Well?

Quite well, I said. And yourself?

I want an answer.

To what?

Was it sabotage?

No, I said. Whatever gave you that idea?

There have been other attempts, you know.

No, I didn't know.

She blushed suddenly, highlighting her freckles. What had caused that?

Well, there have been. We stopped all of them, obviously. But they were there.

Who did it?

We don't know.

Why not?

We never got hold of the people involved.

How come?

They were clever.

I lit a cigarette.

Well, you're wrong, I said. There were some short circuits. I'm an electrical engineer and I spotted them. That was all, though.

She found one someplace, and I lit it for her.

Okay, she said. I guess I've got everything you want to tell me.

I stood then.

... By the way, I ran another check on you.

Yes?

Nothing. You're clean as snow and swansdown.

Glad to hear it.

Don't be. Mister Schweitzer. I'm not finished with you yet

Try everything, I said. You'll find nothing else.

... And I was sure of that.

So I left her, wondering when they would reach me.

I send one Christmas card each year, and it is unsigned. All it bears, in block print, is a list of four bars and the cities in which they exist. On Easter, May Day, the first day of summer, and Halloween, I sit in those bars and sip drinks from nine until midnight, local time. Then I go away. Each year, they're different bars.

Always, I pay cash, rather than using the Universal Credit Card which most people carry these days. The bars are generally dives, located in out-of-the-way places.

Sometimes Don Walsh shows up, sits down next to me and orders a beer. We strike up a conversation, then take a walk. Sometimes he doesn't show up. He never misses two in a row, though. And the second time he always brings me some cash.

A couple of months ago, on the day when summer came bustling into the world, I was seated at a table in the back of the Inferno, in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. It was a cool evening, as they all are in that place, and the air had been clean and the stars very bright as I walked up the flagstone streets of that national monument. After a time, I saw Don enter, wearing a dark, fake-wool suit and yellow sport shirt, opened at the neck. He moved to the bar, ordered something, turned and let his eyes wander about the tables. I nodded when he grinned and waved. He moved toward me with a glass in one hand and a Carta Blanca in the other.

I know you, he said.

Yeah, I think so. Have a seat?

He pulled out a chair and seated himself across from me at the small table. The ashtray was filled to overflowing, but not because of me. The odor of tequila was on the breeze, make that draft , from the opened front of the narrow barroom, and all about us two-dimensional nudes fought with bullfight posters for wall space.

Your name is ... ?

Frank, I said, pulling it out of me air. Wasn't it in New Orleans ... ?

Yeah, at Mardi Gras, a couple years ago.

That's right. And you're ... ?

George.

Right. I remember now. We went drinking together. Played poker all night long. Had a hell of a good time.

... And you took me for about two hundred bucks.

I grinned.

So what've you been up to? I asked him.

Oh, the usual business. There are big sales and small sales. I've got a big one going now.

Congratulations. I'm glad to hear that. Hope it works out.

Me, too.

So we made small talk while he finished his beer; then, Have you seen much of this town? I asked.

Not really. I hear it's quite a place.

Oh, I think you'll like it. I was here for their Festival once. Everybody takes bennies to stay awake for the whole three days. Indios come down from the hills and put on dances. They still hold paseos here, too, you know? And they have the only Gothic cathedral in all of Mexico. It was designed by an illiterate Indian, who had seen pictures of the things on postcards from Europe. They didn't think it would stay up when they took the scaffolding down, but it did and has done so for a long time.

I wish I could stick around, but I'm only here for a day or so. I thought I'd buy some souvenirs to take home to the family.

This is the place. Stuff is cheap here. Jewelry, especially.

I wish I had more time to see some of the sights.

There is a Toltec ruin atop a hill to the northeast, which you might have noticed because of the three crosses set at its summit. It is interesting because the government still refuses to admit it exists. The view from up there is great.

I'd like to see it. How do you get in?

You just walk out there and climb it. It doesn't exist, so there are no restrictions.

How long a hike?

Less than an hour, from here. Finish your beer, and we'll take a walk.

He did, and we did.

He was breathing heavily in a short time. But then, he lived near sea level and this was like 6,500 feet, elevation.

We made it up to the top, though, and wandered amid cacti. We seated ourselves on some big stones.

So, this place doesn't exist, he said, the same as you.

That's right.

Then it's not bugged, no, it couldn't be, the way most bars are these days.

It's still a bit of wilderness.

I hope it stays this way.

Me, too.

Thanks for the Christmas card. You looking for a job?

You know it.

All right. I've got one for you.

And that's how this one started.

Do you know about the Leeward and Windward Islands? he asked me. Or Surtsey?

No. Tell me.

Down in the West Indies, in the Lesser Antilles system, starting in an arc heading southeasterly from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands toward South America, are those islands north, of Guadeloupe which represent the high points of a subterranean ridge ranging from forty to two hundred miles in width. These are oceanic islands, built up from volcanic materials. Every peak is a volcano, extinct or otherwise.

So?

The Hawaiians grew up in the same fashion ... Surtsey, though, was a twentieth-century phenomenon: a volcanically created island which grew up in a very brief time, somewhat to the west of the Vestmanna Islands, near Iceland. That was in 1963. Capelinhos, in the Azores, was the same way, and had its origin undersea.

So? But I already knew, as I said it. I already knew about Project RUMOKO, after the Maori god of volcanoes and earthquakes. Back in the twentieth century, there had been an aborted Mohole Project and there had been natural-gas-mining deals which had involved deep drilling and the use of shaped atomic charges.

RUMOKO, he said. Do you know about it?

Somewhat. Mainly from the Times Science Section.

That's enough. We're involved.

How so?

Someone is attempting to sabotage the thing. I have been retained to find out who and how and why, and to stop him. I've tried, and have been eminently unsuccessful to date. In fact, I lost two of my men under rather strange circumstances. Then I received your Christmas card.

I turned toward him, and his green eyes seemed to glow in the dark. He was about four inches shorter than me and perhaps forty pounds lighter, which still made him a pretty big man. But he had straightened into a nearly military posture, so that he seemed bigger and stronger than the guy who had been wheezing beside me on the way up.

You want me to move in?

Yes.

What's in it for me?

Fifty thousand. Maybe a hundred fifty, depending on the results.

I lit a cigarette.

What will I have to do? I finally asked.

Get yourself assigned as a crewman on the Aquina, better yet, a technician of some kind. Can you do that?

Yes.

Well, do it. Then find out who is trying to screw the thing up. Then report back to me, or else take them out of the picture any way you see fit. Then report back to me.