"Okay, okay. We'll be down in a minute. Bennie brought a gift for Peter, and something for you. She's on her way to her sister's place, but she says she's in no hurry."

"Capital. Drag her down. She knows Heydell." "Fine." She broke the connection.

Christmas Eve.

....he opposite of New Year's:

It is the personal time, rather than the social time; it is the time of focusing upon self and family, rather than society. It is a time of many things: A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away. It is a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted .. .

They ate from the buffet. Most of them drank the warm Ronrico and cinnamon and cloves and fruit cocktail and ginger-flavored punch. They talked of plastasac lungs and blood screens and diagnosis by computer, and of the worth-lessness of penicillin. Peter sat with his hands folded in his lap: listening, watching. His crutches lay at his feet. Music flooded the room.

Jill sas listening, also.

When Render talked everyone listened. Bennie smiled, took another diink. Playboy doctor or not, when Render talked it was with the voice of a disc jockey and the logic of the Jes­uits. Her boss was known. Who knew Minton? Who knew Heydell? Other doctors, that's all. Shapers were big-time, and she was his secretary-receptionist. Everybody knew of the Shapers. There was nothing controversial about being a heart specialist or a bone man, an anesthesiologist or an in­ternal medicine buff. Her boss was her measure of glory. The other girls always asked her about him, about his magic machine... "Electronic Svengalis," that's what Time had called them, and Render had gotten three paia-graphs, two more than any of the others—excepting Baitel-metz, of course.

The music changed to light classical, to ballet. Bennie felt a year's end nostalgia and she wanted to dance again, as she had once long ago. The season and the company, compounded with the music and the punch and the decoia-tions, made her foot tap, slowly, and turned her mind to

memories of a spotlight and a stage filled with color and movement and herself. She listened to the talk.

"... If you can transmit them and receive them, then you can record them, can't you?" Minton was asking.

"Yes," said Render.

"That's what I thought. Why don't they write more about that angle of the thing?"

"Another five or ten years—perhaps less—and they will. Right now though, the use of playback is restricted to qualified personnel."

"Why?"

"Well"—Render paused to light another cigarette—"to be completely frank, it is to keep the whole area under con­trol until we know more about it. The thing could be ex­ploited commercially—and perhaps with disastrous results —if it were left wide open."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I could take a fairly stable person and in his mind construct any sort of dream that you could name, and many that you could not—dreams ranging from vio­lence and sex to sadism and perversion—dreams with a plot, like a total-participation story, or dreams which border upon insanity itself: wish-fulfillment dreams on any subject, cast in any manner. I could even pick a visual arts style, from expressionism to surrealism, if you'd like. A dream of violence in a cubist setting? Like that? Great! You could even be the horse of Guernica. I could set it up. I could re­cord the whole thing and play it back to you, or anyone else, any number of times."

"God!"

"Yes, God. I could make you God, too, if you'd like that —and I could make the Creation last you a full seven days. I control the time-sense, the internal clock, and I can stretch actual minutes into subjective hours."

"Sooner or later this thing will happen, won't it?"

"Yes."

"What will the results be?"

"No one really knows."

"Boss," asked Bennie softly, "could you bring a memory to life again? Could you resurrect something from out of the past and make it live over again in a person's mind, and make it just as though the whole thing was real, all over again?"

Render bit his lip, stared at her strangely.

"Yes," he said, after a long pause, "but it wouldn't really be a good thing to do. It would encourage living in the past, which is now a nonexistent time. It would be a detri­ment to mental health. It would encourage regression, re­version, would become another means of neurotic escape into the past."

The Nutcracker Suite finished, the sounds of Swan Lake filled the room.

"Still," she said, "I should like so to be the swan again . .."

She rose slowly and executed a few clumsy steps—a hefty, tipsy swan in a russet dress.

She flushed then and sat down quickly. Then she laughed and everyone joined her.

"Where would you like to be?" Minton asked Heydell.

The small doctor smiled.

"Back on a certain weekend during the summer of my third year in med school," he said. "Yes, I'd wear out that tape in a week. How about you, son? he asked Peter.

"I'm too young to have any good memories yet," Peter replied. "What about you, Jill?"

"I don't know ... I think I'd like being a little girl again," she said, "and having Daddy—I mean, my father—read to me on a Sunday afternoon, in the wintertime."

She glanced at Render then.

"And you, Charlie?" she asked. "If you were being un­professional for a moment, what would your moment be?"

"This one," he said, smiling. "I'm happy right where I am, in the present, where I belong."

"Are you, are you really?"

"Yes!" he said, and he took another cup of punch.

Then he laughed.

"Yes, I really am."

A soft snore came from beside him. Bennie had dozed off.

And the music went round and round, and Jill looked from father to son and back again. Render had replaced the fast-cast on Peter's ankle. The boy was yawning now. She studied him. What would he be in ten years? Or fifteen? A burnt-out prodigy? Master of some as yet unexploited quantity?

She studied Peter, who was watching his father.

"... But it could be a genuine art form," Minton was saying, "and I don't see how censorship..."

She studied Render.

"... A man does not have a right to be insane," he was saying, "any more than he has a right to commit suicide..."

She touched his hand and he jumped, as though awakened from a doze, jerking his hand away.

"I'm getting tired," she said. "Would you take me home now?"

"In a while," he replied, nodding. "Let's let Bennie catch a little more shuteye first, though," and he turned back to Minton.

Peter turned to her and smiled.

Suddenly, she was really very tired.

Always before, she had liked Christmas.

Across from her, Bennie continued to snore, a faint smile occasionally flickering across her features.

Somewhere, she was dancing.

Somewhere, a man named Pierre was screaming, possibly because he was no longer a man named Pierre.

Me? I'm Vital, like it says in Time, your weekly. Move

in for a close pan-shot, Charlie. No, don't you pan! My pan. See? There. The expression always comes to the man on the cover after he's read the article behind the cover. It's too late then, though. Well, they mean well, but you know... Send a boy to bring me a pitcher of water and a basin, okay? 'Death of the Bit,' that's what they called it. Said

a man could work the same bit for years, moving about a vast and complex sociological structure known as 'the cir­cuit,' and letting the thing fall upon new and virgin ears on each occasion. Oh, living death! Worldwide telecommuni­cations pushed this wheelchair downhill countless elections ago. It bounces now among the rocks of Limbo. We are come upon a new and glorious and vital era... . So, all you people out there in Helsinki and Tierra del Fuego, tell me if you've heard this one before: It concerns an old-time comic with what they called a "bit." One night he did a broadcast performance, and as was his wont he did his bit. Good and pat and solid was his bit, and full of point, balance, and antithesis. Unfortunately, he was out of a job after that, because everyone then knew this bit. Despairing, scraping himself with potsherds, he mounted the rail of the nearest bridge. About to cast himself down into the dark and flowing death-symbol below, he was suddenly halted by a voice. 'Do not cast yourself down into the dark and flow­ing death-symbol below,' said the voice. 'Throw away your potsherds and come down from that rail.' Turning about, he saw a strange creature—that is to say, ugly—all in white, regarding him with a near-toothless smile. 'Who are you, oh strange, smiling creature all in white?' he asked. 'I am an Angel of Light,' she replied, 'and I am come to stop you from killing yourself.' He shook his head. 'Alas,' said he, "but I must kill myself, for my bit is all used up.' Then she raised a palm, thus... 'Despair not,' she said. 'Despair not, for we Angels of Light can work miracles. I can render unto thee more bits than can possibly be used in the brief, wearisome span of mortal existence.' Then, 'Pray,' said he, 'tell me what I must do to effect this miraculous occurrence.' —'Sleep with me,' replied the Angel of Light. 'Is this not somewhat irregular and unangelic?' he asked. 'Not at all,' said she. 'Read the Old Testament carefully and you will be surprised at what you learn of angelic relations.' —'Very well,' he agreed, throwing away his potsherds. And they went away and he did his other bit, despite the fact that she was scarcely the most comely among the Daugh-