare. “I . . . oh, I think sometimes I shall go insane! Do you know what I did? When I got through the fence, I-I felt out the equipment. I found the central switch-house, this little round thing made of that artificial ruby they use over in Lakonia, and I sneaked in and turned everything off. It’s sort of complicated, but when you do it in a certain order …. Well, never mind; I can’t explain the details.

“But when I came away I left the site turned off!”

“Then they’ll find out!” Magda exclaimed. “They service those sites all the time-you see the helicopters taking off from the airport!”

“Yes, of course,” Danta said, staring miserably down at his hands. “And I can feel that they’ll find out soon. I had a reason for doing what I did, I’m sure of that. But I’ll be radiated if I can remember what it was!”

“You’re shaking, baby” Magda said. “Here. Let me wind you down.” She rose and began to strip off her towel.

“Uh-uh,” Danty sighed. “It goes on.”

“What comes next?”

“I’m not sure. I only feel I have to be somewhere-out by the scrap yards on the west end of town. I’ll know the spot when I get there.” He checked his watch. “In fact it’s about time I got started.”

“Have some pot, at least-or a trank, if you’re really in a hurry!”

“No, I daren’t risk it. I have to be as keyed up as I can.”

She stared at him for a long moment. Before she could say anything else, however, he had read her mind.

“You think I’m going to burn myself out, don’t you?”

She gave a nod. A very slight nod, as though limiting the gesture could soften the truth behind it.

“Yes: Yes, I think so too,” Danty muttered. “But not doing what I feel I have to do-that would be worse.” A faint smile followed the words. “But thank you anyhow. If there wasn’t someone I could talk to, someone, who cares about me, I’d have gone insane long ago.”

He rose, stretching. “Although it’s arguable, I guess,” he added, “that I already am crazy. Poor Magdal”

“What?”

“‘Poor Magdal’ I said. Landed with one case for which you can’t see any hopeful outcome!”

She pondered that, then shook her head. “No, that’s not true. You may burn yourself out, that’s a fact. But it would be a very special kind of burning. Goodbye, Danty.”

“What ch’waiting fo’?” Potatohead muttered, staring at the addle cock blonde with the bare chowbag. He nudged ;, Josh Tatum.

“Poke me one more,” Josh said, “I cut out yo’ Idaho eyes. She walking this way? She climbing walls? Shee-it.”

Josh wasn’t a reb and if you’d called him one he’d have carved you for it. They were tight on guns in Cowville but knives, everybody had knives. He was slick from neck to a heel in plastic blacker than his skin, and shinier, and his scalp fuzzed an eighty-eight force-grown natural. Same with other, Shark Bance. -Potatohead was shaved and ashamed. But something wrong with the follicles.

“Lakonia,” Shark said under his breath.

“Where the shit else? 1 know her.”

“What?”

“Name? Name? Piss her name. Peg it, peg it! Chow bare, zip-crotch shorts-eyes, use yo’ eyes!”

“Pegged,” Potatohead said. “Po’ li’1 rich, due fo’ kindaha surprise.” He grabbed Shark’s hand and kissed it.

“Kill it! Wannah-a see that? She grunt pig! Spread an’ bar-a walk. Makun quick!”

“Iota scrap yard?” Shark inquired.

“Scrap yard, yea.”

In spite of her resolution Lora felt- nervous as she approached the young blacks. There was something so statue-like about them: all three tall, all three dead-faced, all three in that strange tight muscle-hugging plastic …. She liked to feel a boy’s skin before she let him unzip the crotch of her shorts, which was why she preferred `: the beach, or in winter the dansoteks where it was always

too hot for heavy clothing.

But this was the thing she had set her mind to, so she kept on going.

The nearest of them, with the shaven head, stepped into . her path. She smiled sunnily at him and said, “Hil”

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