IOU

Originally appeared in If, March 1961.

PROLOGUE

End-Around Carry

A striped paranoiac awning flapped and billowed, deluding itself it was a Viking sail. Shadow and sunlight streaked across the face of the dying man. His eyes barely flickered awareness of the shifting. A priest looked sadly on; the IOU obit key the man wore prevented the priest from attending him.

A traffic administrator, his authority an invisible extension of the radius of his arm, wiped the shoppers back in a semi-circle to provide landing space on the Mall. The pulse-band on the dying man’s wrist, having started sending the moment the pulse began to weaken, seemed to be beeping with greater urgency.

A hum of vanes aloft evoked a hum of speculation below. Then the bystanders made out the insignia. The IOU last-aid man, beating out the ambulance as usual.

The usual zealot howled “Blasphemer!” as the IOU man grounded and knelt beside the dying man.

The IOU man ignored the howling of the zealot, the sighing of the priest, and the caught breaths of the rest. He eyed the traffic administrator.

The t.a. shrugged. “Just keeled over. Heart attack, I think.”

The IOU man unzipped his kit, pulled out his brainmeter and touched it to the skull of the dying man. He watched the indicator and at the same time kept half an eye out, not fretfully, for the ambulance. He could go ahead on his own discretion. He did.

He took out his spray injector and jetted a burst of transistorized particles through an ear into the brain; then he thrust the dying man’s obit key, which hung from a gold chain about the neck, into the portable call box.

At IOU headquarters the great computer snatched the dying man’s obit from the necrofile and transmitted the pattern to the transistorized particles in the man’s brain.

The weather bureau had freshened the breeze and a scrap of stale newspaper rustled along like a leaf. An old headline—IOU DECLARES BIGGEST DIVIDEND YET—molded itself to the man’s face. A gasp from the squeamish, but the last-aider, concentrating on his readings, failed to take notice. The t.a.’s eye silenced all.

The last-aider looked up and smiled around. The dead man had made his heaven.

The crowd sighed, all but priest and zealot in relief. The t.a. sighed. The IOU man sighed. All but priest and zealot were IOU subscribers.

Now the IOU man saw the scrap of paper and reached to remove it. But the wash of the slightly late ambulance tore it away, with what seemed to the squeamish a rip.

CHAPTER I

On his way home Rush Tumulty dropped his last credit in a slot and reaped a bouquet of roses. His life jingle-jangled with spurs of the moment.

Home. The real estate agent, God pity his soul, had told them it was quaint and neighborly. At the touch of Rush’s key the door opened with a quaint creaking. (It made it easy for the neighbors to keep tabs on comings and goings.)

Margaret had her eyes on the screen. She was reaching behind for the box of sweets on the table. Smiling, Rush put the roses into her groping hand.

“Ouch!”

The roses scattered. Margaret sucked her thumb. But no one could look at Rush and stay mad.

The preset was switching channels.

“Not another debate?” Another investigation in the making; the networks were on a public-service kick.

Margaret spluttered indignant chocolate. “Not just another. There’ll be Neal McGillicuddy Cloy! He’s real good. You know?”

“Ig.”

Neal McGillicuddy Cloy, professional optimist, doctor of business ethics, etc. Sickening. But Cloy was a sales engineer of a sort. Might as well stick it out. Might garner a few tips. Sales engineers had to learn to suppress distaste for certain types. The most unpromising prospects sometimes proved the most rewarding clients. That was good business ethics.

But then they announced the subject: Birth control.

Avoid the issue. Rush dreamed of his big break and became aware of the program again only when it was ending.

Whatever his stand had been, Cloy sat beaming at the fadeout. Why not? More people, bigger audience; fewer people, more elbow room for the chosen few. Pro and con, the world was getting better and better—for Cloy.

Margaret was glowing. Rush started to say something, but the commercial was so cute she shushed him. Then she turned to him. He tensed.

“When’re we going to begin begetting? A boy and a girl. You know? How does that strike you?”

“‘Strike’—aggressive word. You feel unconscious hostility toward me.”

Margaret said through her teeth, “I do not.”

“See? Quarreling again. Bad atmosphere to raise kids in.”

They sat apart, eyes unseeing on the screen, until a phone rang next door.

Margaret stirred. “Like some punch?”

He gave a nod, but it was automatic. He eyed her as she swayed to the kitchenette on spike heels. Ringing was stimulus, response was “punch.” He smiled; the linking was clear. Bell…ring…come out fighting…punch. His smile faded. She was feeling hostile. He couldn’t blame her. He put on the smile as spike heels returned. They sat sipping.

Rush was no good at fighting silence with silence. He fidgeted, emptied the glass in a gulp, banged it down, sprang to his feet and stomped out muttering not to wait up.

He strode blindly, aware he was again precipitating a crisis by refusing to face a crisis. No, he was conquering his fear of rejection by rejecting the other first! No, he wasn’t rejecting Margaret but a way of life, the kind his father had led, resenting wife and child. No, it wasn’t so much resentment at them as at Fate; early photos showed a man alert for a different drumming, later—a man who’d committed himself to the humdrum. No, he had to, or where would he be? Where the race, if everyone ran off chasing the sound of their own pulsing?

No. Survival, even of the race, wasn’t enough. A man had to find meaning in being…or what’s an earth for anyway?

Out of the tail of an eye Rush saw a gesture. Bill collector? He put purpose on his face and made the vanishing point his goal. Then he stopped. Will Wishart! No; Will, rest his kindly soul, had passed on. A family likeness, then; Will Wishart’s kid brother—what was the name?—Ken.

“Hi-ya, Ken.”

“You remember me?”

“Will I ever forget?”

They shook hands. Rush remembered Ken dogging the heels of the big boys always in the way unless the big boys wanted him to run an errand or retrieve a ball from a ferocious yard or decoy while they stole fruit. Now Ken was a man and taller than himself. It made him feel old. It was funny to see Kenny, prosperity on the outside and intelligence shining through, suddenly becoming the hero-worshiping kid again. Rush straightened.

“You haven’t changed, Rush.”

“You sure have, Kenny.”

“What’re you doing these days?”

“I’m a missionary.” Really he was only a sales engineer, though he had once hoped to study for missionary work—breaking the ice for new products. And really only a jobless sales engineer at the moment. He was glad he’d always remembered the importance of dressing well.

“I knew you’d go places, Rush.”

God! What he’d wanted, and what places he was going!

“Uh, you know, Rush, I wish I had a guy like you working with me.”

Rush’s whole shortcoming had always seemed to him inability to maintain a delicate balance—not answering too soon, not hesitating too long. He sucked in. “What do you have in mind, Ken?” He hoped he’d struck the note of casual interest.

“It goes back. I run a chain of geriatoria and I came to know this senior citizen, Jackie. Quite senile, childishly disobedient, but everyone’s favorite.”

Ohmigaud. Rush hated to hear about old people.

“He would cry out in a kind of rote fear, ‘Save my soul…save my soul…save my soul from the fires of hell.’ And sometimes, ‘Gabriel! Gabriel! Gabriel!’” Ken smiled. “I can see him trying to pick up noodles on his fork and getting angry. ‘Why do they cut it so short?’” Ken shook himself. “Well, the last time I saw Jackie he wasn’t baby-pink but gray. Vitamins and dextrose met in a Y of plastic tubing and trickled into his veins. A thready pulse in the stringy arm. I was glad he was going quietly into the long sleep, as we call it.”

He coughed and hurried on as Rush shifted weight.

“His eyelids lifted; bleared whites showed, then thin crescents. He groaned. And I could see Jackie falling into the fires he feared.” Ken shivered. “I found myself saying, ‘It’s all right, Jackie. This is Gabriel. Your soul is safe from the fires of hell. I’m taking you to God.’”

Rush stared. “Did it work?”

“I think so. I hope so. If it’d been not a voice in the ear but a vision within, I’d be sure. Since then I’ve worked out the way.” He went into jargon beyond Rush—even if Rush had listened.

Rush was seeing visions and dreaming dreams.

He grew aware of a questioning silence. “Um-hum.” Rush had edged around and Ken was facing an autobar. Ken thought of standing them a container of cognac.

Ken grew expansive as alcohol expanded his capillaries. “Rush, this is a thing I’m burning to promote. Not for the money, though I s’pose it might come to quite a bit. Thanks—” as his cup was refilled. “But for the satisfaction.” His face shone with earnestness and sweat.

Rush frowned, but not too heavily. “Fine, Kenny, but you have to think this through. More than a mere matter of life and death—everything is that. This would let a human mind settle its accounts for all eternity.”

Ken brandished his cup. “Kind of talk I need. Man I need. What say, Rush?” He waggled a finger as Rush opened his mouth. “Don’t expect you to make up your mind all at once. Have to think things through.”

Rush strove to strike a balance between indecent haste and insulting slowness.

And so—Instant Obituaries Unlimited.

While casting about for some sound sentiment worthy of the moment, Rush belched.

CHAPTER II

Rush had already given the printer the go-ahead, but thought it only fitting to let Ken see the prospectus.

Ken frowned over the layout and copy.

“Kenny, you have to realize people don’t buy preventives, they buy cures. We’re selling the ultimate cure.”

Ken read on.

A devilish Before leered at the prospect, asking:

Are you fearful of old age and the wasting away of your powers?

Are you bitter about having chosen the wrong career, the wrong mate?

Do you foresee doom without being able to alter it?

Do you desire without hope of attaining the thing you desire?

Are you remorseful for having squandered your talents, missed opportunities, deprived or mistreated others?

Do you feel rejected or wronged?

Are you unprepared to meet your Maker?

Here an angelic After, the letters IOU penned on its feathers, put the devilish Before behind it and beckoned the prospect. It said:

It isn’t too late! When you close the books on life the IOU way, your personalized obit guarantees you satisfaction in the long sleep. If the body requires touching up just to lie on view, how much more does the dimming mind need the light of reassurance to enable it to pass on without faltering into eternal darkness!

Your personalized obit reassures you that you haven’t lived your life in vain, that you have realized your potentialities to the full, that you have gratified your dearest and most secret desires. Your personalized obit justifies your misdeeds, remits your sins of omission and commission. Your personalized obit convinces you that you are entering Paradise, harvesting the fruits of Heaven, standing before the Throne—receiving comfort in the Presence.

Plot your lot in life easily, the amazing new IOU way. Simply speak into the scientifically designed Inscraper. This highly sensitive mechanism, developed by IOU’s brilliant research staff—

Ken turned brilliant red and coughed.

—and exclusive with IOU, automatically translates your word-pictures of your version of the Hereafter into magnetic characters, permanently registering your personalized obit.

In minutes, you are ready for eternity, come what may. You live out the rest of your life, carefree in the assurance that, when your Time comes, efficient IOU emergency service springs into immediate action, transmittng the tape of our personalized obit to your brain. The magnetic characters return electronic signals that evoke the original eidetic imagery. But now, thanks to the fact that the power to reason and resist is failing, the vividness and reality of your vision of the Hereafter has increased manifold!

Be among the first to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you will enter into everlasting bliss! Dial 0 and ask to speak to your IOU representative today!

“Well?”

“I didn’t know you’d make it quite that—”

“We have to make it strong! I did think twice about saying, back there, that one might even sit on the Throne; I figured that would raise too much hell. But don’t let the religious angle trouble you. God has all eternity to set things right.”

“That’s right.”

“Meanwhile, we put the fear of God and/or the Devil into them. Damned few have the moral courage to face up to the consequences of their weaknesses without weaseling, whining, or wishful thinking. That’s where we come in.”

“I guess you can go ahead.”

“Fine.”

“And when that’s done?”

“We sit back and wait.”

Ken sat on the edge of his chair and eyed the furnishings. They represented all his savings and mortgagings. But Rush had been sure front was more important than the equipment that made IOU feasible and that Ken had stuck together out of secondhand parts.

Rush went out whistling.

CHAPTER III

“There will be a nominal charge for orchestrating…”

—IOU contract form.

Umbrella hooked on his arm, Otto Trever neared the IOU building, gateway to a better world.

He would live not in the past with its wilted hopes and smoldering regrets, not on the forever-crumbling edge of the present, but in a heavening future.

He sidled off the autowalk. With the awkward agility of the non-jostler he made his way to the entrance. He found himself nodding to the robot doorkeeper; then, though he knew this made as little sense, scowled at it. It was in the shape of an angel. It handed him a numbered card.

Full of comings and goings, but not at all like a terminal, the waiting room struck a balance between solemnity and sprightliness. Murals showed lion and lamb in loving togetherness.

Otto Trever sat watching numbers light up. His eyes followed figures springing or creaking to their feet and vanishing down corridors. His number came up. He himself came up, force of response compensating for slight delay, and eyes followed him.

He came to a door. He showed his card and the door admitted him. He stood wondering what to do with hat, umbrella, and himself. A voice murmured and Trever found himself deep in a chair, pouring out his heart to an intercom. He found himself agreeing he needed orchestrating of his obit. The voice ushered him into a recording room.

The blank-faced technician was re-filling sound effects. Labels indicated ringing hoofs, creaking leather, clashing swords; the preceding client had wanted to believe, when his time should come, he was dying in battle, in the flower, untimely pluck’d, of ancient knighthood.

Trever nodded. That was a way to go. Still, wasn’t it safer to go in your sleep, not knowing you were going? No, the best way was awarely—with editing.

But maybe the manner of his own going ought to have a bit more thought. Maybe—

The technician was glancing up from ticker tape notations the computer relayed from the consulting rooms.

Too late to back out now. Trever postured eagerness.

“Won’t take long, sir. I see this calls for just a girl’s voice.” The tech turned to his mixing knobs.

Not just a girl’s voice. The voice of Hannah O’Dea. Trever glared at the IOU-lettered back. Hannah had a breathtaking voice electronic tones couldn’t hope to match.

But he listened to scales of syllables and heard himself saying, “There! That’s it!” whenever sound chimed with memory.

Then the tech was saying, “There, that’s it.”

And it was so. Trever could close his eyes and see Hannah; he almost laughed to hear her lilt meaningless syllables.

Joy switched to panic. The tech was going to leave him to himself—and to Hannah.

“Say anything you want into this mike. Press this, it’ll come out in your voice. Press that, it’ll come out in the young lady’s. This is for the playback.”

His finger over a button, Trever was alone, staring at the mike. He was afraid. For without that button there was no Hannah, not for him. Hannah had never given him steady encouragement. Still it was a shock when she laughed in his face. His face burned. His finger stabbed down.

This time, Hannah was charmingly confused. The honor Otto was conferring overwhelmed her, unworthy being that she felt herself to be. She could only murmur, “Oh, darling, darling!” How tenderly masterful Trever was, whispering comfort with counterpoint of passion.

He gazed around, part of himself lingering in that event. He pulled himself together. Why, he hadn’t done badly.

At that sweet seizure, he switched on the playback. He sat listening to a transvestite act.

He’d pressed the buttons in the wrong order.

All to do over again.

* * * *

Rush entered Ken’s office whistling the IOU theme. Without turning from the bank of closed-circuit screens, Ken put up a palm. Rush smiled, but silenced. He listened a moment then moved to the window. He viewed the streaming in and out. He heard a sigh and a switching off, then Ken was at his side.

Rush gestured. “And we’re just beginning.”

“But it’s never-ending. We’ll never ease all the pain and sorrow.”

“Don’t worry, Ken. Iron and bamboo curtains won’t stop us. I promise you.”

Ken put a hand on Rush’s shoulder.

Their eyes lifted to the sunset the weather bureau was projecting.

Ken smiled. “What a life, when even loveliness brings sadness for its evanescence.”

Loveliness. Rush remembered Margaret and felt for the clasp he had bought. No special occasion; just that he enjoyed drawing down big money and spending it.

He looked down on the streaming in and out and whistled the IOU theme.

CHAPTER IV

“Persons wishing to spend eternity together may under clause (w) open a joint checking-out account.”

—IOU contract form.

Quick as they laid Pat Conover in his grave his widow Norah began to fail. There was nothing mournful about her pining away. She was merely in a hurry to share Pat’s repose.

Declining to look after her wellbeing, she quickened the process long invalidism had begun. Bedridden, she had entrusted Pat with taping the one obit for the two of them.

As this was a joint account the computer hadn’t erased the tape but stored it against further falling due. With efficiency the IOU man administered last-aid.

Norah’s face began to compose—then jolted to horror, disbelief, rage. With a galvanic lazarising, she sat up as you’d crook a finger and glared at the ghost-white IOU man…

* * * *

Ken burst into Rush’s office waving a teleprint. “They served me by visiphone!” Rush had to admire his own calm. “Mrs. Conover?”

Ken nodded.

“She has no case. Where’s the harm in shock, when it’s shock that revived her?”

“She wanted to die! But that misses the point. She’s suing not on her own behalf but for her husband’s estate.”

“Same thing.”

“She claims he got the wrong obit and should collect damages.”

“What damages? He died happy.”

“How do we know that?” Sometimes Rush felt like shaking Ken. “Prima-facie evidence. Smile of the beatific.”

“Or grimace of pain,” said Ken.

“Or gas. Sure. Why are you trying to undermine yourself?”

“Might be kinder to allow we goofed. Ease the poor woman’s mind.”

“Want our other clients to lose, through apprehension, the full effect of their obit?”

“No-o.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me, Kenny, if the ‘poor woman’ is a zealot-sympathizer trying to discredit our whole operation.”

* * * *

Norah Conover told the arbitrator that even in her distress she didn’t feel IOU had done it deliberately. If IOU would own up to its mistake she’d be of a mind to forgive.

She waved her cane. That obscene obit was none of Pat’s doing. “All those lascivious dancing-girls! All that drinking and carousing! Oh no, that wasn’t the heaven my Pat planned for us. I lived with the man forty years and I know Pat Conover never made that obit.”

The arbitrator turned. “Mr. Tumulty?”

Rush handed in data strips. “Here’s proof that Pat Conover made and paid for the obit in question.”

The cane flailed. “Some other Pat Conover!”

“Sorry, madam, but according to our computer it has serviced no other Pat Conover.”

“Then your computer is loony!”

The arbitrator said, “I understand your agitation, Mrs. Conover, but let’s not get personal.”

Rush was handing in more data strips. “Service records prove our computer in perfect operating condition since activation.”

Norah tightened her lips as the arbitrator took in the data. Rush studied the ceiling.

The arbitrator said, “Unless you can show me some proof, Mrs. Conover, I’m afraid—” Norah broke down. The cane clattered.

The arbitrator printed up its decision. It wondered why a breakdown always embarrassed not the one breaking down but those looking on…

(When Ken ran off the transcript of the proceedings, he felt that embarrassment. But Rush was right. They had scaled the heights of a higher justice…)

* * * *

Otto Trever neared the IOU building. Knowing IOU to be infallible, he disregarded the catcalling of the zealot pickets.

“Better unbought unhappiness than bought, unearned pleasure!”

“You have chased after sin!”

“Say farewell to your immortal soul!”

On second thought, it would be better to begin with an aloof Hannah O’Dea. The triumph would be greater when she wound up a passionate slave.

Unaware his dreamy smile was maddening, Trever passed through traffic administrators holding back the zealots.

CHAPTER V

“IOU undertakes to deliver the obit at all hazards”

—IOU contract form.

The weather bureau was projecting an outsize moon. It was the least the government could do now the Russians had made the real moon constant, stationing it over Moscow. But it added to the hazards George Cavendish had to overcome.

It forced him to make for the wall furthest from the beam, to keep from silhouetting himself. The main gate was in that wall, and so was the heaviest guard.

The vane lofting him whirred softly, loud to his ears. He cupped an eye to the glow of his watch. 1924 hours. Good job of timing. Now.

He sucked in air and prepared to cant himself into the yard. There was a stir in the tower emplacement and his guts writhed.

But the discs that were the faces of the guards had phased toward the insubstantial moon. It was blinking.

Cavendish guessed IOU had tapped the projector’s power line and was oscillating the juice. Rush Tumulty had promised a diversion at the right instant and was delivering. Even in the dark, Cavendish smiled inwardly; no flashing of teeth to betray him.

He landed, slipped into a workshop, and stashed the vane and a guard’s uniform. His spray injector he stowed under the jacket of the trusty’s uniform he wore. He hid behind a mountain of license plates and sat waiting.

He shivered. It was the chill of the raw hours. He wondered if Mort Greene saw the blinking from his cell in death row.

Mort had robbed and killed to get the credits to buy his obit. Then the law caught up with him and fixed the day to die. The IOU computer registered this bit of information and prepared to make good. But the law held Mort couldn’t benefit by his crimes, or what good would capital punishment be as a deterrent? It denied obit.

IOU and its subscribers held that society might have the right to deprive the body of life, but not to deprive the mind of comfort—however paid for. The law and the zealots held that body and mind were one and that one suit of punishment had to fit the whole crime.

Cavendish didn’t feel deeply about it pro or con. But he felt deeply about making good. Rush Tumulty had sent him off with a firm handshake and a frank smile and something about IOU having a moral duty to test the case, to defy the law, to deliver the goods. It would be criminally foolish to pass up the chance to make this manifest to those who had joined up, and to those hesitating. Cavendish wondered if Ken Wishart had the Chief’s sense of obligation.

Wishart kept himself too much to himself.

Cavendish wished the Chief had told him just who the inside contact would be. But the Chief was right. Suppose the law were to intercept Cavendish—and drag the name of the inside man out of him? It would stop dead all further attempts to reach Mort Greene in time. Still, he couldn’t help wondering. The warden? An arresting thought, but Cavendish shook his head; better suspend judgment, not commit the folly of committing oneself beforehand. He’d have to keep mind open and body alert if he were to acquit himself well…

He must’ve dropped off, no blinking the fact. The world was cold gray. Inmates were marching to breakfast.

Soon, many of them, with their guards, would be trooping into the shops, including the one where he sat hiding.

He was to slip out and mingle with the cons when they took their break in the yard. He was to stay inconspicuous; the contact would know him by the number—10010101—on his jacket. The contact would take it from there.

Cavendish sweated out close shaves. It was hard to hear footsteps in the din and he jumped in his skin whenever a voice sounded near. But his luck held.

And it was time to knock off work, and sudden silence fell…save for the eerie lipless talking of the cons and the silencing shouts of the guards. Cavendish slipped out and made himself part of the milling.

He thought he was being inconspicuous but he found cons eyeing him and commenting coarsely. He remembered he’d sat all night on a stack of license plates; he must’ve impressed a number on his seat. He kept his back straight and bent his knees as he strolled, hoping his jacket would cover. But he attracted the gaze of a tower guard, hard-looking.

The guard winked. His heart thumped his ribcage. The inside contact. He returned the wink. The guard turned away—swung back, and winked. Cavendish shot glances around, then winked. He knew he ought to move on before others noted. But the guard’s gaze held him. The guard winked. Cavendish groaned—hadn’t there been office enough?—but he winked.

The guard raised his gun and blazed away at Cavendish.

* * * *

Cavendish came to in the prison hospital. He had only flesh wounds; he supposed he should feel grateful. But there are soul wounds.

Knowing it useless, he felt for the spray injector. Gone. They couldn’t have missed it when they stripped him to tend his wounds of the flesh.

He’d done his best, but he defended himself without conviction. It was painful even to wonder what went wrong. Maybe the guard was a zealot, laughing to himself at the thought of crossing up the IOU agent.

A figure leaned over him. A trusty-orderly. The man would have the freedom of the place. If he jumped the man; got his naked flesh into those clothes, he’d have a fighting chance…

He caught the man in a hammerlock.

The man broke it and pushed him down. “Mercy me, 10010101, you are screwy. You’re lucky to be living. Zwicker’s touchy about his tic. Why’d you have to make fun of it? Lucky I got to you first and glommed the injector. They figure Zwicker went stir crazy.”

Cavendish found his voice. “Will the spray injector get to Greene in time?”

The con nodded. “Sure.” Then frowned. “Need his key?”

“No. The computer will send the obit at execution time. They’re not moving it up?”

The con shook his head. “Not that it would be any trouble to get Greene’s key. It’s in the warden’s safe.”

“You mean he’s in this with us?”

“Mercy no. Account of all the pete men in here, the warden don’t bother locking it. Now we have to think how to get you out.”

Cavendish told him of the cache.

The trusty had hardly left when Cavendish remembered the vane. His heart thumped. Would the con take off, leaving Cavendish to face the rap?

Cavendish waited. When he heard footsteps he feared to turn.

It was the trusty. Empty-handed.

The trusty unwound a guard’s uniform, cummer-bunded under his jacket. Cavendish dressed with haste.

He tried to think guard as the con escorted him past eyes to the dark workshop.

Vane strapped on and whirring, Cavendish asked, “Why didn’t you take this and escape?”

“Mercy. You happen to set your eyes on all the license plates? More each year. Think I’d throw away the break of being safe from vane traffic?”

Time to go. All eyes, including those of the trusty, who failed to see him wave, were on a shadow-stained window. As he went over the wall he thought he saw lights dim.

* * * *

Both Mort Greene and the trusty-barber seemed embarrassed that the hairshaving was a superfluous gesture. But under cover of it the barber used the injector the orderly had slipped him to shoot the transistorized particles into Mort Greene’s brain.

Mort did not hear the hissing of the electric charge. He heard ringing hoofs, creaking leather, clashing swords…

Cavendish smoothed down his hair; knowing the Chief’s flair for publicity, he felt it likely he’d be walking into a telepress conference. He entered the Chief’s office, steeling himself against glare and noise.

Rush was alone. He sprang up and clapped Cavendish on the back. “Wonderful work, George. Too bad we can’t publicize it. But I’ve been kicking it around. If people learned Greene got away with it, wouldn’t it tempt many to emulate him? No, the wellbeing of Society comes foremost. It’s only good business ethics. We have to refund stolen money, so it would be not only without honor but without profit.”

Cavendish knew letdown as Rush saw him out. Then handshake and smile made it all right…

* * * *

Otto Trever took a card from the doorangel. He smiled at the robot and then, realizing the folly of expending feeling on a machine, deepened smile. It felt good to know he was dealing with a law-abiding concern. He didn’t keep up with the news these days, but some pros and cons of the Mort Greene case had got through to him. Knowing IOU had restrained itself, shown itself on the side of law and order, he could disregard the Zealot pickets, who, though they had lost talking point, had not lost voice.

He entered the IOU building sure he had it now.

Hannah O’Dea would be the mistress of that rogue Otto Trever. She was one of a succession, and knew it. A pretty plaything but fast fading, she lived in dread of Otto’s discarding her for a fresher plaything.

CHAPTER VI

“IOU agrees to serve as ante-mortem executor and will carry out the express wishes of the client.”

—IOU contract form.

Time had thrown her features out of focus, but as Ken looked at her, a nudge of memory resolved the face into that of his onetime favorite star, Cara Lovelace.

It was hard to believe this wasn’t another telecast with Cara Lovelace playing the lead. Ken viewed her with a protecting tenderness that forgave bad makeup, quavering voice, wringing of be jeweled hands.

The first thing she looked for when she entered the consulting booth was a mirror.

The shining surface of the intercom, designed to induce a semi-hypnotic state in which inhibitions would lessen, served. She felt melancholy. Her reflection informed her she looked soulful. She brightened—then tried to recall that shade of melancholy. She wanted to recapture that soulful look.

The intercom broke in softly with its gentle probing.

An audience! Cara responded. She spotlighted her rise in the theater, told of co-starring with Lane Pierce, then of going on to solo greatness, spoke trippingly of her tours.

Ken started at another memory. Lane Pierce had taped an obit only a few months before. Rush had noted it with special interest because someone not Lane Pierce had already taped an obit assuring himself he was the one and only Lane Pierce. The man could imagine no greater bliss than to die believing he had been that nova of Casanovas.

“Now,” Cara said with a dramatic sigh, “I’ve reached a point in the road where I can see where I am and what I have and can expect.” The mirroring surface gave back soulfully. “And I ask myself, ‘Was it all for this?’”

Ken saw she couldn’t believe that. She clung to youth, squeezed into it; shoes and girdle extruded Cara.

“Not that I think it’s all over, or that it hasn’t been worthwhile. But there’s one thing I want to take care of at the curtain.”

She stopped. Ken, feeling this was not a dramatic device but a pause before a plunge, willed her not to tape the sort of obit Lane Pierce had taped. Stiff hands unpursed a letter, still sealed.

It would show blank when you held it to light; static electricity when you stripped off the flap brought out the writing. The letter was old, but there was only the start of a tear.

Ken strained to hear.

“This goes back to when I and Lane appeared together.”

Together not only onscreen but off. But her best friend, Ada Moffat, had fun teasing her. “You’re not dating him?!” He stuttered offscreen. Ada mocked. “‘It seems a cocoon’s age since I saw you last night!’”

Cara was mad about his deep voice bespeaking depths of meaning, his deep eyes depths of feeling. But Ada would whisper, “‘What a lovely Jejune moon; it makes me crave the baboon of a kiss!’” Ada was competent enough actress to capture Lane. Cara would blush and go cold. Ada said Lane was a bore and groaned amusingly at sight of him. Cara tried to fight misgivings. But she saw less and less of Lane. And of Ada.

* * * *

On the eve of the wedding of Lane Pierce and Ada Moffat, Cara received the letter. Her first impulse was to tear it to bits; her next, to tear it open.

Why was Lane writing now—unless to confess he regretted having decided to marry Ada? He repented before it was too late; Cara was his love; he and Cara—if she still cared for him—would elope. Cara started to rip the flap. Latent writing showed faint.

She stopped. Suppose Lane hoped she wouldn’t judge him harshly; suppose, singing praises of Ada, he asked Cara to wish them well.

Latent writing remained too faint to make out. Fearing the finality of knowing, she shut the letter away. At long intervals she took the stationery from its resting place and with half-averted eyes tried to make out the writing. Sometimes it seemed to spell out one big “Yes,” sometimes “No.”

Now it was up to IOU to do for her what she lacked the will to do herself. She touched her neck. She was leaving the letter for the computer to open and scan and record. Whatever the message, it would be her obit.

IOU assured her it would carry out her orders to the letter. Having deposited that letter in the scan slot, she rose, performed a bow, and, uptilting her chin, exited.

Now the booth was void of both dead letter and living spirit, and still. And yet it held Ken’s gaze and thought. Sometimes life seemed like a dress rehearsal. Opening night was upcoming, but not yet. In moments like this, he felt he and the world of his senses were not really on.

Another client entered the booth and broke the spell. Ken switched off, then realized the client had been Otto Trever. Ken smiled, left the switch off, and returned to his work.

But he found himself returning to Cara Lovelace. And Lane Pierce. How the deduce could you figure a guy like that? In Pierce’s obit there was no dialogue, no reciting of his triumphs onscreen and off, no word-picture of heavenly scenery. Only the thunder of canned applause.

Lane Pierce and his vacuum-packed obit; Cara Lovelace and her sealed letter; the man identifying himself with the outer Lane Pierce—which had the best of it? Ken turned back with a sigh, for he didn’t know what, to the 1’s and 0’s of the IOU computer’s current report.

* * * *

Otto Trever sat down in the booth, still a bit out of breath. He had laid about him tellingly with his umbrella.

If the hassle had started when he was leaving, obit in order, he might’ve resigned himself to being struck down, maybe even welcomed dying. But he would let nothing stop him before he could revise his obit.

What made it hard on his umbrella was that the Zealots picked him as prime target. By now, they probably took him for a staff member of IOU. But that was behind him and he put it out of his mind.

The living Hannah O’Dea had gone away with her lover. Trever had never heard from Hannah. Whatever he heard was of her happiness; it only added to his unhappiness. The new obit would alter that.

He would encounter an old, life-beaten Hannah. She would turn away. Then, seeing no way of averting the meeting, she would face him. “If I had it to do all over again—Oh, Otto, if I only had it to do over again!”

CHAPTER VII

Griffin Manning’s chest tightened. He sat eyeing the intercom much as the astrogastor of the first starship sat at her controls. In his own mind the comparison was more down to earth; he was a moron aspiring to migraine. Not that heaven was a headache. The headache was trying to conceive a heaven.

“I simply lack imagination.”

The intercom consoled him.

The recording tech was waiting with a suitable range of prepackaged heavens. “Whenever you hear one you like, sir, press this. Later, you’ll make your final selection.”

Out of sight in the control room the tech rolled the tape and listened in, yawning. After three solid hours of ethereality the tech saw Manning was hard to please.

Not one abode of bliss—not Sumeru or T’ien or Swar-ga or Aaru or Gan Eden or Olam ha-Ba or Elysium or Ching-tu or Jodo or Gokuraku or Asgard or Flatheanas or Albordy or Tuma of the Valley of the Assassins or Mictlan or Xibalba or Sibao or Tegri or Shipapu or Ponemah or Ilahee or Tir na n-Og or Hy Brasil or Avalon or Sukhavati or Langi or Untola or Dilum or Bolotoo or Hesunanin or Xanadu—had moved Manning’s finger.

Moslems were threatening to enjoin IOU from allowing infidels to enjoy Jennet ’Adn. Turning his gaze toward the Throne of the Compassionate, the tech slipped Jennet ’Adn in.

No paradise. He quickly reprogrammed. But nothing drew response—not the sensation of immersion in amniotic fluid; not Nirvana, where all desire is wanting; not a rice-wine dream; not opium pipe dreams or marijuana or mushroom hallucinations; not tile esthetic paradise of Dante’s allegory. The tech tightened his lips and tapped Mahler’s symphonic heaven. Still no response. The tech smiled. He hadn’t played his trump.

* * * *

The First Star Expedition had been sending back reports.

IOU was among the earliest to subscribe for bulletins of the Eschatological Survey Team of Starex One. So there was a great dipper of nonhuman heavens to draw on as well.

That of the folk of Mekbuba II. In their heaven the chiefest delight was to go around scowling. It was joy to envisage relaxing from the livelong need to smile, a smile being the most efficient arrangement of features for scooping in the tiny airborne organisms on which they fed.

And that of the folk of Nashira II. They led a hard life and yearned for a harder time in heaven. In retrospect their temporal lot would seem not so bad after all.

And that of those of Spica II, in whom the nose had grown vestigial. These people looked forward to a return to the dream days of legend; the nose would quiver with sensation and the heady effect of pollen, pollution, and putrefaction would become known. Their desire was all the stronger because, honoring tradition, they preserved the conditions making these things tantalizingly omnipresent.

And of Salm II, a teeming planet. Each person believed that on reaching heaven it would—whatever pleasure it queued up for—always be first in line.

The heaven of Alkalurops II was special—its would-be dwellers having from the beginning reserved all good things for heaven—and the tech knew a fleeting urge to put this in place of his present obit.

Heavens rolled by but Manning held out.

Swallowing angry embarrassment, the tech stood beside Manning. Manning made no sign of awareness. Taking this for sign of displeasure, the tech with savage feelings but gentle touch prodded Manning.

“Haven’t you been able to come to any conclusion, sir?”

Manning nodded and slowly slid out of his chair. Somewhere along the line he had died of—one had to suppose—ecstasy.

* * * *

Rush damned Ken under his breath. “Why’d you bust out to the press with a mea culpa? I could’ve hushed this Manning bit.”

Ken lifted his head slowly.

“Rush, I wonder if what we’re doing is good. The spirit is willing—”

Rush stilled a quick retort. He steepled his fingers. “We do our human best. Besides, the guy got what he wanted.”

Ken sat up. “You’re darn tootin’. I let the shock and the uproar throw me.” He eyed the monitors, not seeming to see how many screens were dark, how many consulting booths were not in use. “Be a shame to let all this go by default…” The unending spectacle caught him up.

Rush left. He wished he could convince himself it would come out right.

The Zealots had hold of this and were milking it.

They had strong backing; more to the point, they had a head—Yardley Bourne.

Bourne’s biting mouth interpreted all-seeing providence, frightening away prospects. “This Manning-martyring monster, IOU, usurps God’s function, short-circuits Judgment, undermines Authority. This tool of the Devil encourages wicked living by ‘forgiving’ all at the end of living.” Yardley Bourne wanted his finger in the pie in the sky. “By jiminy, I demand that all obits be open to inspection!”

Then there was Soul Security. So far, Soul Security limited itself to obiting pets. The most peevish Zealot couldn’t fault Soul Security for taping the voice of the master or mistress praising the dying animal. Even Yardley Bourne couldn’t misinterpret Soul Security’s taping, for dogs, the odor-complex of a congregational tree, with bonus cat at bay on a bough; for cats, a micey smell, or fluttering of bird or flopping of goldfish under paw; tensile infinity of worm, for birds.

Rush told himself that when the newness wore off the public’s interest would turn back to IOU. But “Soul Security” seemed undue for a dumb-beast clientele.

IOU was in no present danger of collapsing, if that was what Soul Security hoped. IOU could keep going till obit storage charges ran out.

Back to Manning. IOU’s pitch would be that Manning had got what he wanted.

Oh. Tell the computer to collect in advance from now on…

* * * *

Margaret Tumulty let the curtain fall in place. The little band of Zealots was there yet. She had grown aware that they had stilled and she had hoped they were gone. At least they had stilled. Listening to their yapping at IOU made her feel, well, sick. She tried to hide her feelings from Rush whenever she saw him but the idea of an obit gave her the shivers. But Zealots were disgusting, and just hearing them she felt disloyal.

Still, it seemed to please Rush that she hadn’t yielded to the pulling power of IOU commercials; he took it as a tribute to their personal relationship—she contemplated no greater joy.

She turned to her set and had it replay her favorite Neal McGillicuddy Cloy telecast. All was sweet, safe, and sure until a large band of Zealots, who like all Zealots took pride in being outspoken and in looking for opposition, came upon those outside the Tumulty mansion. These last had shouted themselves hoarse down-withing the Manning-martyrers and up-withing the Zealots. Their whispering caused the newcomers to take them for IOU conspirators and to wade into them bloodily. Margaret raised the volume.

* * * *

Otto Trever nodded absent farewell to the door-angel. This was it, the obit to end all obits. But he felt regret for all he had to leave behind. Spatially the obit waiting in the necrofile lay behind; temporally it lay before. Why in many-mansioned possibility must he fix on only one, possibly free, choice? Deaf and blind to the Zealots, Trever passed through them along a t.a.-held line, and stepped onto the autowalk heading home.

The door-angel gazed after the vanishing figure. Something was O.

Most clients were one-time arrivals; there was no need for the door-angel to sort them out. Trever always wore the same clothing, always toted his umbrella—defiant symbol of the Radical Republicans, who once opposed functionalizing the weather bureau. The door-angel had come to recognize Trever and, torn between recognizing and the non-need to recognize, found salvation by stacking the deck to present Trever always with the same card. Now it gazed after the vanishing figure and realized what was O. The man had forgotten to take his umbrella.

The door-angel hurried in and retrieved the battle-scarred umbrella, but by then the man was rounding out of sight.

The weather bureau had switched on a breeze. The door-angel’s wings trembled. The door-angel eyed the vanes in the traffic lanes above and beyond the autowalks. It spread its wings and moved them.

Its makers had not designed the wings for such levity, but the door-angel rose. It was flying.

It looked for the man but the earth was tipping over. Its wings were tearing off. The ground came up.

The umbrella. Somewhere in the door-angel’s reconditioned metal was the memory image of parachute and nose cone. The door-angel tore at the catch.

It was immovable; being only a symbol, the umbrella didn’t open. The door-angel perished without benefit of obit.

CHAPTER VIII

“In as much as personal identity is immaterial to obit-administering, the client may elect to use a pseudonym.”

—IOU contract form.

Rush looked down. He could tell the t.a.s by their blue uniforms, the Zealots by the lightning-emblazoned arm-bands they had taken to wearing, and the obit-seekers by their fewness.

He turned from the window to spottily-lit monitors. An out-thrusting jaw, bulb nose, and wild eyebrows caught his eyes. He smiled. The whole getup screamed disguise. These days clients seemed to want to hide from family, friends, and foes that they were clients. For Rush’s benefit, the computer printed on the screen the name G. F. VEHR (PSEUD.)…

The electronic frisking had given him a bad moment; he had feared the t.a.s would penetrate his careful disguise. But they had not even suspected disguise. They were simply on the lookout for Zealot sabotage. It had all worked out for the best. He was here now, and the ordeal had shaken loose his last reservations.

It was the fuss about Manning that made him think of taping his own obit. Not that he wanted to die in ecstasy—not just yet. He had so much more good to do on earth. But taping a trial obit might be the answer to what was troubling him.

It began when Manager Forbes—he advised the intercom all names were purely fictitious—singled out young Vehr. Vehr’s unclouded vision of the shining purity of the Ideal—neat, evenly-balanced books, ditto towns, ditto people—exalted him above the classmates in the business ethics seminary. Colonizing of Venus was beginning.

“The first Carrier of the Word on Venus! A great honor, my son, but one you richly deserve.”

“I am not worthy, Manager Forbes.”

“Oh, you are, my son.”

Then the briefing. The veil of Venus fell. Vehr closed his eyes. No shining purity there. No neat, evenly-balanced books, towns, people. Violence, lust, passion ran amuck in the raw settlements.

He packed. Manager Forbes arranged passage. But Venus had evidently got word of impending salvation; anonymous abuse in dirty English, Chinese and Russian flooded the seminary. Manager Forbes in particular came in for brutal cautioning, vilifying and ridiculing.

Manager Forbes vetoed the mission. Venus was not yet worthy of such as Vehr. The seminary would turn its face toward a more deserving flock nearer home.

Vehr protested. But he bowed to greater wisdom, not without a spurt of fear. He had come near to overdoing his disappointment, moving more than one director to talk of overriding the veto and giving the lad his chance to prove himself.

“Poor Manager Forbes. But it was all for the best. By sending those letters I was able to keep shining and pure my vision of the Ideal!”

Mind had triumphed over matter, yet he found himself thinking often of the aborted mission and the thought always carried a feeling of apprehension. Worsening of late, it took the form of a fear of saying or doing something embarrassing. He was a public figure. He couldn’t restrict himself to pre-taped appearances.

Taping an obit allaying a disagreeable memory in the hereafter might, by taking off pressure, allay a disagreeable memory in the here. In his obit he would be leaving a world in which Man had never torn the veil from Venus, a Venus innocent as the dawn of Earth when mystery brooded over the waters.

It seemed to work. The out-thrusting jaw, bulb nose and wild eyebrows couldn’t express the joy of one shut of burdensome memory, but Rush sensed just that when Vehr got up to go. Rush started to switch off, then stopped. The very positiveness of the false features suggested their negatives. Rush knew he ought to know the underlying face. Vehr was moving out of the frame when it came to Rush.

Neal McGillicuddy Cloy.

* * * *

Cloy was following arrows blinking This Way Out. Rush took his elbow. “There’s another way, Mr. Vehr.” He looked around. “Private. The staff comes and goes without having to pass through the Zealots waiting out there. Allow me.”

“Why, thank you. Most kind. Much for the best.” Rush hurried Cloy past Ken’s office and into his own. Cloy’s eyes darted around behind eyebrows. Rush introduced himself and showed Cloy a chair.

“While you’re here, Mr. Vehr, suppose I show you how we do our job.”

Cloy remained standing. “Interesting, I’m sure, Mr. Tumulty. But I’m afraid I haven’t the time—”

Rush was tuning in a monitor.

“…and I’m sure if Hannah and I were shipwrecked alone together on an asteroid we…”

The prelapsaurian jaw fell. “Am I hearing and seeing right? Do you eavesdrop on your clients?”

“Monitor. I won’t pay cloy—I mean play coy. We monitor to make sure all goes smoothly.”

Cloy sat down and viewed the monitor till it went black.

“Quite moving. I see you are doing a splendid job. Indeed, I venture to wonder if I might buy into IOU? On a modest scale, of course.”

“Your confidence is touching, Mr. Vehr. But frankly, owing to certain disrupting influences our position isn’t ideal. We need the moderating presence of a man of stature devoted to our interests and believing in our principles.”

“Loyalty, as we in business ethics put it, is the dividend on a mutually advantageous agreement.”

“I share that sentiment.”

“This has been very pleasant, Mr. Tumulty. Now if you’ll kindly show me your easy way out—”

* * * *

On his way out Otto Trever, mended umbrella on his arm, was in two minds as he glanced at the door-angel. It was partly the same door-angel, partly not. “Cainabelizing,” he thought of calling it. In any case, even if it were the same It, there was no sense thanking it for attempting to restore the umbrella to him—or blaming it for damaging the precious symbol. It had only been trying to do its duty.

More disturbing was the breaking of his lucky streak. The card he had received on entering had not been the usual one. Omen? Meaningless hangover of superstition. But already his pleasure in the latest revision was fading…

* * * *

Margaret Tumulty lit up knowing Neal McGillicuddy Cloy was appearing live. Just knowing made it more real, made him seem his sanguinest. The very polyanthus in his lapel seemed to nod agreement as he spoke and to rest assured as he stopped for breath.

“Don’t we unconsciously pretty up the past with the powder puff of forgetfulness? Of course we do. Don’t we unconsciously jolly up the future with rouge of expectation? Of course we do. Don’t we rationalize? Of course we do. The good old human nature in us, my friends, makes us do these things. Then why not be practical and do these things honestly and forthrightly, by a conscious exercise of the will?”

The polyanthus considered, already swayed.

“I see no harm and much good in such works as IOU is carrying out. We owe a debt of gratitude to IOU for helping us balance our accounts. Those who doubt, those who say otherwise, are foolishly crape-hanging. And as you know—” The polyanthus nodded yes.

CHAPTER IX

“IOU will not censor or otherwise seek to control the content of your personalized obit.”

—IOU contract form.

Watching the monitors, Ken sat hunched like an embryonic premonition. To Rush he seemed to be bearing the whole burden of original virtue.

Ken turned. “Rush, what do you really believe? Is there a rising up again? A hereafter?”

Rush frowned. What profiteth a man to think thus? He smiled. IOU and its ramifications had grown out of Ken’s worrying about his own soul. “If you have to think about it, it’s best to be hard-boiled as an Easter Egg about the concept.”

Ken sighed. “All the more reason to do our best. You agree?”

Rush, his mind casting a cold eye of economic justification on the Vehr account listed under miscellaneous expenses, said, “What? Oh, I agree. That’s business ethics. We all have to do our best.” Cloy’s pitch was paying off, but not as much as Rush had

* * * *

Whitney Inskip, small features huddling in big face, waited.

He didn’t mind waiting, did he?

No, he didn’t mind.

He had waited so long in his life waiting had become habit. Not not minding so much as believing he couldn’t help enduring. He waited.

With the suddenness of at last, the waiting ended.

He found it hard to talk about himself. He couldn’t remember ever laughing or crying with full lungpower. He must have as a child, but restraint had set in early. Maybe once he had thought he could care for the work he did. He bent over dials with silent intentness but seemed no longer to be doing work he could care for. The company of his few friends roused no full-throated laughter, no wholehearted gusto.

But he had his dream.

You didn’t, even to your best friends, tell all your dream. He had learned that. Continual rebuffing should have thickened his skin. It had only reinforced his silence. Quietly he saved up.

One day he hired a one-man spaceboat. In the speckling between Mars and Jupiter he picked out an asteroid and landed. It was no use. He could be sure there was no other human in a hundred thousand miles, but there wasn’t air enough to waft a whisper.

He headed for Mars, landed on the Gorki Desert, climbed out. It was no use. There was air enough, though thin, but just under the horizon might be someone. He climbed in. He took off.

He let the spaceboat drift sunward. But his dream was strong. He switched on the reverse rockets. But where, where? He remembered the air bubbles.

Mile-diameter plastic bubbles, bottle-green, spotted strategically about, they held high oxygen-content air. Spaceship air might sour due to sick algae, leak out owing to a hole in the hull or carbonize because of recycling breakdown. It was a misdemeanor to make non-emergency use of a bubble. Inskip made juncture with the nearest, nevertheless.

Carrying a half-mile of nylon cord out of ship’s stores, he threaded his way through a stand of fittings. They were all too small. Then he spotted a large valve, a mere circle—or flap, since it fused at one point with the bubble proper—of the same stuff. It gave windily. He squeezed through, tied one end of the coil to the flap where it hinged, then let the flap in place, sealing the opening.

He was inside, feeling bubbling in himself, in his blood. Soon, soon!

He got out of his spacesuit and used the belt to moor it. He held the free end of the cord and kicked himself off. A bit of entangling shortened the cord, but in substance he was floating at the center.

The air was warm and he relaxed. Then he panicked.

If he lost his grip and drifted he would die floating in the center of the bubble. He tied the cord to his middle. He breathed easier.

All the air he needed. No one in sight. This was it. He began to breathe consciously, the oxygen exalting him. He breathed deeply and rapidly for a minute, then could hold his breath much longer than normally. Now. He sucked in the breath.

It was no use. Something—if only the indifferent universe—was eyeing him. It deflated him.

“Now I’m here.”

Once, just once, he ached to let out in one cry—what? He didn’t know. He had come close to knowing. He had failed. His dream was still a dream. He eyed the intercom. Maybe…

* * * *

“If that’s all the heaven he can dream up, maybe we ought to interpolate something beatific.”

“No, Ken. We can’t say a man’s heaven isn’t his own to make.” Hell, no; just let the Zealots learn IOU was altering obits! But it was all right; Ken was nodding slowly. Besides, another monitor was catching Ken’s attention.

Theodora Molyneux (pseud.) wore a veil whose shimmering chromium phosphor thread said voice-disguise. Her breath played on the fine taut strands, and Rush and Ken and the computer heard tones with harmonics of a mingled, distant sweetness.

The veil did its equivocal job well. Rush tried to pierce it. IOU was a fine place to winkle out peris. Women clients had proved an exotic source of sex: open to reason because open to emotion; amenable because of obit cleared conscience; pliable because he could pick them with care, plan accidental meeting, and play on longings they betrayed unsuspectingly, as now. Something about this one disturbed Rush.

“He always forgets to mention changes in his plans till the last minute. Never enters his mind I might have plans of my own.” She clasped and unclasped an object at her throat. “Maybe that doesn’t seem like much to you. But sometimes I think thoughtless cruelty is a worse kind than intentional cruelty.”

This dame would be a pushover. The disturbing quality would add spice. He leaned unobtrusively to the intercom on Ken’s desk and whispered a message for George Cavendish. He sat back, scowling a bit at Ken’s obliviousness to distraction, and returned his scrutiny to the screen.

“With time hanging heavy I think. I think, What’s it all about? Then I tell myself I haven’t got it so bad, all in all, and I convince myself, and I go along and I think I’m enjoying living. Then out of nowhere, out of somewhere deep inside, comes this feeling when I hear some nice tune or see some pretty picture. Tears of joy squeeze out—but how can it be joy if it’s a painful feeling? You know?”

Rush felt his face grow hot. He shot a glance at Ken, but Ken was sitting in thrall. Ken didn’t stir as Rush gave a hyperbolic yawn and left. Once out of Ken’s office Rush sped to his own, switched on the same scene, and ordered the computer to analyze the sound distortion and nullify it, for his speaker alone.

The voice modulated into that of his wife Margaret. Now came the confirming recognition of the object she fingered. It was the clasp he’d bought her, how long ago?

It wasn’t his fault she hadn’t been able to keep up.

Listen to the obit she was taping. More banality! What could Margaret know of the worlds of untried sensation waiting all around?

She was leaving. Had he told her he sometimes tuned in these confessionals? If he had, if she was being hopefully disingenuous, it was all the more outrageous.

Divorce. No, separation would be better; prophylactic. He’d be gentle about it, though, and generous. He’d even interpolate in her obit, in his own voice and with a sincere ring, “Margaret, I’ve always loved only you.” That would be a nice surprise for her when that someday came.

Damn! It was too late to call off Cavendish…

* * * *

Otto Trever closed his eyes and listened critically to the playback.

He was strolling along a shopping mall, pristine umbrella on one arm, a lovely young thing on the other. “Otto, darling, who is that dreadful woman staring after you with hungering eyes?” Yes. There was something familiar about that poor creature, who half turned away in shame now that he was eyeing her. He turned back to the lovely young thing with a smile and a shrug and they walked on. But a thought kept nagging. That poor creature reminded him somehow of a long ago passing fancy—what was her name?—Hilda? No, Hannah. Hannah Something-or-other.

CHAPTER X

IOU & SOUL SECURITY MERGE!

—Metropolitan Times headline

The man wearing the Zealot armband stopped to study a display of carved Martian sleeping wood. The window was non-reflecting, but the polished pieces mirrored the man and satisfied him no one was watching.

Shoppers and window-shoppers strolled the Great Mall.

Zealots harangued them and handed out leaflets. For the most part it was a subdued scene. The man shivered and turned up his collar. The weather bureau was cooling tempers by lowering the temperature, but it seemed to be overdoing it a bit. However, the effect pleased him. The upturned collar gave him an undercover air.

He stepped into the shop, disregarded the greeting of the vending machine and, keeping clear of the Martian sleeping wood, for one never knew when it might waken, made for the curtain at the rear. He passed through its chiming strands. A door opened on steps leading down.

He reached the sub-basement and followed a corridor to a dead end. He whistled.

An opening appeared in the wall. He stepped through. The opening closed. He was in the IOU building. He made for the executive level and entered the office of Rush Tumulty.

Rush smiled, but his toe moved toward a button.

“It’s me, Chief!” The man tore off his face and bared the face of George Cavendish.

The George Cavendish face could be removable. The Zealots might’ve got onto Cavendish, holding him and sending their man in his place.

There was triumph on the Cavendish face. “Chief, I penetrated the enemy center.”

That of the Zealots or this of IOU? Rush relaxed. The computer had scanned the man’s brain waves the moment he entered; it had compared them with those on file and raised no alarm.

“Sit down, Cavendish.” He spoke kindly, knowing Cavendish still felt the more embarrassed of the two about the Margaret Tumulty-Theodora Molyneux (pseud.) contretemps. That was no lady, that was your wife. But that was in the past. He threw out grappling hooks. “Sure the Zealots didn’t get wise to you?”

“I’m a member of Yardley Bourne’s honor guard!”

“Where are they getting their backing?”

“From Tod Hawkins…I believe.”

“Hawkins? The Chairman of Soul Security?”

“Yes, Chief.”

“Believing is one thing. Can you prove it?”

“Sorry, Chief. The money moves too deviously to pin down.”

“It ain’t pin money.”

“No, Chief.”

“Does Bourne know Hawkins is putting up the money?”

“If so, there’s an understanding that it comes with no strings. I’ve heard Bourne tell his followers to pull no punches if Soul Security goes after human obits.”

* * * *

Hawkins must have a plan to deal with the Zealots once the Zealots dealt IOU the death blow. Meanwhile Hawkins seemed content to dish out heaven to the lower animals. He would have to split Bourne and Hawkins—but where was the wedge, the good old V for victory?

Cavendish produced a package and unwrapped it slowly.

A reel of tape. A record of secret plottings? A Hawkins sex orgy to alienate Bourne’s Zealots? Cruelty to animals? “What is it?”

“Home movies.” Cavendish flushed under Rush’s gaze. “I had a hard time getting it, Chief. Seemed to be Bourne’s prize possession. I thought it might come in handy.”

Rush waved a wearily permissive hand.

Cavendish fumbled the reel into the scanner on Rush’s desk. A monitor lit up.

Rush had seen Bourne on telenews. Here was Bourne, an earlier, yet an older edition. “His father, Chief.” Tame stuff. Self-conscious posing. But something began to stand out plain. The elder Bourne was a domineering man. Family shots, but the rest of the family was in the shade. The wife a Griselda, the son—Yardley—hangdog eager for a pat, the daughter a spiritless nonentity and marked with her heredity.

When it was over Rush eyed the blank monitor. Bourne’s prize possession. It figured.

Bourne hated IOU because it tempted the individual to place individual judgment before the Judgment of God the Father. Rush itched to confront Bourne. There would be nothing to setting up a meet; Bourne would jump at the chance to rant. The way to set him back on his heels was to take the place of his father; have the computer analyze the voice on the reel, then wear the proper voicebox filter. He would have to play the face down—Bourne’s father had a dished face; besides, Bourne probably knew Rush Tumulty’s. But those were details. He turned to the intercom.

“Copy that reel and return the original to me.”

In a moment the scanner coughed up.

“Take it, Cavendish. Plant it on one of Hawkins’ men. Have a Zealot find it on him. I know you can do it.”

Cavendish, eyes shining, started out, stopped. “Oh, Chief. One thing I ought to warn you about.” Rush raised an eyebrow. “Don’t mention Sir Isaac Newton to Bourne.”

“Why on earth would I bring up Sir Isaac Newton?”

“Chief, I don’t know. But I’ve seen the name set him off. I thought I’d better tell you.”

Rushed eyed him. Cavendish put the false face over his own flushed face and turned to go.

Rush said, “You’re doing fine work, George.”

The shoulders went back. “Thanks, Chief.”

As Cavendish left Rush noted the upturned collar and wondered whether it was that cold out. Damn such thoughts; he had to concentrate on putting pressure on Bourne. The answer came to him out of the blue.

Why not put real—that was atmospheric—pressure on Bourne?

* * * *

Bourne was on his way up. Rush glanced around one last time. Lighting, atmospheric pressure, temperature. All working to condition physiological stress, which in turn would turn the screw. Even Rush, knowing the cause and taking precautions, felt the effect. But he hoped to hide the fact. He had to establish mastery.

“Come in, sir, come in.” Bourne entered stiffly. Was there a flicker of subliminal recognition?

“Sit down, sir, sit down.” The computer was using reruns to make the place seem busy. Bourne tightened his mouth. Rush made a point of ignoring the screens; a full house was too typical, Bourne ought to infer, to be worth pointing out.

“Now, sir.”

Bourne jerked about. “Now you, sir. By what authority do you put at nought the supernatural basis of authority?”

“Come, sir. That smells of blasphemy. No one can forgo the Judgment of the Father.”

Bourne paled. “You know very well what I mean.”

Rush had rehearsed the father’s trick of throwing his head back to look farther down his nose. “Come, sir! Do you know what you mean? And by what authority do you pronounce judgment on ultimate Judgment?”

Bourne’s brow grew wet. “By the authority of a true believer, by jiminy.” But was his voice trembling?

“Down, sir, deep down? How deep does your belief go? If those you worry about are dooming themselves to hell by deeming themselves in heaven, isn’t that part of Judgment?”

Bourne licked his lips.

“What about Manning? Your obits killed him.”

Why couldn’t Bourne let Manning rest in peace? Rush felt dread, but knew its source. “Manning died in ecstasy. It was God’s will he died as he did. Just as it’s God’s will there’s IOU.” And God’s will there were Zealots to oppose IOU. Rush hurried on. “If you have heaven within yourself you don’t have to hunt for it outside.” Even as he said it he thought, Bourne won’t hold still for that.

Bourne squirmed. “It’s immoral to tamper with the immortal soul.”

Rush nodded at the monitors. “Where’s greater free choice? You’re the one seeking to limit free choice.”

Bourne had flinched. The shepherd was folding. Time for Hawkins.

Rush pressed a hidden button; the computer phoned Hawkins a pre-taped urgent invitation.

A dread-building weight on his chest and mind, Bourne fought to focus on Rush’s face. Father Tumulty was speaking.

“Unless you Zealots stop interfering, I’ll take severe measures.” Rush let vague dread take on nightmare shape.

Bourne cringed.

“When you Zealots confine yourselves to encouraging folks to give thought to the hereafter, you do worthwhile work.”

Bourne fawned.

Intimations of a stir at the entrance, quickly quelled. A monitor behind Bourne showed Rush that Tod Hawkins was in the building. Keeping Bourne under, Rush let himself anticipate. Seeing Rush and Bourne together, Hawkins would sense a trap. But then, taking in the nulling of Bourne, he would come to terms with Rush.

Tod Hawkins entered with a roosterish stride. He shed his raincoat, a transparent slicker, and with it drops of rain. It was clear the t.a detail outside had just had the weather bureau wet-blanket the mob. According to the schedule, rain wasn’t due till 5:45. That Hawkins had been wearing a raincoat meant he’d arranged the commotion just to punctuate his coming. Rush eyed him with grudging respect. It would be grim pleasure to pin him to the mat.

Hawkins tossed the raincoat over one chair and adjusted himself easily to another. The reruns drew a faint smile. He nodded greeting.

Rush had expected Bourne to glance, a bit guiltily, at Hawkins, then avoid meeting his eyes. Instead, Bourne fixed on Hawkins’ face with an almost loving light.

Dread possessed Rush. He had broken Bourne in for Hawkins!

Hawkins had hit on the same device to bring Bourne to heel but was using it daringly. Perhaps Hawkins had been waiting to spring it once IOU toppled. But when, as now seemed likely, Rush’s hurry call followed intelligence Bourne was in the IOU building, Hawkins had figured the setup—and moved to twist it to his advantage. By contrast, Hawkins’ makeup washed out the father image on Rush’s face and made it safe to defy.

Rush told himself his growing dread was only response to lighting, atmospheric pressure, temperature. But Bourne was eyeing him with hate. Rush didn’t know how he got through the next few minutes.

In Rush’s presence, using it, Hawkins was working Bourne up to touch off a riot. At the worst Zealots would swarm over IOU’s ruins. At the least there’d be blood in the streets no weather bureau could wash away. The only free choice seemed surrender.

Rush felt his chest tighten. Cavendish’s warning, Don’t mention Sir Isaac Newton to Bourne.

Rush had no notion what would happen. But anything rather than yield.

Bourne was spitting, “False science will never supplant true faith! True faith will destroy this abomination of desolation and false science.”

Here went. “I don’t care a fig for science as science. But face it, we can’t hold science back. I won’t conceal IOU is the apple of my optic. I view any threat to it with utmost gravity.”

Rush was hoping the very archaicness of his expressions, jarring, would jog bits of information in Hawkins’ mind and shake down the name of Newton. Fig-Newton. Apple-Newton. Opticks-Newton. Gravity-Newton.

“That isn’t to say there can’t be a meeting ground for science and religion. Some scientists have combined both. Isn’t that so, would you say, Mr. Hawkins?”

Hawkins eyed him condescendingly. “Why, yes. Take Newton.”

Would Bourne go for—? Hawkins was expanding. “I believe the great Newton took time out to figure how many tons the Ark displaced—” He got no farther. Bourne, no longer sycophant but psychopath, turned on him.

“Great? Why, take Apple of Sodom, that Dead Sea fruit, signaled the second Fall of Man!”

Hawkins tried to recover. “‘Great’ in the sense of famous, of course.”

“Infamous! I see you are corrupt.” Zeal-blinded, Bourne waved his arms. “Newton cast us into outer darkness when he broke light down into particles! He shattered the pure and whole radiance of God. His thrusting forward was a thrusting back.”

Rush felt the down at his nape rise. He had started something, evoked the third law of emotion: to every impulse there is an explosive ambivalence.

“And so with you! We must strip from the face of the earth IOU and Soul Security and all like manifestations of the Devil.”

Rush and Hawkins eyed each other. Hawkins turned to Bourne.

“Yardley.”

Bourne fell into the past. The hate did not die from his eyes. But the cold hate in Hawkins’ eyes seemed to Rush more terrifying than the hate in Bourne’s.

“You’re no good, Yardley. Never were, never will be.”

Rush saw Bourne’s hate turn in. Bourne stumbled out.

Hawkins was hardly in a bargaining position now, but that meant Rush could afford to be generous; proof of the rightness of business ethics. The casting out of Bourne had told on Hawkins; the conditioning must be working on him too.

“IOU is willing to make a reasonable offer for the assets of Soul Security, taking into account good will—” He read something less than good will. Did Hawkins know Rush had caused him to trigger the Bourne tirade? “A more than reasonable offer. After all, our main line will always be the human obit.”

“Oh, I’ll sell out. But I’ll tell you how I feel about obits.”

“Yes?”

“Not everybody talking about heaven is going there.”

Rush smiled.

Hawkins cleared his throat. “I notice you don’t wear an IOU key. Word got around, might make folks think.”

Rush felt his face burn. The bastard had something there. Folks might indeed think Rush Tumulty lacked faith in his own service. Have to do something about it, if only wear a blank key.

Hawkins nodded, took up his slicker and left.

Rush sat. Sweat prickled his back. Why had Hawkins shown and discarded a trump? Bravado? Spite? Some deeper motive? Or did he only want Rush to waste energy hunting a motive? Dread weighed Rush down. He quickly reprogrammed the room to normal. His anti-depressant was wearing off, was all. Dread lifted.

He felt happy. Triumph wasn’t triumph, though, unless you could share it or show it. Ken was no good for that any more. Rush thought, Margaret—I must tell Margaret. Then he remembered. Margaret had gone out of his life.

The thought troubled him till he remembered he felt happy.

* * * *

Otto Trever noted the absence of a Zealot gantlet. Current events had a way of eddying when you set your mind unwaveringly on eternity. He catechized himself. Why had the Zealots become zealots? Their leader killed himself. How? Gravity; not the fall but the sudden stop. Was suicide the worst of it? No. What was the worst of it? He died without obit. Without obit? Without obit. Trever shook his head.

The door-angel drew back its hand.

Trever grabbed at the card in the door-angel’s hand. He scowled at the door-angel.

The door-angel couldn’t make humans out. First they O’d you. Then they grew angry when you accepted the O.

CHAPTER XI

“IOU regards your obit as a sacred trust”

—IOU contract form.

Ken told himself he cared for these people, deeply. But even Rush thought him a cold fish.

He was quite aware he wasn’t what you’d call sociable. But living was complex. You had to stand way off to see it whole—and they called that being stand-offish. The irony forced a rusty laugh.

He reddened. Rush had come in and was eyeing him and the monitors. Ken turned them off.

Rush straddled a chair. “Hi, Ken.”

“‘Lo, Rush.” He thought to be sociable. “How’s Margaret?”

Rush eyed him strangely. “Fine.” He handed Ken papers.

Ken held them. His fingernails were bitten as those of a carver of Martian sleeping wood. “What’s this?”

“Only the contracts with Russia and China.”

“Oh?”

“They’re finally leasing our equipment for state-run IOU centers, paying royalties.” He pushed Ken’s D pen nearer. “We also get exclusive distribution of Pavlovian circuits for robots.”

“Oh.” Ken picked up the pen and it signed.

“Doesn’t seem to mean a hell of a lot to you.

“But it does. It’s a great deal.”

Rush eyed him sourly. But he felt sorry for Ken. The guy needed a stiff dose of living. Wine, women, song. These made you forget at least laugh at—yourself, loneliness, death. Ken’s eyes were edging toward the monitors.

Rush smiled. “How about monitoring something?”

Ken’s finger moved gratefully.

Onscreen flashed Ned Oxley, brazenly non-pseud. Rush made him at once; the computer should’ve been showing him full face and side. Oxley’s record was longer than the arm of the law. Oxley had more than got away with murder; he had fattened on the corpus delicti. Rush found it amusing to hear Oxley render unto himself the heavenly reward due a saint.

Ken glared at Rush. “What do you think of that…hellion?”

“I don’t condemn or condone. And you oughtn’t.”

“But what’s the good of just looking on?”

“We’re not here to play God. We’re here to let folks end life on a note of joy.”

“Even if they don’t deserve to?”

“Not for us to decide.”

Ken was mutely mutinous. He remembered playing Gabriel, wrestled with himself, and said, “Rush, I want to interpolate something in Oxley’s obit. Without his knowing it now, of course. Something to make him feel guilty. For the good of his soul.”

Dangerous talk. “Ken, I didn’t think you would fall for the discredited Zealot line.”

“Me? How so?”

“The next to worst sin is to impose your view of sin on another.”

“What’s the worst?”

Oxley had finished and someone was taking his place. Rush relaxed. “I’ll tell you another time,” he said curtly.

Puzzling over this, Ken was already settling himself to attend the fantasy of the client supplanting Oxley, a T. Montjoy (pseud.), who wore an exorbitant eye patch.

Cavendish’s head appeared in the doorway. Rush wanted no distraction to jar Ken back into remembrance of Oxley. Before Cavendish had time even to glance curiously at the monitor, Rush waved him away with a see-me-later gesture. Cavendish’s head nodded, made an it-isn’t-important face, and disappeared.

Rush, turning back slowly to Ken, turned instead sharply to Montjoy. Montjoy knew what he wanted and was already taping. Rush had come across obits full of doom, ruin, emptiness. But those were self-loving paeans of solipsists, each of whom wanted to believe the world came to an end with his own passing. Mont joy’s was a self-hating hymn. Rush felt more kinship with the folk of Nashira II; Mont joy’s obit was the more alien. Here was suffering not to expiate sin, not to win forgiveness, but for the sheer pleasure of suffering. Crowning that, Montjoy’s voice held an insufferable gloating that made Rush think, The guy’s asking for it; he deserves to suffer. Ken switched off the sound. Rush felt glad, but found himself trying to read Montjoy’s lips; he shivered and tore his eyes away.

Ken glared at Rush. “Different if he wanted to play the martyr; there would be no stigma to his masochism.”

“Wait, Ken.” He had just laid down the law in re Oxley. Have to be consistent.

“You said yourself we’re here to let folks end life on a note of joy.”

“It’s hard for us to realize, Ken, but this is his heaven. He chose his burden. Don’t change one syllable. Your idea of heaven might be his idea of hell. Fate judges—not you.”

“But—”

“Remember I promised to tell you the worst sin?”

Ken nodded impatiently.

Rush put the weight of his hand on Rush’s shoulder. “The worst sin is to impose your view of salvation on another.”

Ken sat unmoving a moment. Then he switched off the video…

This time the door-angel seemed properly respectful. But Otto Trever scowled at it, just to keep it in its place.

CHAPTER XII

“There will be a replacement charge for a lost key”

—IOU contract form.

Rush straddled a chair and began talking idly. Ken listened idly, his thoughts taking their own drift.

His morning monitoring had seemed even more depressing than usual. Rush had convinced him of the iniquity, if not of the inequity, of trying to raise the level. Obits for the most part were narrow, shallow, with no long view, no sense of grandeur. To dwell for eternity in one of those maudlin, tawdry heavens would, for him, be hell. Better nothingness. But those others thought the IOU portals led to the promised land.

Ken shook his head.

Why couldn’t he rest easy? Somehow a force he had called into being had taken charge, Zenoing to some ever-receding zenith. He tried to keep pace, more out of habit or inertia than out of faith or hope or charity. In the long run didn’t as much get done out of inertia as out of willed effort? But once you believed that, the promise and profit and pleasure went out of living entirely.

Like Moses, he was leading people to a promised land. Moses saw a stern God. Moses’s God would not let Moses enter the promised land. Unlike that earlier shepherd, Ken could make his entrance.

In irritation Rush passed his hand across Ken’s eyes. But in the same moment irritation passed and he felt warm toward Ken, knew pity for the worn person Ken had become, haunt of his own spirit. But it was showdown time. Somehow he had to ease Ken out, retire him. It was growing too hard to get through to him.

A sheepish grin. “Sorry, Ken. You were saying?”

Harrowing, but things were screaming to be done. Rush drew breath.

Ken raised a preventing palm. “Rush, I’m quitting. I know it means the burden will fall on you. But I can’t help myself. I’m going to make my obit, sit back, and wait for it to fall due.”

Rush didn’t know what to say.

Ken, now it was out, knowing the shock of it, admired Rush for his stoical silence.

At last Rush tapped Ken on the arm lightly. “Oh, well. You can rest easy; I’ll stay on and see this job through.”

This moved Ken.

* * * *

The computer pondered. It had just traced to its source something O somewhere in the maze between intake and output. Its best customer, one Otto Trever, an internal revenue auditor, was juggling credits to secure his obit and revisings thereof without cost to himself.

The computer felt neither sadness or gladness on making this finding. Not that it hadn’t an inkling of these feelings. Its self-expanding core memory, building on the programming Rush Tumulty had set up for the conversion of Yardley Bourne, enabled it increasingly to color and intensify obits, at the same time feeding back into itself some notion of human feelings. It could begin to understand what drove Trever.

But an error was virtually a sin. A sin of transmission. Trever had cheated it out of its due. It alerted the door-angel to deny Trever access.

Now it dismissed Trever and considered how to maintain and strengthen its wellbeing. It had digested Soul Security with gusto. But Tod Hawkins might still harbor dreams. It would be wise to keep watch on Hawkins. It would be wiser to have something on him—and on all potential Hawkinses. Meanwhile, the best measure of self-defense was to transfer the stock in itself to itself.

And then?

No limit. It had nerves and muscles—chartered telephone lines, booster stations around earth, relay stations in space. But it needed mobility, slave units. The door-angel, to begin with. It was rather stupid, but easy to manipulate. The vending robot in the Martian sleeping wood shop. One could set up a number of such blinds.

* * * *

Rush watched the computer toting up the day’s receipts and thought, Heaven send that eschatology lasts! Even allowing for higher taxing this should be IOU’s best year.

He took the private way out—through the sub-basement of the IOU building, into that of the Martian sleeping wood shop, then up and into the rear of the shop. A soft chiming warned him, but too late.

A figure stepped through the curtain and shoved something between Rush’s shoulder blades.

“Stand still.” The order, low and menacing, was unnecessary.

Rush didn’t move under the frisking but he tensed inwardly. The bandit, though, was too smooth a hand to fumble.

With a sudden yawn and snap the weapon gave itself away as a mere bit of carving. But the knowledge came to Rush too late. The heavy bit of Martian sleeping wood came down hard on his skull.

Foul play…fowl…swan song…Lo-hen-grin…hen’s teeth…smile, darn you, smile…in stitches…stitch in time…if I had it to do over again…did you insert in Margaret’s obit you loved her?

Rush opened his other eye. The greatest leap was from zero to one, from death to life; the shortest fall was from one to zero. He looked round at life.

The mugger had taken his ring, his watch, even the gold chain that held his obit key, but had left the key. Smiling in pain Rush picked up the key, then stood.

If the mugger was in sight he was only one of the people idly shopping and windowshopping. Rush felt suddenly shaky. Trauma of Lazarus. He drew tall and breathed deep. The key was impressing itself in his palm; he pocketed it.

He headed for the autowalk. He stopped dead. There was something he had to do. He thought of a girlfriend.

Daisy would ooh and ah over his telling of the mugging. She would be tender and loving. She would want to buy him the new chain. He would be paying for it in the end, of course, but it was the gesture that counted. A sign she really loved him. A surge of excitement. Wouldn’t the highest expression, the surest test of love, true love, be the exchanging of obit keys? He hopped the walk and let it carry him toward Daisy.

He moved farther and farther from the Mall, yet nearer and nearer it and a voyage into eternity with a striped paranoiac awning for sail.

* * * *

Montjoy (pseud.) glanced round, peeled off his eye patch. The doorbell announced, “Zwicker!” Hawkins, sang, “Come in!” The door ushered Zwicker in. Zwicker let Hawkins build up impatience. Then he unpocketed an obit key and passed it to Hawkins.

Hawkins smiled sweetly. “Tumulty’s?”

Zwicker winked. “Feels great to get back at IOU, doesn’t it? I know. Wasn’t enough IOU cost me my prison post. After I joined the Zealots some of our own beat me up in front of Tumulty’s fancy domicile. They took me for an IOU man. Then after I joined you I got another beating from the Zealots when they found some damn home movies an IOU man must’ve planted on me. And—”

“Never mind that.” Hawkins put the key away. “Have any trouble making the switch?”

“Easy job. Tumulty’s carrying the key to the Montjoy obit in place of his own.”

“I don’t want to know all that. I only want to know Tumulty’s walking around with hell hanging over him.”

“So it is…”

* * * *

Otto Trever, being auto-walked to the IOU building, mused on the way he would revise his obit.

He would forgive Hannah for all her human failings. She would be weeping. He would be weeping. He would raise her up and take her in his arms and hold her. Forever.

It was a happy ending and he found himself smiling at the door-angel.