She nodded, and pressed a few keys: Words started to fill her screen, and one close to Osborne. I got up and read Lisa's terminal.
   It was a brief bio of Kluge/Gavin. He was about my age, but while I was getting shot at in a foreign land, he was cutting a swath through the infant computer industry. He had been there from the ground up, working at many of the top research facilities. It surprised me that it had taken over a week to identify him.
   "I compiled this anecdotally," Lisa said, as we read. "The first thing you have to realize about Gavin is that he exists nowhere in any computerized information system. So I called people all over the country-interesting phone system he's got, by the way; it generates a new number for each call, and you can't call back or trace it-and started asking who the top people were in the fifties and sixties. I got a lot of names. After that, it was a matter of finding out who no longer existed in the files. He faked his death in 1967. I located one account of it in a newspaper file. Everybody I talked to who had known him knew of his death. There is a paper birth certificate in Florida. That's the only other evidence I found of him. He was the only guy so many people in the field knew who left no mark on the world. That seemed conclusive to me."
   Osborne finished reading, then looked up.
   "All right, Ms. Foo. What else have you found out?"
   "I've broken some of his codes. I had a piece of luck, getting into a basic rape-and-plunder program he'd written to attack other people's programs, and I've managed to use it against a few of his own. I've unlocked a file of passwords with notes on where they came from. And I've learned a few of his tricks. But it's the tip of the iceberg."
   She waved a hand at the silent metal brains in the room.
   "What I haven't gotten across to anyone is just what this is. This is the most devious electronic weapon ever devised. It's armored like a battleship. It has to be; there's a lot of very slick programs out there that grab an invader and hang on like a terrier. If they ever got this far Kluge could deflect them. But usually they never even knew they'd been burgled. Kluge'd come in like a cruise missile, low and fast and twisty. And he'd route his attack through a dozen cut-offs.
   "He had a lot of advantages. Big systems these days are heavily protected. People use passwords and very sophisticated codes. But Kluge helped invent most of them. You need a damn good lock to keep out a locksmith. He helped install a lot of the major systems. He left informants behind, hidden in the software. If the codes were changed, the computer itself would send the information to a safe system that Kluge could tap later. It's like you buy the biggest, meanest, best-trained watchdog you can. And that night, the guy who trained the dog comes in, pats him on the head, and robs you blind."
   There was a lot more in that vein. I'm afraid that when Lisa began talking about computers, ninety percent of my head shut off.
   "I'd like to know something, Osborne," Lisa said.
   "What would that be?"
   "What is my status here? Am I supposed to be solving your crime for you, or just trying to get this system back to where a competent user can deal with it?"
   Osborne thought it over.
   "What worries me," she added, "is that I'm poking around in a lot of restricted data banks. I'm worried about somebody knocking on the door and handcuffing me. You ought to be worried, too. Some of these agencies wouldn't like a homicide cop looking into their affairs."
   Osborne bridled at that. Maybe that's what she intended.
   "What do I have to do?" he snarled. "Beg you to stay?"
   "No. I just want your authorization. You don't have to put it in writing. Just say you're behind me."
   "Look. As far as L.A. County and the State of California are concerned, this house doesn't exist. There is no lot here. It doesn't appear in the assessor's records. This place is in a legal limbo. If anybody can authorize you to use this stuff, it's me, because I believe a murder was committed in it. So you just keep doing what you've been doing."
   "That's not much of a commitment," she mused.
   "It's all you're going to get. Now, what else have you got?"
   She turned to her keyboard and typed for a while. Pretty soon a printer started, and Lisa leaned back. I glanced at her screen. It said: osculate posterior-p. I remembered that osculate meant kiss. Well, these people have their own language. Lisa looked up at me and grinned.
   "Not you," she said, quietly. "Him."
   I hadn't the faintest notion of what she was talking about.
   Osborne got his printout and was ready to leave. Again, he couldn't resist turning at the door for final orders.
   "If you find anything to indicate he didn't commit suicide, let me know."
   "Okay. He didn't commit suicide."
   Osborne didn't understand for a moment.
   "I want proof."
   "Well, I have it, but you probably can't use it. He didn't write that ridiculous suicide note."
   "How do you know that?"
   "I knew that my first day here. I had the computer list the program. Then I compared it to Kluge's style. No way he could have written it. It's tighter'n a bug's ass. Not a spare line in it. Kluge didn't pick his alias for nothing. You know what it means?"
   "Clever," I said.
   "Literally. But it means… a Rube Goldberg device.
   Something overly complex. Something that works, but for the wrong reason. You 'kluge around' bugs in a program. It's the hacker's vaseline."
   "So?" Osborne wanted to know.
   "So Kluge's programs were really crocked. They were full of bells and whistles he never bothered to clean out. He was a genius, and his programs worked, but you wonder why they did. Routines so bletcherous they'd make your skin crawl. Real crufty bagbiters. But good programming's so rare, even his diddles were better than most people's super-moby hacks."
   I suspect Osborne understood about as much of that as I did.
   "So you base your opinion on his programming style."
   "Yeah. Unfortunately, it's gonna be ten years or so before that's admissible in court, like graphology or fingerprints. But if you know anything about programming you can look at it and see it. Somebody else wrote that suicide note-somebody damn good, by the way. That program called up his last will and testament as a sub-routine. And he definitely did write that. It's got his fingerprints all over it. He spent the last five years spying on the neighbors as a hobby. He tapped into military records, school records, work records, tax files and bank accounts. And he turned every telephone for three blocks into a listening device. He was one hell of a snoop."
   "Did he mention anywhere why he did that?" Osborne asked.
   "I think he was more than half crazy. Possibly he was suicidal. He sure wasn't doing himself any good with all those pills he took. But he was preparing himself for death, and Victor was the only one he found worthy of leaving it all to. I'd have believed he committed suicide if not for that note. But he didn't write it. I'll swear to that."
   We eventually got rid of him, and I went home to fix the dinner. Lisa joined me when it was ready. Once more she had a huge appetite.
   I fixed lemonade and we sat on my small patio and watched evening gather around us.
   I woke up in the middle of the night, sweating. I sat up, thinking it out, and I didn't like my conclusions. So I put on my robe and slippers and went over to Kluge's.
   The front door was open again. I knocked anyway. Lisa stuck her head around the corner.
   "Victor? Is something wrong?"
   "I'm not sure," I said. "May I come in?"
   She gestured, and I followed her into the living room. An open can of Pepsi sat beside her console. Her eyes were red as she sat on her bench.
   "What's up?" she said, and yawned.
   "You should be asleep, for one thing," I said.
   She shrugged, and nodded.
   "Yeah. I can't seem to get in the right phase. Just now I'm in day mode. But Victor, I'm used to working odd hours, and long hours, and you didn't come over here to lecture me about that, did you?"
   "No. You say Kluge was murdered."

   "He didn't write his suicide note. That seems to leave murder.''
   "I was wondering why someone would kill him. He never left the house, so it was for something he did here with his computers. And now you're… well, I don't know what you're doing, frankly, but you seem to be poking into the same things. Isn't there a danger the same people will come after you?"
   "People?" She raised an eyebrow.
   I felt helpless. My fears were not well-formed enough to make sense.
   "I don't know… you mentioned agencies…"
   "You notice how impressed Osborne was with that? You think there's some kind of conspiracy Kluge tumbled to, or you think the CIA killed him because he found out too much about something, or-"
   "I don't know, Lisa. But I'm worried the same thing could happen to you." ¦
   Surprisingly, she smiled at me.
   "Thank you so much, Victor. I wasn't going to admit it to Osborne, but I've been worried about that, too."
   "Well, what are you going to do?"
   "I want to stay here and keep working. So I gave some thought to what I could do to protect myself. I decided there wasn't anything."
   "Surely there's something."
   "Well, I got a gun, if that's what you mean. But think about it. Kluge was offed in the middle of the day. Nobody saw anybody enter or leave the house. So I asked myself, who can walk into a house in broad daylight, shoot Kluge, program that suicide note, and walk away, leaving no traces he'd ever been there?"
   "Somebody very good."
   "Goddam good. So good there's not much chance one little gook's gonna be able to stop him if he decides to waste her."
   She shocked me, both by her words and by her apparent lack of concern for her own fate. But she had said she was worried.
   "Then you have to stop this. Get out of here."
   "I won't be pushed around that way," she said. There was a tone of finality to it. I thought of things I might say, and rejected them all.
   "You could at least… lock your front door," I concluded, lamely.
   She laughed, and kissed my cheek.
   "I'll do that, Yank. And I appreciate your concern. I really do."
   I watched her close the door behind me, listened to her lock it, then trudged through the moonlight toward my house. Halfway there I stopped. I could suggest she stay in my spare bedroom. I could offer to stay with her at Kluge's.
   No, I decided. She would probably take that the wrong way.
   I was back in bed before I realized, with a touch of chagrin and more than a little disgust at myself, that she had every reason to take it the wrong way.
   And me exactly twice her age.

   I spent the morning in the garden, planning the evening's menu. I have always liked to cook, but dinner with Lisa had rapidly become the high point of my day. Not only that, I was already taking it for granted. So it hit me hard, around noon, when I looked out the front and saw her car gone.
   I hurried to Kluge's front door. It was standing open. I made a quick search of the house. I found nothing until the master bedroom, where her clothes were stacked neatly on the floor.
   Shivering, I pounded on the Laniers' front door. Betty answered, and immediately saw my agitation.
   "The girl at Kluge's house," I said. "I'm afraid something's wrong. Maybe we'd better call the police."
   "What happened?" Betty asked, looking over my shoulder. "Did she call you? I see she's not back yet."
   "Back?"
   "I saw her drive away about an hour ago. That's quite a car she has."
   Feeling like a fool, I tried to make nothing of it, but I caught a look in Betty's eye. I think she'd have liked to pat me on the head. It made me furious.
   But she'd left her clothes, so surely she was coming back.
   I kept telling myself that, then went to run a bath, as hot as I could stand it.

   When I answered the door she was standing there with a grocery bag in each arm and her usual blinding smile on her face.
   "I wanted to do this yesterday but I forgot until you came over, and I know I should have asked first, but then I wanted to surprise you, so I just went to get one or two items you didn't have in your garden and a couple of things that weren't in your spice rack…"
   She kept talking as we unloaded the bags in the kitchen. I said nothing. She was wearing a new T-shirt. There was a big V, and under it a picture of a screw, followed by a hyphen and a small case "p." I thought it over as she babbled on. V, screw-p. I was determined not to ask what it meant.
   "Do you like Vietnamese cooking?"
   I looked at her, and finally realized she was very nervous.
   "I don't know," I said. "I've never had it. But I like Chinese, and Japanese, and Indian. I like to try new things." The last part was a lie, but not as bad as it might have been. I do try new recipes, and my tastes in food are catholic. I didn't expect to have much trouble with Southeast Asian cuisine.
   "Well, when I get through you still won't know," she laughed. "My momma was half-Chinese. So what you're gonna get here is a mongrel meal." She glanced up, saw my face, and laughed.
   "I forgot. You've been to Asia. No, Yank, I ain't gonna serve any dog meat."

* * *

   There was only one intolerable thing, and that was the chopsticks. I used them for as long as I could, then put them aside and got a fork.
   "I'm sorry," I said. "Chopsticks happen to be a problem for me."
   "You use them very well."
   "I had plenty of time to learn how."
   It was very good, and I told her so. Each dish was a revelation, not quite like anything I had ever had. Toward the end, I broke down halfway.
   "Does the V stand for victory?" I asked.
   "Maybe."
   "Beethoven? Churchill? World War Two?"
   She just smiled.
   "Think of it as a challenge, Yank."
   "Do I frighten you, Victor?"
   "You did at first."
   "It's my face, isn't it?"
   "It's a generalized phobia of Orientals. I suppose I'm a racist. Not because I want to be."
   She nodded slowly, there in the dark. We were on the patio again, but the sun had gone down a long time ago. I can't recall what we had talked about for all those hours. It had kept us busy, anyway.
   "I have the same problem," she said.
   "Fear of Orientals?" I had meant it as a joke.
   "Of Cambodians." She let me take that in for a while, then went on. "When Saigon fell, I fled to Cambodia. It took me two years with stops when the Khmer Rouge put me in labor camps. I'm lucky to be alive, really."
   "I thought they called it Kampuchea now."
   She spat. I'm not even sure she was aware she had done it.
   "It's the People's Republic of Syphilitic Dogs. The North Koreans treated you very badly, didn't they, Victor?"
   "That's right."
   "Koreans are pus suckers." I must have looked surprised, because she chuckled.
   "You Americans feel so guilty about racism. As if you had invented it and nobody else–except maybe the South Africans and the Nazis-had ever practiced it as heinously as you. And you can't tell one yellow face from another, so you think of the yellow races as one homogeneous block. When in fact Orientals are among the most racist peoples on the earth. The Vietnamese have hated the Cambodians for a thousand years. The Chinese hate the Japanese. The Koreans hate everybody. And everybody hates the 'ethnic Chinese.' The Chinese are the Jews of the east."
   "I've heard that."
   She nodded, lost in her own thoughts.
   "And I hate all Cambodians," she said, at last. "Like you, I don't wish to. Most of the people who suffered in the camps were Cambodians. It was the genocidal leaders, the Pol Pot scum, who I should hate." She looked at me. "But sometimes we don't get a lot of choice about things like that, do we, Yank?"
   The next day I visited her at noon. It had cooled down, but was still warm in her dark den. She had not changed her shirt.
   She told me a few things about computers. When she let me try some things on the keyboard I quickly got lost. We decided I needn't plan on a career as a computer programmer.
   One of the things she showed me was called a telephone modem, whereby she could reach other computers all over the world. She "interfaced" with someone at Stanford who she had never met, and who she knew only as "Bubble Sorter." They typed things back and forth at each other.
   At the end, Bubble Sorter wrote "bye-p." Lisa typed T.
   "What's T?" I asked.
   "True. Means yes, but yes would be too straightforward for a hacker.''
   "You told me what a byte is. What's a byep?"
   She looked up at me seriously.
   "It's a question. Add p to a word, and make it a question. So bye-p means Bubble Sorter was asking if I wanted to log out. Sign off."
   I thought that over.
   "So how would you translate 'osculate posterior-p'?"
   " 'You wanna kiss my ass?' But remember, that was for Osborne."
   I looked at her T-shirt again, then up to her eyes, which were quite serious and serene. She waited, hands folded in her lap.
   Intercourse-p.
   "Yes," I said. "I would."
   She put her glasses on the table and pulled her shirt over her head.
   We made love in Kluge's big waterbed.
   I had a certain amount of performance anxiety-it had been a long, long time. After that, I was so caught up in the touch and smell and taste of her that I went a little crazy. She didn't seem to mind.
   At last we were done, and bathed in sweat. She rolled over, stood, and went to the window. She opened it, and a breath of air blew over me. Then she put one knee on the bed, leaned over me, and got a pack of cigarettes from the bedside table. She lit one.
   "I hope you're not allergic to smoke," she said.
   "No. My father smoked. But I didn't know you did."
   "Only afterwards," she said, with a quick smile. She took a deep drag. "Everybody in Saigon smoked, I think." She stretched out on her back beside me and we lay like that, soaking wet, holding hands. She opened her legs so one of her bare feet touched mine. It seemed enough contact. I watched the smoke rise from her right hand.
   "I haven't felt warm in thirty years," I said. "I've been hot, but I've never been warm. I feel warm now."
   "Tell me about it," she said.
   So I did, as much as I could, wondering if it would work this time. At thirty years remove, my story does not sound so horrible. We've seen so much in that time. There were people in jails at that very moment, enduring conditions as bad as any I encountered. The paraphernalia of oppression is still pretty much the same. Nothing physical happened to me that would account for thirty years lived as a recluse.
   "I was badly injured," I told her. "My skull was fractured, I still have… problems from that. Korea can get very cold, and I was never warm enough. But it was the other stuff. What they call brainwashing now.
   "We didn't know what it was. We couldn't understand that even after a man had told them all he knew they'd keep on at us. Keeping us awake. Disorienting us. Some guys signed confessions, made up all sorts of stuff, but even that wasn't enough. They'd just keep on at you.
   "I never did figure it out. I guess I couldn't understand an evil that big. But when they were sending us back and some of the prisoners wouldn't go… they really didn't want to go, they really believed…"
   I had to pause there. Lisa sat up, moved quietly to the end of the bed, and began massaging my feet.
   "We got a taste of what the Vietnam guys got, later. Only for us it was reversed. The GJ.'s were heroes, and the prisoners were…"
   "You didn't break," she said. It wasn't a question.
   "No, I didn't."
   "That would be worse."
   I looked at her. She had my foot pressed against her flat belly, holding me by the heel while her other hand massaged my toes.
   "The country was shocked," I said. "They didn't understand what brainwashing was. I tried telling people how it was. I thought they were looking at me funny. After a while, I stopped talking about it. And I didn't have anything else to talk about.
   "A few years back the Army changed its policy. Now they don't expect you to withstand psychological conditioning. It's understood you can say anything or sign anything."
   She just looked at me, kept massaging my foot, and nodded slowly. Finally she spoke.
   "Cambodia was hot," she said. "I kept telling myself when I finally got to the U.S. I'd live in Maine or someplace, where it snowed. And I did go to Cambridge, but I found out I didn't like snow."
   She told me about it. The last I heard, a million people had died over there. It was a whole country frothing at the mouth and snapping at anything that moved. Or like one of those sharks you read about that, when its guts are ripped out, bends in a circle and starts devouring itself.
   She told me about being forced to build a pyramid of severed heads. Twenty of them working all day in the hot sun finally got it ten feet high before it collapsed. If any of them stopped working, their own heads were added to the pile.
   "It didn't mean anything to me. It was just another job. I was pretty crazy by then. I didn't start to come out of it until I got across the Thai border."
   That she had survived it at all seemed a miracle. She had gone through more horror than I could imagine. And she had come through it in much better shape. It made me feel small. When I was her age, I was well on my way to building the prison I have lived in ever since. I told her that.
   "Part of it is preparation," she said, wryly. "What you expect out of life, what your life has been so far. You said it yourself. Korea was new to you. I'm not saying I was ready for Cambodia, but my life up to that point hadn't been what you'd call sheltered. I hope you haven't been thinking I made a living in the streets by selling apples."
   She kept rubbing my feet, staring off into scenes I could not see.
   "How old were you when your mother died?"
   "She was killed during Tet, 1968. I was ten."
   "By the Viet Cong?"
   "Who knows? Lot of bullets flying, lot of grenades being thrown."
   She sighed, dropped my foot, and sat there, a scrawny Buddha without a robe.
   "You ready to do it again, Yank?"
   "I don't think I can, Lisa. I'm an old man."
   She moved over me and lowered herself with her chin just below my sternum, settling her breasts in the most delicious place possible.
   "We'll see," she said, and giggled. "There's an alternative sex act I'm pretty good at, and I'm pretty sure it would make you a young man again. But I haven't been able to do it for about a year on account of these." She tapped her braces. "It'd be sort of like sticking it in a buzz saw. So now I do this instead. I call it 'touring the silicone valley.' " She started moving her body up and down, just a few inches at a time. She blinked innocently a couple times, then laughed.
   "At last, I can see you," she said. "I'm awfully myopic."
   I let her do that for a while, then lifted my head.
   "Did you say silicone?"
   "Uh-huh. You didn't think they were real, did you?"
   I confessed that I had.
   "I don't think I've ever been so happy with anything I ever bought. Not even the car."
   "Why did you?"
   "Does it bother you?"
   It didn't, and I told her so. But I couldn't conceal my curiosity.
   "Because it was safe to. In Saigon I was always angry that I never developed. I could have made a good living as a prostitute, but I was always too tall, too skinny, and too ugly. Then in Cambodia I was lucky. I managed to pass for a boy some of the time. If not for that I'd have been raped a lot more than I was. And in Thailand I knew I'd get to the West one way or another, and when I got there, I'd get the best car there was, eat anything I wanted any time I wanted to, and purchase the best tits money could buy. You can't imagine what the West looks like from the camps. A place where you can buy tits!"
   She looked down between them, then back at my face.
   "Looks like it was a good investment," she said.
   "They do seem to work okay," I had to admit.
   We agreed that she would spend the nights at my house. There were certain things she had to do at Kluge's, involving equipment that had to be physically loaded, but many things she could do with a remote terminal and an armload of software. So we selected one of Kluge's best computers and about a dozen peripherals and installed her at a cafeteria table in my bedroom.
   I guess we both knew it wasn't much protection if the people who got Kluge decided to get her. But I know I felt better about it, and I think she did, too.
   The second day she was there a delivery van pulled up outside, and two guys started unloading a king-size waterbed. She laughed and laughed when she saw my face.
   "Listen, you're not using Kluge's computers to-"
   "Relax, Yank. How'd you think I could afford a Ferrari?"
   "I've been curious."
   "If you're really good at writing software you can make a lot of money. I own my own company. But every hacker picks up tricks here and there. I used to run a few Kluge scams, myself."
   "But not anymore?"
   She shrugged. "Once a thief, always a thief, Victor. I told you I couldn't make ends meet selling my body."
   Lisa didn't need much sleep.

  We got up at seven, and I made breakfast every morning. Then we would spend an hour or two working in the garden.
   She would go to Kluge's and I'd bring her a sandwich at noon, then drop in on her several times during the day. That was for my own peace of mind; I never stayed more than a minute. Sometime during the afternoon I would shop or do household chores, then at seven one of us would cook dinner. We alternated. I taught her "American" cooking, and she taught me a little of everything. She complained about the lack of vital ingredients in American markets. No dogs, of course, but she claimed to know great ways of preparing monkey, snake, and rat. I never knew how hard she was pulling my leg, and didn't ask.
   After dinner she stayed at my house. We would talk, make love, bathe.
   She loved my tub. It is about the only alteration I have made in the house, and my only real luxury. I put it in– having to expand the bathroom to do so-in 1975, and never regretted it. We would soak for twenty minutes or an hour, turning the jets and bubblers on and off, washing each other; giggling like kids. Once we used bubble bath and made a mountain of suds four feet high, then destroyed it, splashing water all over the place. Most nights she let me wash her long black hair.
   She didn't have any bad habits-or at least none that clashed with mine. She was neat and clean, changing her clothes twice a day and never so much as leaving a dirty glass on the sink. She never left a mess in the bathroom. Two glasses of wine was her limit.
   I felt like Lazarus.
   Osborne came by three times in the next two weeks. Lisa met him at Kluge's and gave him what she had learned. It was getting to be quite a list.
   "Kluge once had an account in a New York bank with nine trillion dollars in it," she told me after one of Osborne's visits. "I think he did it just to see if he could. He left it in for one day, took the interest and fed it to a bank in the Bahamas, then destroyed the principal. Which never existed anyway."
   In return, Osborne told her what was new on the murder investigation-which was nothing-and on the status of Kluge's property, which was chaotic. Various agencies had sent people out to look the place over. Some FBI men came, wanting to take over the investigation. Lisa, when talking about computers, had the power to cloud men's minds. She did it first by explaining exactly what she was doing, in terms so abstruse that no one could understand her. Sometimes that was enough. If it wasn't, if they started to get tough, she just moved out of the driver's seat and let them try to handle Kluge's contraption. She let them watch in horror as dragons leaped out of nowhere and ate up all the data on a disc, then printed "You Stupid Putz!" on the screen.
   "I'm cheating them," she confessed to me. "I'm giving them stuff I know they're gonna step in, because I already stepped in it myself. I've lost about forty percent of the data Kluge had stored away. But the others lose a hundred percent. You ought to see their faces when Kluge drops a logic bomb into their work. That second guy threw a three thousand dollar printer clear across the room. Then tried to bribe me to be quiet about it."
   When some federal agency sent out an expert from Stanford, and he seemed perfectly content to destroy everything in sight in the firm belief that he was bound to get it right sooner or later, Lisa showed him how Kluge entered the IRS main computer in Washington and neglected to mention how Kluge had gotten out. The guy tangled with some watchdog program. During his struggles, it seemed he had erased all the tax records from the letter S down into the W's. Lisa let him think that for half an hour.
   "I thought he was having a heart attack," she told me. "All the blood drained out of his face and he couldn't talk. So I showed him where I had-with my usual foresight– arranged for that data to be recorded, told him how to put it back where he found it, and how to pacify the watchdog. He couldn't get out of that house fast enough. Pretty soon he's gonna realize you can't destroy that much information with anything short of dynamite because of the backups and the limits of how much can be running at any one time. But I don't think he'll be back."
   "It sounds like a very fancy video game," I said.
   "It is, in a way. But it's more like Dungeons and Dragons. It's an endless series of closed rooms with dangers on the other side. You don't dare take it a step at a time. You take it a hundredth of a step at a time. Your questions are like, 'Now this isn't a question, but if it entered my mind to ask
   this question-which I'm not about to do-concerning what might happen if I looked at this door here-and I'm not touching it, I'm not even in the next room-what do you suppose you might do?' And the program crunches on that, decides if you fulfilled the conditions for getting a great big cream pie in the face, then either throws it or allows as how it might just move from step A to step A Prime. Then you say, 'Well, maybe I am looking at that door.' And sometimes the program says 'You looked, you looked, you dirty crook!' And the fireworks start."
   Silly as all that sounds, it was very close to the best explanation she was ever able to give me about what she was doing.
   "Are you telling everything, Lisa?" I asked her.
   "Well, not everything. I didn't mention the four cents."
   Four cents? Oh my god.
   "Lisa, I didn't want that, I didn't ask for it, I wish he'd never-"
   "Calm down, Yank. It's going to be all right."
   "He kept records of all that, didn't he?"
   "That's what I spend most of my time doing. Decoding his records."
   "How long have you known?"
   "About the seven hundred thousand dollars? It was in the first disc I cracked."
   "I just want to give it back."
   She thought that over, and shook her head.
   "Victor, it'd be more dangerous to get rid of it now than it would be to keep it. It was imaginary money at first. But now it's got a history. The IRS thinks it knows where it came from. The taxes are paid on it. The State of Delaware is convinced that a legally chartered corporation disbursed it. An Illinois law firm has been paid for handling it. Your bank has been paying you interest on it. I'm not saying it would be impossible to go back and wipe all that out, but I wouldn't like to try. I'm good, but I don't have Kluge's touch."
   "How could he do all that? You say it was imaginary money. That's not the way I thought money worked. He could just pull it out of thin air?''
   Lisa patted the top of her computer console, and smiled at me.
   "This is money, Yank," she said, and her eyes glittered.

* * *

   At night she worked by candlelight so she wouldn't disturb me. That turned out to be my downfall. She typed by touch, and needed the candle only to locate software.
   So that's how I'd go to sleep every night, looking at her slender body bathed in the glow of the candle. I was always reminded of melting butter dripping down a roasted ear of corn. Golden light on golden skin.
   Ugly, she had called herself. Skinny. It was true she was thin. I could see her ribs when she sat with her back impossibly straight, her tummy sucked in, her chin up. She worked in the nude these days, sitting in lotus position. For long periods she would not move, her hands lying on her thighs, then she would poise, as if to pound the keys. But her touch was light, almost silent. It looked more like yoga than programming. She said she went into a meditative state for her best work.
   I had expected a bony angularity, all sharp elbows and knees. She wasn't like that. I had guessed her weight ten pounds too low, and still didn't know where she put it. But she was soft and rounded, and strong beneath.
   No one was ever going to call her face glamorous. Few would even go so far as to call her pretty. The braces did that, I think. They caught the eye and held it, drawing attention to that unsightly jumble.
   But her skin was wonderful. She had scars. Not as many as I had Expected. She seemed to heal quickly, and well.
   I thought she was beautiful.
   I had just completed my nightly survey when my eye was caught by the candle. I looked at it, then tried to look away.
   Candles do that sometimes. I don't know why. In still air, with the flame perfectly vertical, they begin to flicker. The flame leaps up then squats down, up and down, up and down, brighter and brighter in regular rhythm, two or three beats to the second-
   –and I tried to call out to her, wishing the candle would stop its regular flickering, but already I couldn't speak-
   –I could only gasp, and I tried once more, as hard as I could, to yell, to scream, to tell her not to worry, and felt the nausea building…


* * *

   I tasted blood. I took an experimental breath, did not find the smells of vomit, urine, feces. The overhead lights were on.
   Lisa was on her hands and knees leaning over me, her face very close. A tear dropped on my forehead. I was on the carpet, on my back.
   "Victor, can you hear me?"
   I nodded. There was a spoon in my mouth. I spat it out.
   "What happened? Are you going to be all right?"
   I nodded again, and struggled to speak.
   "You just lie there. The ambulance is on its way."
   "No. Don't need it."
   "Well, it's on its way. You just take it easy and-"
   "Help me up."
   "Not yet. You're not ready."
   She was right. I tried to sit up, and fell back quickly. I took deep breaths for a while. Then the doorbell rang.
   She stood up and started to the door. I just managed to get my hand around her ankle. Then she was leaning over me again, her eyes as wide as they would go.
   "What is it? What's wrong now?"
   "Get some clothes on," I told her. She looked down at herself, surprised.
   "Oh. Right."
   She got rid of the ambulance crew. Lisa was a lot calmer after she made coffee and we were sitting at the kitchen table. It was one o'clock, and I was still pretty rocky. But it hadn't been a bad one.
   I went to the bathroom and got the bottle of Dilantin I'd hidden when she moved in. I let her see me take one.
   "I forgot to do this today," I told her.
   "It's because you hid them. That was stupid."
   "I know." There must have been something else I could have said. It didn't please me to see her look hurt. But she was hurt because I wasn't defending myself against her attack, and that was a bit too complicated for me to dope out just after a grand mal.
   "You can move out if you want to," I said. I was in rare form.
   So was she. She reached across the table and shook me by the shoulders. She glared at me.
   "I won't take a lot more of that kind of shit," she said, and I nodded, and began to cry.
   She let me do it. I think that was probably best. She could have babied me, but I do a pretty good job of that myself.
   "How long has this been going on?" she finally said. "Is that why you've stayed in your house for thirty years?''
   I shrugged. "I guess it's part of it. When I got back they operated, but it just made it worse."
   "Okay. I'm mad at you because you didn't tell me about it, so I didn't know what to do. I want to stay, but you'll have to tell me how. Then I won't be mad anymore."
   I could have blown the whole thing right there. I'm amazed I didn't. Through the years I'd developed very good methods for doing things like that. But I pulled through when I saw her face. She really did want to stay. I didn't know why, but it was enough.
   "The spoon was a mistake," I said. "If there's time, and if you can do it without risking your fingers, you could jam a piece of cloth in there. Part of a sheet, or something. But nothing hard." I explored my mouth with a finger. "I think I broke a tooth."
   "Serves you right," she said. I looked at her, and smiled, then we were both laughing. She came around the table and kissed me, then sat on my knee.
   "The biggest danger is drowning. During the first part of the seizure, all my muscles go rigid. That doesn't last long. Then they all start contracting and relaxing at random. It's very strong."
   "I know. I watched, and I tried to hold you."
   "Don't do that. Get me on my side. Stay behind me, and watch out for flailing arms. Get a pillow under my head if you can. Keep me away from things I could injure myself on." I looked her square in the eye. "I want to emphasize this. Just try to do all those things. If I'm getting too violent, it's better you stand off to the side. Better for both of us. If I knock you out, you won't be able to help me if I start strangling on vomit."
   I kept looking at her eyes. She must have read my mind, because she smiled slightly.
   "Sorry, Yank, I am not freaked out. I mean, like, it's totally gross, you know, and it barfs me out to the max, you could-"
   "-gag me with a spoon, I know. Okay, right, I know I was dumb. And that's about it. I might bite my tongue or the inside of my cheek. Don't worry about it. There is one more thing."
   She waited, and I wondered how much to tell her. There wasn't a lot she could do, but if I died on her I didn't want her to feel it was her fault.
   "Sometimes I have to go to the hospital. Sometimes one seizure will follow another. If that keeps up for too long, I won't breathe, and my brain will die of oxygen starvation."
   "That only takes about five minutes," she said, alarmed.
   "I know. It's only a problem if I start having them frequently, so we could plan for it if I do. But if I don't come out of one, start having another right on the heels of the first, or if you can't detect any breathing for three or four minutes, you'd better call an ambulance."
   "Three or four minutes? You'd be dead before they got here."
   "It's that or live in a hospital. I don't like hospitals."
   "Neither do I."
   The next day she took me for a ride in her Ferrari. I was nervous about it, wondering if she was going to do crazy things. If anything, she was too slow. People behind her kept honking. I could tell she hadn't been driving long from the exaggerated attention she put into every movement.
   "A Ferrari is wasted on me, I'm afraid," she confessed at one point. "I never drive it faster than fifty-five."
   We went to an interior decorator in Beverly Hills and she bought a low-watt gooseneck lamp at an outrageous price.
   I had a hard time getting to sleep that night. I suppose I was afraid of having another seizure, though Lisa's new lamp wasn't going to set it off.
   Funny about seizures. When I first started having them, everyone called them fits. Then, gradually, it was seizures, until fits began to sound dirty.
   I guess it's a sign of growing old, when the language changes on you.
   There were rafts of new words. A lot of them were for things that didn't even exist when I was growing up. Like software. I always visualized a limp wrench.
   "What got you interested in computers, Lisa?" I asked her.
   She didn't move. Her concentration when sitting at the machine was pretty damn good. I rolled onto my back and tried to sleep.
   "It's where the power is, Yank." I looked up. She had turned to face me.
   "Did you pick it all up since you got to America?"
   "I had a head start. I didn't tell you about my Captain, did I?"
   "I don't think you did."
   "He was strange. I knew that. I was about fourteen. He was an American, and he took an interest in me. He got me a nice apartment in Saigon. And he put me in school."
   She was studying me, looking for a reaction. I didn't give her one.
   "He was surely a pedophile, and probably had homosexual tendencies, since I looked so much like a skinny little boy."
   Again the wait. This time she smiled.
   "He was good to me. I learned to read well. From there on, anything is possible."
   "I didn't actually ask you about your Captain. I asked why you got interested in computers."
   "That's right. You did."
   "Is it just a living?"
   "It started that way. It's the future, Victor."
   "God knows I've read that enough times."
   "It's true. It's already here. It's power, if you know how to use it. You've seen what Kluge was able to do. You can make money with one of these things. I don't mean earn it, I mean make it, like if you had a printing press. Remember Osborne mentioned that Kluge's house didn't exist? Did you think what that means?"
   "That he wiped it out of the memory banks."
   "That was the first step. But the lot exists in the county plat books, wouldn't you think? I mean, this country hasn't entirely given up paper.''
   "So the county really does have a record of that house."
   "No. That page was torn out of the records."
   "I don't get it. Kluge never left the house."

   "Oldest way in the world, friend. Kluge looked through the L.A.P.D. files until he found a guy known as Sammy. He sent him a cashier's check for a thousand dollars, along with a letter saying he could earn twice that if he'd go to the hall of records and do something. Sammy didn't bite, and neither did McGee, or Molly Unger. But Little Billy Phipps did, and he got a check just like the letter said, and he and Kluge had a wonderful business relationship for many years. Little Billy drives a new Cadillac now, and hasn't the faintest notion who Kluge was or where he lived. It didn't matter to Kluge how much he spent. He just pulled it out of thin air."
   I thought that over for a while. I guess it's true that with enough money you can do just about anything, and Kluge had all the money in the world.
   "Did you tell Osborne about Little Billy?"
   "I erased that disc, just like I erased your seven hundred thousand. You never know when you might need somebody like Little Billy."
   "You're not afraid of getting into trouble over it?"
   "Life is risk, Victor. I'm keeping the best stuff for myself. Not because I intend to use it, but because if I ever needed it badly and didn't have it, I'd feel like such a fool."
   She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes, which made them practically disappear.
   "Tell me something, Yank. Kluge picked you out of all your neighbors because you'd been a Boy Scout for thirty years. How do you react to what I'm doing?"
   "You're cheerfully amoral, and you're a survivor, and you're basically decent. And I pity anybody who gets in your way."
   She grinned, stretched, and stood up.
   " 'Cheerfully amoral.' I like that." She sat beside me, making a great sloshing in the bed. "You want to be amoral again?"
   "In a little bit." She started rubbing my chest. "So you got into computers because they were the wave of the future. Don't you ever worry about them… I don't know, I guess it sounds corny… do you think they'll take over?"
   "Everybody thinks that until they start to use them," she said. "You've got to realize just how stupid they are. Without programming they are good for nothing, literally. Now, what I do believe is that the people who run the computers will take over. They already have. That's why I study them."
   "I guess that's not what I meant. Maybe I can't say it right."
   She frowned. "Kluge was looking into something. He'd been eavesdropping in artificial intelligence labs, and reading a lot of neurological research. I think he was trying to find a common thread."
   "Between human brains and computers?"
   "Not quite. He was thinking of computers and neurons. Brain cells." She pointed to her computer. "That thing, or any other computer, is light-years away from being a human brain. It can't generalize, or infer, or categorize, or invent. With good programming it can appear to do some of those things, but it's an illusion.
   "There's an old speculation about what would happen if we finally built a computer with as many transistors as the human brain has neurons. Would there be a self-awareness? I think that's baloney. A transistor isn't a neuron, and a quintil-lion of them aren't any better than a dozen.
   "So Kluge-who seems to have felt the same way-started looking into the possible similarities between a neuron and an 8-bit computer. That's why he had all that consumer junk sitting around his house, those Trash-80's and Atari's and TI's and Sinclair's, for chrissake. He was used to much more powerful instruments. He ate up the home units like candy."
   "What did he find out?"
   "Nothing, it looks like. An 8-bit unit is more complex than a neuron, and no computer is in the same galaxy as an organic brain. But see, the words get tricky. I said an Atari is more complex than a neuron, but it's hard to really compare them. It's like comparing a direction with a distance, or a color with a mass. The units are different. Except for one similarity."
   "What's that?"
   "The connections. Again, it's different, but the concept of networking is the same. A neuron is connected to a lot of others. There are trillions of them, and the way messages pulse through them determines what we are and what we think and what we remember. And with that computer I can reach a million others. It's bigger than the human brain, really, because the information in that network is more than all humanity could cope with in a million years. It reaches from Pioneer Ten, out beyond the orbit of Pluto, right into every living room that has a telephone in it. With that com-puter you can tap tons of data that has been collected but nobody's even had the time to look at.
   "That's what Kluge was interested in. The old 'critical mass computer' idea, the computer that becomes aware, but with a new angle. Maybe it wouldn't be the size of the computer, but the number of computers. There used to be thousands of them. Now there's millions. They're putting them in cars. In wristwatches. Every home has several, from the simple timer on a microwave oven up to a video game or home terminal. Kluge was trying to find out if critical mass could be reached that way."
   "What did he think?"
   "I don't know. He was just getting started." She glanced down at me. "But you know what, Yank? I think you've reached critical mass while I wasn't looking."
   "I think you're right." I reached for her.
   Lisa liked to cuddle. I didn't, at first, after fifty years of sleeping alone. But I got to like it pretty quickly.
   That's what we were doing when we resumed the conversation we had been having. We just lay in each other's arms and talked about things. Nobody had mentioned love yet, but I knew I loved her. I didn't know what to do about it, but I would think of something.
   "Critical mass," I said. She nuzzled my neck, and yawned.
   "What about it?"
   "What would it be like? It seems like it would be such a vast intelligence. So quick, so omniscient. God-like."
   "Could be."
   "Wouldn't it… run our lives? I guess I'm asking the same questions I started off with. Would it take over?"
   She thought about it for a long time.
   "I wonder if there would be anything to take over. I mean, why should it care? How could we figure what its concerns would be? Would it want to be worshipped, for instance? I doubt it. Would it want to 'rationalize all human behavior, to eliminate all emotion,' as I'm sure some sci-fi film computer must have told some damsel in distress in the 'fifties.
   "You can use a word like awareness, but what does it mean? An amoeba must be aware. Plants probably are. There may be a level of awareness in a neuron. Even in an integrated circuit chip. We don't even know what our own aware-ness really is. We've never been able to shine a light on it, dissect it, figure out where it comes from or where it goes when we're dead. To apply human values to a thing like this hypothetical computer-net consciousness would be pretty stupid. But I don't see how it could interact with human awareness at all. It might not even notice us, any more than we notice cells in our bodies, or neutrinos passing through us, or the vibrations of the atoms in the air around us."
   So she had to explain what a neutrino was. One thing I always provided her with was an ignorant audience. And after that, I pretty much forgot about our mythical hyper-computer.
   "What about your Captain?" I asked, much later.
   "Do you really want to know, Yank?" she mumbled, sleepily.
   "I'm not afraid to know."
   She sat up and reached for her cigarettes. I had come to know she sometimes smoked them in times of stress. She had told me she smoked after making love, but that first time had been the only time. The lighter flared in the dark. I heard her exhale.
   "My Major, actually. He got a promotion. Do you want to know his name?"
   "Lisa, I don't want to know any of it if you don't want to tell it. But if you do, what I want to know is did he stand by you."
   "He didn't marry me, if that's what you mean. When he knew he had to go, he said he would, but I talked him out of it. Maybe it was the most noble thing I ever did. Maybe it was the most stupid.
   "It's no accident I look Japanese. My grandmother was raped in '42 by a Jap soldier of the occupation. She was Chinese, living in Hanoi. My mother was born there. They went south after Dien Bien Phu. My grandmother died. My mother had it hard. Being Chinese was tough enough, but being half Chinese and half Japanese was worse. My father was half French and half Annamese. Another bad combination. I never knew him. But I'm sort of a capsule history of Vietnam."
   The end of her cigarette glowed brighter once more.
   "I've got one grandfather's face and the other grandfather's height. With tits by Goodyear. About all I missed was some American genes, but I was working on that for my children.
   "When Saigon was falling I tried to get to the American Embassy. Didn't make it. You know the rest, until I got to Thailand, and when I finally got Americans to notice me, it turned out my Major was still looking for me. He sponsored me over here, and I made it in time to watch him die of cancer. Two months I had with him, all of it in the hospital."
   "My god." I had a horrible thought. "That wasn't the war, too, was it? I mean, the story of your life-"
   "-is the rape of Asia. No, Victor. Not that war, anyway. But he was one of those guys who got to see atom bombs up close, out in Nevada. He was too Regular Army to complain about it. but I think he knew that's what killed him."
   "Did you love him?"
   "What do you want me to say? He got me out of hell."
   Again the cigarette flared, and I saw her stub it out.
   "No," she said. "I didn't love him. He knew that. I've never loved anybody. He was very dear, very special to me. I would have done almost anything for him. He was fatherly to me." I felt her looking at me in the dark. "Aren't you going to ask how old he was?"
   "Fiftyish," I said.
   "On the nose. Can I ask you something?"
   "I guess it's your turn."
   "How many girls have you had since you got back from Korea?"
   I held up my hand and pretended to count on my fingers.
   "One," I said, at last.
   "How many before you went?"
   "One. We broke up before I left for the war."
   "How many in Korea?"
   "Nine. All at Madame Park's jolly little whorehouse in Pusan."
   "So you've made love to one white and ten Asians. I bet none of the others were as tall as me."
   "Korean girls have fatter cheeks, too. But they all had your eyes."
   She nuzzled against my chest, took a deep breath, and sighed.
   "We're a hell of a pair, aren't we?"
   I hugged her, and her breath came again, hot on my chest.
   I wondered how I'd lived so long without such a simple miracle as that.
   "Yes. I think we really are."

   Osborne came by again about a week later. He seemed subdued. He listened to the things Lisa had decided to give him without much interest. He took the printout she handed him, and promised to turn it over to the departments that handled those things. But he didn't get up to leave.
   "I thought I ought to tell you, Apfel," he said, at last. "The Gavin case has been closed."
   I had to think a moment to remember Kluge's real name had been Gavin.
   "The coroner ruled suicide a long time ago. I was able to keep the case open quite a while on the strength of my suspicions." He nodded toward Lisa. "And on what she said about the suicide note. But there was just no evidence at all."
   "It probably happened quickly," Lisa said. "Somebody caught him, tracked him back-it can be done; Kluge was lucky for a long time-and did him the same day."
   "You don't think it was suicide?" I asked Osborne.
   "No. But whoever did it is home free unless something new turns up."
   "I'll tell you if it does," Lisa said.
   "That's something else," Osborne said. "I can't authorize you to work over there any more. The county's taken possession of house and contents."
   "Don't worry about it," Lisa said, softly.
   There was a short silence as she leaned over to shake a cigarette from the pack on the coffee table. She lit it, exhaled, and leaned back beside me, giving Osborne her most inscrutable look. He sighed.
   "I'd hate to play poker with you, lady," he said. "What do you mean, 'Don't worry about it'?"
   "I bought the house four days ago. And its contents. If anything turns up that would help you re-open the murder investigation, I will let you know."
   Osborne was too defeated to get angry. He studied her quietly for a while.
   "I'd like to know how you swung that."
   "I did nothing illegal. You're free to check it out. I paid good cash money for it. The house came onto the market. I got a good price at the Sheriffs sale."
   "How'd you like it if I put my best men on the transaction? See if they can dig up some funny money? Maybe fraud. How about I get the F.B.I, in to look it all over?"
   She gave him a cool look.
   "You're welcome to. Frankly, Detective Osborne, I could have stolen that house, Griffith Park, and the Harbor Freeway and I don't think you could have caught me."
   "So where does that leave me?"
   "Just where you were. With a closed case, and a promise from me."
   "I don't like you having all that stuff, if it can do the things you say it can do."
   "I didn't expect you would. But that's not your department, is it? The county owned it for a while, through simple confiscation. They didn't know what they had, and they let it go-"
   "Maybe I can get the Fraud detail out here to confiscate your software. There's criminal evidence on it."
   "You could try that," she agreed.
   They stared at each other for a while. Lisa won. Osborne rubbed his eyes and nodded. Then he heaved himself to his feet and slumped to the door.
   Lisa stubbed out her cigarette. We listened to him going down the walk.
   "I'm surprised he gave up so easy," I said. "Or did he? Do you think he'll try a raid?"
   "It's not likely. He knows the score."
   "Maybe you could tell it to me."
   "For one thing, it's not his department, and he knows it."
   "Why did you buy the house?"
   "You ought to ask how."
   I looked at her closely. There was a gleam of amusement behind the poker face.
   "Lisa. What did you do?"
   "That's what Osborne asked himself. He got the right answer, because he understands Kluge's machines. And he knows how things get done. It was no accident that house going on the market, and no accident I was the only bidder. I used one of Kluge's pet councilmen."
   "You bribed him?"
   She laughed, and kissed me.
   "I think I finally managed to shock you, Yank. That's gotta be the biggest difference between me and a native-born American. Average citizens don't spend much on bribes over here. In Saigon, everybody bribes."
   "Did you bribe him?"
   "Nothing so indelicate. One has to go in the back door over here. Several entirely legal campaign contributions appeared in the accounts of a State Senator, who mentioned a certain situation to someone, who happened to be in the position to do legally what I happened to want done." She looked at me askance. "Of course I bribed him, Victor. You'd be amazed to know how cheaply. Does that bother you?"
   "Yes," I admitted. "I don't like bribery."
   "I'm indifferent to it. It happens, like gravity. It may not be admirable, but it gets things done."
   "I assume you covered yourself."
   "Reasonably well. You're never entirely covered with a bribe, because of the human element. The councilman might geek if they got him in front of a grand jury. But they won't, because Osborne won't pursue it. That's the second reason he walked out of here without a fight. He knows how the world wobbles, he knows what kind of force I now possess, and he knows he can't fight it."
   There was a long silence after that. I had a lot to think about, and I didn't feel good about most of it. At one point Lisa reached for the pack of cigarettes, then changed her mind. She waited for me to work it out.
   "It is a terrific force, isn't it," I finally said.
   "It's frightening," she agreed. "Don't think it doesn't scare me. Don't think I haven't had fantasies of being super-woman. Power is an awful temptation, and it's not easy to reject. There's so much I could do."
   "Will you?"
   "I'm not talking about stealing things, or getting rich."
   "I didn't think you were."
   "This is political power. But I don't know how to wield it… it sounds corny, but to use it for good. I've seen so much evil come from good intentions. I don't think I'm wise enough to do any good. And the chances of getting torn up like Kluge did are large. But I'm not wise enough to walk away from it.
   I'm still a street urchin from Saigon, Yank. I'm smart enough not to use it unless I have to. But I can't give it away, and I can't destroy it. Is that stupid?"
   I didn't have a good answer for that one. But I had a bad feeling.
   My doubts had another week to work on me. I didn't come to any great moral conclusions. Lisa knew of some crimes, and she wasn't reporting them to the authorities. That didn't bother me much. She had at her fingertips the means to commit more crimes, and that bothered me a lot. Yet I really didn't think she planned to do anything. She was smart enough to use the things she had only in a defensive way– but with Lisa that could cover a lot of ground.
   When she didn't show up for dinner one evening, I went over to Kluge's and found her busy in the living room. A nine-foot section of shelving had been cleared. The discs and tapes were stacked on a table. She had a big plastic garbage can and a magnet the size of a softball. I watched her wave a tape near the magnet, then toss it in the garbage can, which was almost full. She glanced up, did the same operation with a handful of discs, then took off her glasses and wiped her eyes.
   "Feel any better now, Victor?" she asked.
   "What do you mean? I feel fine."
   "No you don't. And I haven't felt right, either. It hurts me to do it, but I have to. You want to go get the other trash can?''
   I did, and helped her pull more software from the shelves.
   "You're not going to wipe it all, are you?"
   "No. I'm wiping records, and… something else."
   "Are you going to tell me what?"

   "There are things it's better not to know," she said, darkly.
   I finally managed to convince her to talk over dinner. She had said little, just eating and shaking her head. But she gave in.
   "Rather dreary, actually," she said. "I've been probing around some delicate places the last couple days. These are places Kluge visited at will, but they scare the hell out of me. Dirty places. Places where they know things I thought I'd like to find out."
   She shivered, and seemed reluctant to go on. "Are you talking about military computers? The CIA?"
   "The CIA is where it starts. It's the easiest. I've looked around at NOR AD-that's the guys who get to fight the next war. It makes me shiver to see how easy Kluge got in there. He cobbled up a way to start World War Three, just as an exercise. That's one of the things we just erased. The last two days I was nibbling around the edges of the big boys. The Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security… something. DIA and NSA. Each of them is bigger than the CIA. Something knew I was there. Some watchdog program. As soon as I realized that I got out quick, and I've spent the last five hours being sure it didn't follow me. And now I'm sure, and I've destroyed all that, too."
   "You think they're the ones who killed Kluge?"
   "They're surely the best candidates. He had tons of their stuff. I know he helped design the biggest installations at NSA, and he'd been poking around in there for years. One false step is all it would take."
   "Did you get it all? I mean, are you sure?"
   "I'm sure they didn't track me. I'm not sure I've destroyed all the records. I'm going back now to take a last look."
   "I'll go with you."
   We worked until well after midnight. Lisa would review a tape or a disc, and if she was in any doubt, toss it to me for the magnetic treatment. At one point, simply because she was unsure, she took the magnet and passed it in front of an entire shelf of software.
   It was amazing to think about it. With that one wipe she had randomized billions of bits of information. Some of it might not exist anywhere else in the world. I found myself confronted by even harder questions. Did she have the right to do it? Didn't knowledge exist for everyone? But I confess I had little trouble quelling my protests. Mostly I was happy to see it go. The old reactionary in me found it easier to believe There Are Things We Are Not Meant To Know.
   We were almost through when her monitor screen began to malfunction. It actually gave off a few hisses and pops, so Lisa stood back from it for a moment, then the screen started to flicker. I stared at it for a while. It seemed to me there was an image trying to form in the screen. Something three-dimensional. Just as I was starting to get a picture of it I happened to glance at Lisa, and she was looking at me. Her face was flickering. She came to me and put her hands over my eyes.
   "Victor, you shouldn't look at that."
   "It's okay," I told her. And when I said it, it was, but as soon as I had the words out I knew it wasn't. And that is the last thing I remembered for a long time.
   I'm told it was a very bad two weeks. I remember very little of it. I was kept under high dosage of drugs, and my few lucid periods were always followed by a fresh seizure.
   The first thing I recall clearly was looking up at Doctor Stuart's face. I was in a hospital bed. I later learned it was in Cedars-Sinai, not the Veteran's Hospital. Lisa had paid for a private room.
   Stuart put me through the usual questions. I was able to answer them, though I was very tired. When he was satisfied as to my condition he finally began to answer some of my questions. I learned how long I had been there, and how it had happened.
   "You went into consecutive seizures," he confirmed. "I don't know why, frankly. You haven't been prone to them for a decade. I was thinking you were well under control. But nothing is ever really stable, I guess."
   "So Lisa got me here in time."
   "She did more than that. She didn't want to level with me at first. It seems that after the first seizure she witnessed she read everything she could find. From that day, she had a syringe and a solution of Valium handy. When she saw you couldn't breathe she injected you with 100 milligrams, and there's no doubt it saved your life."
   Stuart and I had known each other a long time. He knew I had no prescription for Valium, though we had talked about it the last time I was hospitalized. Since I lived alone, there would be no one to inject me if I got in trouble.
   He was more interested in results than anything else, and what Lisa did had the desired result. I was still alive.
   He wouldn't let me have any visitors that day. I protested, but soon was asleep. The next day she came. She wore a new T-shirt. This one had a picture of a robot wearing a gown and mortarboard, and said "Class of 11111000000." It turns out that was 1984 in binary notation.
   She had a big smile and said "Hi, Yank!" and as she sat on the bed I started to shake. She looked alarmed and asked if she should call the doctor.
   "It's not that," I managed to say. "I'd like it if you just held me."
   She took off her shoes and got under the covers with me. She held me tightly. At some point a nurse came in and tried to shoo her out. Lisa gave her profanities in Vietnamese, Chinese, and a few startling ones in English, and the nurse left. I saw Doctor Stuart glance in later.
   I felt much better when I finally stopped crying. Lisa's eyes were wet, too.
   "I've been here every day," she said. "You look awful, Victor."
   "I feel a lot better."
   "Well, you look better than you did. But your doctor says you'd better stick around another couple of days, just to make sure."
   "I think he's right."
   "I'm planning a big dinner for when you get back. You think we should invite the neighbors?"
   I didn't say anything for a while. There were so many things we hadn't faced. Just how long could it go on between us? How long before I got sour about being so useless? How long before she got tired of being with an old man? I don't know just when I had started to think of Lisa as a permanent part of my life. And I wondered how I could have thought that.
   "Do you want to spend more years waiting in hospitals for a man to die?''
   "What do you want, Victor? I'll marry you if you want me to. Or I'll live with you in sin. I prefer sin, myself, but if it'll make you happy-"
   "I don't know why you want to saddle yourself with an epileptic old fart."
   "Because I love you."
   It was the first time she had said it. I could have gone on questioning-bringing up her Major again, for instance-but I had no urge to. I'm very glad I didn't. So I changed the subject.
   "Did you get the job finished?"
   She knew which job I was talking about. She lowered her voice and put her mouth close to my ear.
   "Let's don't be specific about it here, Victor. I don't trust any place I haven't swept for bugs. But, to put your mind at ease, I did finish, and it's been a quiet couple of weeks. No one is any wiser, and I'll never meddle in things like that again."
   I felt a lot better, I was also exhausted. I tried to conceal my yawns, but she sensed it was time to go. She gave me one more kiss, promising many more to come, and left me.
   It was the last time I ever saw her.
   At about ten o'clock that evening Lisa went into Kluge's kitchen with a screwdriver and some other tools and got to work on the microwave oven.
   The manufacturers of those appliances are very careful to insure they can't be turned on with the door open, as they emit lethal radiation. But with simple tools and a good brain it is possible to circumvent the safety interlocks. Lisa had no trouble with them. About ten minutes after she entered the kitchen she put her head in the oven and turned it on.
   It is impossible to say how long she held her head in there. It was long enough to turn her eyeballs to the consistency of boiled eggs. At some point she lost voluntary muscle control and fell to the floor, pulling the microwave down with her. It shorted out, and a fire started.
   The fire set off the sophisticated burglar alarm she had installed a month before. Betty Lanier saw the flames and called the fire department as Hal ran across the street and into the burning kitchen. He dragged what was left of Lisa out onto the grass. When he saw what the fire had done to her upper body, and in particular her breasts, he threw up.
   She was rushed to the hospital. The doctors there amputated one arm and cut away the frightful masses of vulcanized silicone, pulled all her teeth, and didn't know what to do about the eyes. They put her on a respirator.
   It was an orderly who first noticed the blackened and bloody T-shirt they had cut from her. Some of the message was unreadable, but it began, "I can't go on this way anymore…"

* * *

   There is no other way I could have told all that. I discovered it piecemeal, starting with the disturbed look on Doctor Stuart's face when Lisa didn't show up the next day. He wouldn't tell me anything, and I had another seizure shortly after.
   The next week is a blur. I remember being released from the hospital, but I don't remember the trip home. Betty was very good to me. They gave me a tranquilizer called Tranxene, and it was even better. I ate them like candy. I wandered in a drugged haze, eating only when Betty insisted, sleeping sitting up in my chair, coming awake not knowing where or who I was. I returned to the prison camp many times. Once I recall helping Lisa stack severed heads.
   When I saw myself in the mirror, there was a vague smile on my face. It was Tranxene, caressing my frontal lobes. I knew that if I was to live much longer, me and Tranxene would have to become very good friends.
   I eventually became capable of something that passed for rational thought. I was helped along somewhat by a visit from Osborne. I was trying, at that time, to find reasons to live, and wondered if he had any.
   "I'm very sorry," he started off. I said nothing. "This is on my own time," he went on. "The department doesn't know I'm here."
   "Was it suicide?" I asked him.
   "I brought along a copy of the… the note. She ordered it from a shirt company in Westwood, three days before the… accident."
   He handed it to me, and I read it. I was mentioned, though not by name. I was "the man I love." She said she couldn't cope with my problems. It was a short note. You can't get too much on a T-shirt. I read it through five times, then handed it back to him.
   "She told you Kluge didn't write his note. I tell you she didn't write this."
   He nodded reluctantly. I felt a vast calm, with a howling nightmare just below it. Praise Tranxene.
   "Can you back that up?"
   She saw me in the hospital shortly before it all happened. She was full of life and hope. You say she ordered the shirt three days before. I would have felt that. And that note is pathetic. Lisa was never pathetic."
   He nodded again. '
   "Some things I want to tell you. There were no signs of a struggle. Mrs. Lanier is sure no one came in the front. The crime lab went over the whole place and we're sure no one was in there with her. I'd stake my life on the fact that no one entered or left that house. Now, / don't believe it was suicide, either, but do you have any suggestions?"
   "The NSA," I said.
   I explained about the last things she had done while I was still there. I told him of her fear of the government spy agencies. That was all I had.
   "Well, I guess they're the ones who could do a thing like that, if anyone could. But I'll tell you, I have a hard time swallowing it. I don't know why, for one thing. Maybe you believe those people kill like you and I'd swat a fly." His look make it into a question.
   "I don't know what I believe."
   "I'm not saying they wouldn't kill for national security, or some such shit. But they'd have taken the computers, too. They wouldn't have left her alone, they wouldn't even have let her near that stuff after they killed Kluge."
   "What you're saying makes sense."
   He muttered on about it for quite some time. Eventually I offered him some wine. He accepted thankfully. I considered joining him-it would be a quick way to die-but did not. He drank the whole bottle, and was comfortably drunk when he suggested we go next door and look it over one more time. I was planning on visiting Lisa the next day, and knew I had to start somewhere building myself up for that, so I agreed to go with him.
   We inspected the kitchen. The fire had blackened the counters and melted some linoleum, but not much else. Water had made a mess of the place. There was a brown stain on the floor which I was able to look at with no emotion.
   So we went back to the living room, and one of the computers was turned on. There was a short message on the screen.

   IF YOU WISH TO KNOW MORE PRESS ENTER? ▄

   "Don't do it," I told him. But he did. He stood, blinking solemnly, as the words wiped themselves out and a new message appeared.

   YOU LOOKED ▄

   The screen started to flicker and I was in my car, in darkness, with a pill in my mouth and another in my hand. I spat out the pill, and sat for a moment, listening to the old engine ticking over. In my other hand was the plastic pill bottle. I felt very tired, but opened the car door and shut off the engine. I felt my way to the garage door and opened it. The air outside was fresh and sweet. I looked down at the pill bottle and hurried into the bathroom.
   When I got through what had to be done there were a dozen pills floating in the toilet that hadn't even dissolved. There were the wasted shells of many more, and a lot of other stuff I won't bother to describe. I counted the pills in the bottle, remembered how many there had been, and wondered if I would make it.
   I went over to Kluge's house and could not find Osborae. I was getting tired, but I made it back to my house and stretched out on the couch to see if I would live or die.
   The next day I found the story in the paper. Osborne had gone home and blown out the back of his head with his revolver. It was not a big story. It happens to cops all the time. He didn't leave a note.
   I got on the bus and rode out to the hospital and spent three hours trying to get in to see Lisa. I wasn't able to do it. I was not a relative and the doctors were quite firm about her having no visitors. When I got angry they were as gentle as possible. It was then I learned the extent of her injuries. Hal had kept the worst from me. None of it would have mattered, but the doctors swore there was nothing left in her head. So I went home.
   She died two days later.
   She had left a will, to my surprise. I got the house and contents. I picked up the phone as soon as I learned of it, and called a garbage company. While they were on the way I went for the last time into Kluge's house.
   The same computer was still on, and it gave the same message.

   PRESS ENTER? ▄

   I cautiously located the power switch, and turned it off. I had the garbage people strip the place to the bare walls.
   I went over my own house very carefully, looking for anything that was even the first cousin to a computer. I threw out the radio. I sold the car, and the refrigerator, and the stove, and the blender, and the electric clock. I drained the waterbed and threw out the heater.
   Then I bought the best propane stove on the market, and hunted a long time before I found an old icebox. I had the garage stacked to the ceiling with firewood. I had the chimney cleaned. It would be getting cold soon.
   One day I took the bus to Pasadena and established the Lisa Foo Memorial Scholarship fund for Vietnamese refugees and their children. I endowed it with seven hundred thousand eighty-three dollars and four cents. I told them it could be used for any field of study except computer science. I could tell they thought me eccentric.
   And I really thought I was safe, until the phone rang.
   I thought it over for a long time before answering it. In the end, I knew it would just keep on going until I did. So I picked it up.
   For a few seconds there was a dial tone, but I was not fooled. I kept holding it to my ear, and finally the tone turned off. There was just silence. I listened intently. I heard some of those far-off musical tones that live in phone wires. Echoes of conversations taking place a thousand miles away. And something infinitely more distant and cool.
   I do not know what they have incubated out there at the NSA. I don't know if they did it on purpose, or if it just happened, or if it even has anything to do with them, in the end. But I know it's out there, because I heard its soul breathing on the wires. I spoke very carefully.
   "I do not wish to know any more," I said. "I won't tell anyone anything. Kluge, Lisa, and Osborne all committed suicide. I am just a lonely man, and I won't cause you any trouble." There was a click, and a dial tone.
   Getting the phone taken out was easy. Getting them to remove all the wires was a little harder, since once a place is wired they expect it to be wired forever. They grumbled, but when I started pulling them out myself, they relented, though they warned me it was going to cost.
   The power company was harder. They actually seemed to believe there was a regulation requiring each house to be hooked up to the grid. They were willing to shut off my power-though hardly pleased about it-but they just weren't going to take the wires away from my house. I went up on the roof with an axe and demolished four feet of eaves as they gaped at me. Then they coiled up their wires and went home.
   I threw out all my lamps, all things electrical. With hammer, chisel, and handsaw I went to work on the dry wall just above the baseboards.
   As I stripped the house of wiring I wondered many times why I was doing it. Why was it worth it? I couldn't have very many more years before a final seizure finished me off. Those years were not going to be a lot of fun.
   Lisa had been a survivor. She would have known why I was doing this. She had once said I was a survivor, too. I survived the camp. I survived the death of my mother and father and managed to fashion a solitary life. Lisa survived the death of just about everything. No survivor expects to live through it all. But while she was alive, she would have worked to stay alive.
   And that's what I did. I got all the wires out of the walls, went over the house with a magnet to see if I had missed any metal, then spent a week cleaning up, fixing the holes I had knocked in the walls, ceiling, and attic. I was amused trying to picture the real-estate agent selling this place after I was gone.
   It's a great little house, folks. No electricity…
   Now I live quietly, as before.
   I work in my garden during most of the daylight hours. I've expanded it considerably, and even have things growing in the front yard now.
   I live by candlelight, and kerosene lamp. I grow most of what I eat.
   It took a long time to taper off the Tranxene and the Dilantin, but I did it, and now take the seizures as they come. I've usually got bruises to show for it.
   In the middle of a vast city I have cut myself off. I am not part of the network growing faster than I can conceive. I don't even know if it's dangerous, to ordinary people. It noticed me, and Kluge, and Osborne. And Lisa. It brushed against our minds like I would brush away a mosquito, never noticing I had crushed it. Only I survived.
   But I wonder.
   It would be very hard…
   Lisa told me how it can get in through the wiring. There's something called a carrier wave that can move over wires carrying household current. That's why the electricity had to go-
   I need water for my garden. There's just not enough rain here in southern California, and I don't know how else I could get the water.
   Do you think it could come through the pipes?

PRITISNI ENTER

- Ovo je snimak. Ne prekidajte dok ...

Toliko sam jako lupio slusalicom da je telefon pao na pod. Ostao sam stajati potpuno mokar, ljuto se tresuci. Onda je telefon poceo zujati, sto je znak da slusalica nije na mestu. Taj je zvuk dvadeset puta glasniji od bilo kog drugog zvuka koji stvara telefon; uvek sam se pitao zasto je to tako. Kao da je to neka tragedija:"Uz- buna! Slusalica nije na mestu!"

Telefonski uredjaji za odgovaranje jedna su od malih neprilika u zivotu. Priznajte, da li vam se stvarno svidja da razgovarate sa ure- djajem? Ali ono sto mi se upravo dogodilo bilo je nesto vise od sitnog nerviranja. Upravo me je pozvao automatski uredjaj za pozi- vanje.

To je prilicno nova stvar. Imao sam dva ili tri takva poziva mesecno. Vecinu od osiguravajucih zavoda. Prvo puste dvominutni govor i zatim daju broj, ako ste zainteresovani. (Jednom sam im telefonirao da im kazem sta treba, a oni su me pustili da cekam i emitovali mi ljigavu muziku). Koriste se spiskovima. Ne znam gde ih nabavljaju.

Vratio sam se u kupatilo, obrisao kapljice vode se plasticnih korica knjige iz biblioteke i pazljivo se spusio natrag u vodu. Bila je prehladna. Natocio sam jos vruce i bas kad mi se krvni pritisak poceo vracati na normallu, telefon je ponovo zazvonio.

Sedeo sam kroz petnaest zvonjava, pokusavajuci da ga ignorisem.

Jeste li ikada pokusali citati dok telefon zvoni?

Kod sesnaestog signala sam ustao. Obrisao sam se, obukao ogrtac i polako i odmereno dosetao do dnevne sobe. Neko sam vreme zurio u telefon.

Kod pedesetog signala sam podigao slusalicu.

- Ovo je snimak. Ne prekidajte dok se poruka ne zavrsi. Ovaj poziv dolazi iz kuce vaseg prvog suseda, Carlsa Klaga. Ponavljace se svakih deset minuta. Gospodin Klag zna da nije bio bas najbolji sused i unapred se izvinjava zbog uznemiravanja. Trazi da odmah podjete njegovoj kuci. Kljuc vam je ispod otiraca. Udjite i uradite ono sto treba. Za vase usluge cete biti nagradjeni. Hvala.

Klik. Pozivni ton.

Nisam covek koji zuri. Deset minuta kasnije kad je telefon ponovo zazvonio, jos sam sedeo i razmisljao. Podigao sam slusalicu i pazljivo slusao.

Poruka je bila ista. Kao i pre, to nije bio Klagov glas. Bilo je to nesto sinteticko, sa svom ljudskom toplinom aerodromske najave.

Saslusao sam je jos jednom i spustio slusalicu kad se poruka zavrsila.

Razmisljao sam da zovem policiju. Carls Klag je ziveo pored mene vec deset godina. Za to vreme mozda smo razgovarali desetak puta, nijednom duze od minuta. Nisam mu nista dugovao.

Razmisljao sam da sve to ignorisem. Dok sam mislio o tome, telefon je ponovo zazvonio. Pogledao sam na sat. Deset minuta. Podigao sam slusalicu i odmah je spustio.

Mogao sam iskljuciti telefon. Zivot mi se ne bi znatno promenio.

Naposletku sam se obukao i izisao na prednja vrata, skrenuo levo i krenuo ka Klagovoj kuci.

Sused preko puta, Hal Lanier, kosio je travnjak. Mahnuo mi je, a ja sam mu uzvratio pozdrav. Bilo je oko sedam sati predivne veceri u avgustu. Senke su bile dugacke. U vazduhu se osecao miris pokosene trave. Uvek mi se svidjao taj miris. Vreme je da ja pokosim svoj travnjak, mislio sam.

O toj stvari Klag nikad nije mislio. Njegova je trava bila smedja i visoka do kolena, zagusena korovom.

Zazvonio sam. Kad se niko nije pojavio, pokucao sam. Uzdahnuo sam, pogledao ispod otiraca i kljucem koji sam tu nasao, otvorio vrata.

- Klag? - pozvao sam ga, gurnuvsi glavu unutra.

Prosao sam kratkim hodnikom, s nelagodnoscu koju ljudi osecaju kada nisu sigurni da su dobrodosli. Kao i uvek, zavese su bile navucene, tako da je bilo mracno, ali u onom sto je bila nekad dnevna soba, deset televizijskih ekrana davalo je dovoljno svetla da vidim Klaga. Sedeo jeu stolici ispred stola, licem na tastaturi, a cela strana glave bila mu je raznesena.

Hal Lanier radi na kompjuteru u losandjeloskoj policiji, pa sam mu rekao sta sam nasao i on je pozvao policiju. Zajedno smo cekali da se pojave prva kola. Hal me stalno zapitkivao da li sam nesto dirao, a ja sam mu uporno odgovarao da nisam, osim kvake na ulaznim vratima.

Bolnicka kola su stigla vez ukljucene sirene. Uskoro su i policajci sve preplavili, a susedi su stajali u dvoristima ili su razgovarali ispred Klagove kuce. Ekipe nekih TV stanica stigle su na vreme da snime telo, umotano u plasticni prekrivac, dok su ga iznosili. Muskarci i zene su dolazili i odlazili. Pretpostavljao sam da obavljaju rutinski policijski posao, uzmiaju otiske, prikupljajuju dokaze. Hteo sam da odem kuci, ali su mi rekli da ostanem.

Naposletku su me doveli do detektiva Osborna, koji je vodio slucaj. Uveli su me u dnevnu sobu. Svi televizijski ekrani jos su bili ukljuceni. Rukovao sam se s Osbornom. Osmotrio me je pre nego sto je ista rekao. Bio je to nizak, procelav tip. Delovao je vrlo umorno sve dok nije ugledao mene. I tada, iako mu se izraz uopste nije promenio, vise nije delovao umorno.

- Vi ste Viktor Apfel? - upitao je. Rekoh da jesam. Pokazao je na sobu. - Gospodine Apfel, mozete li reci da li je ista uzeto iz ove sobe?

Ponovo sam pogledao sobu, kao da resavam zagonetku.

Bio je tu kamin, a preko prozora su bile navucene zavese. Na podu tepih. Osim tih stvari, nije bilo nicega sto bi normalno ocekivali u dnevnoj sobi.

Uz sve zidove bili su stolovi koji su cinili uski prolaz kroz sredinu sobe. Na stolovima su bili monitori, tastature, citaci disketa - sve sjajne igracke novog doba. Bili su medjusobno povezani debelim kablovima i zicama. Pod stolovima je bilo jos kompjutera i kutija punih elektronske opreme. Iznad stolova bile su police koje su dolazile do plafona, pretrpane kutijama disketa, traka, kaseta... Postoji rec za sve to, koje se tada nisam mogao setiti. Rec je softver.

- Namestaja nema, zar ne? Izuzev njega...

Delovao je zbunjeno.

- Mislite da je tu pre bilo namestaja?

- Otkud bih to mogao znati? - Onda sam shvatio u cemu je nesporazum. - Oh, mislite da sam ovde vec bio. Prvi put sam stupio u ovu sobu pre jedan sat.

Namrstio se i to mi se nije dopalo.

- Istrazni lekar kaze da je covek mrtav otprilike tri sata. Kako to da ste dosli kad ste dosli, Viktore?

Nije mi se dopalo to sto me zove imenom, ali protiv toga nisam mogao nista uciniti. I znao sam da mu moram ispricati o telefonskom pozivu.

Delovao je sumnjicavo. Postojao je samo jedan nacin da se to proveri i tako smo uradili. Hal, Osborn i ja i nekoliko drugih ljudi otisli smo do moje kuse. Dok smo ulazili telefon je zvonio.

Osborn je podigao slusalicu i slusao. Na licu mu se pojavio vrlo kiseli izraz. Kako se noc produzavala, taj je izraz bio sve gori i gori.

Cekali smo deset minuta da telefon ponovo zazvoni. To je vreme Osborn iskoristio da pregleda sve u mojoj dnevnoj sobi. Bio sam srecan kada je telefon ponovo zazvonio. Snimili su poruku i zatim smo se vratili u Klagovu sobu.

Osborn je otisao u dvoriste sa zadnje strane kuce da pregleda Klagovu sumu antena. Izgledao je impresioniran.

- Gospodja Medison, ona s kraja ulice, misli da je pokusavao da stupi u vezu sa Marsovcima - rece Hal smejuci se. - A ja mislim da je besplatno gledao programe kablovskih TV stanica.

Bila su tamo i tri parabolicna tanjira. Bilo je i sest visokih jarbola i par onih stvari sto vidite na postanskim zgradama, a sluze za prenos ultrakratkih talasa.

Osborn me je ponovo uveo u dnevnu sobu. Trazio je da mu opisem sta sam nasao. Nije mi bilo jasno ima li to smisla, ali sam poslusao.

- Sedeo je u onoj stolici koja je bila ispred ovog stola. Video sam revolver na podu. Ruka mu je visila nad njim.