Willy K floated a little closer to Eric, then withdrew. There is no way we can keep him here, Mr Taubman. When the drug wears off he will go back to his own period. However, I would like to interrogate him to a certain extent while he's here.' To Eric he said, 'Unless you object, sir.'

'I don't know,' Eric said, rubbing his forehead. It had been too much of the unexpected, hearing Willy K ask about Kathy; it had disorientated him entirely and all he wanted to do now was to leave – he had no curiosity, no interest in the situation.

'I sympathize with your situation,' Willy K said. 'In any case to question you formally is sham; I am getting everything I want from you as it is. What I had hoped to do was answer, if I could, some of your questions by the way I phrased mine. Your wife, for example. You have great conflicting emotions about her, fear for the most part, then hatred, and also a good deal of undistorted love.'

Taubman said, 'God, how the Betels love to be psychologists. It must come natural to telepaths; I don't think they can even help it.' He loitered nearby, evidently interested in Willy K's probing.

'Can I take the antidote back to Kathy?'

'No, but you can memorize the formula,' Willy K said. 'So that Hazeltine Corporation, in your time, can reproduce it. But I don't think you want to. I'm not going to urge you to ... and I can't force you to.'

'You mean his wife's hooked on JJ-180, too,' Taubman said, 'and he isn't going to try to help her?'

'You're not married,' Willy K said. 'In marriage the greatest hatred that is possible between two human beings can be generated, perhaps because of the constant proximity, perhaps because once there was love. The intimacy is still there, even though the love element has disappeared. So a will to power, a struggle for domination, comes into being.' To Taubman he explained, 'It was his wife Kathy who addicted him in the first place, so it is easy to understand his sentiments.'

'I hope I never get in a fix like that,' Taubman said. 'Hating someone I once loved.'

The female reeg had clacked up to listen, watching the conversation as it was reproduced on the surface of her translating box. Now she added her own comment.

HATE AND LOVE ARE CLOSELY LINKED, MUCH MORE SO THAN MOST TERRANS REALIZE

'Do you have another cigarette?' Eric asked Taubman.

'Sure.' Taubman passed him the pack.

'What I find most interesting of all,' Willy K said, 'is that Dr Sweetscent comes from a universe in which a pact exists between Terra and Lilistar. And that in his year, 2055, a war is being fought in which they are slowly but steadily losing. Clearly this is not our past but another past entirely. And, in his mind, I find the excruciatingly interesting thought that Terra's quondam warlord, Gino Molinari, has already discovered this rank of parallel universes and has made use of it for his immediate political advantage.' Willy K was silent a moment and then declared, 'No, Dr Sweetscent, after having visualized your memory of the Molinari corpse I am fairly certain that it was not obtained from our world; true, Molinari died by assassination, but I recall pics of his corpse and there is a small but crucial difference. In our world the Secretary was hit repeatedly in the facial area; his features were destroyed. The corpse you saw was not so damaged and I would assume it comes from another world in which he was assassinated, similar to ours but not identical.'

'This must be why so few time travelers have shown up here,' Taubman said. They're scattered through all the different possible futures.'

'As to the virile Molinari,' Willy K said thoughtfully. 'I suppose that, too, is an alternate configuration. You realize of course, doctor, that all this indicates that your Secretary has taken JJ-180 himself; there is therefore an element of cruel hypocrisy in his threatening you with death if you became addicted. But I would guess, by several clues in your mind, that he also possesses the 'Star manufactured antidote which you just now took. So he has no fears and can move freely about among the worlds.'

The Mole, Eric realized, could have given me and Kathy the antidote any time.

It was hard for him to accept that about Gino Molinari; he had seemed more humane than this. He was just playing with us, Eric realized. As Willy K said, with an element of cruel hypocrisy.

'But wait,' Willy K cautioned. 'We don't know what he intended to do; he had just found out about your addiction, and he was as usual suffering from a spasm of his chronic illness pattern. He might have given it to you in time. Before it ceased to matter.'

COULD YOU EXPLAIN THIS DISCUSSION?

The reeg receptionist, and also Taubman, had lost the thread of the discourse.

'Would you care to begin the laborious process of memorizing the formula?' Willy K said to Eric. 'It will take all the time you have left.'

All right,' Eric said, and listened intently.

Willy K ceased, rotated his supporting mechanism inquiringly.

THE DOCTOR HAS LEARNED SOMETHING MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANY CHEMICAL FORMULA

'What is it?' Eric asked her.'

IN YOUR UNIVERSE WE ARE YOUR ENEMY BUT HERE YOU HAVE SEEN TERRANS AND OURSELVES LIVE TOGETHER. YOU KNOW THAT WAR AGAINST US IS UNNECESSARY. AND WHAT IS MORE IMPORTANT, SO DOES YOUR LEADER.

That was so. No wonder Molinari had no heart for the war; it was not merely a suspicion on his part that this was the wrong war with the wrong enemy and the wrong ally; it was a fact which he had experienced for himself, perhaps many times. And all due to JJ-180.

But not only that. There was something more, something so ominous that he wondered why the inhibition barriers of his mind had permitted the thought to rise from his unconscious. JJ-180 had reached Lilistar – and in quantity. 'Starmen had certainly been experimenting with it. So they, too, knew the alternate possibility, knew that Terra's better hope lay in cooperation with the reegs. Had witnessed it for themselves.

In both branches of possibility Lilistar had lost the war. With or without Terra on her side. Or—

Was there a third alternative, one in which Lilistar and the reegs joined against Terra?

'A pact between Lilistar and the reegs is unlikely,' Willy K said. They have been antagonists for too many years. I feel that it is only your planet, on which we now stand, that hangs in the balance; Lilistar will be defeated by the reeg power in any eventuality.'

'But that means,' Eric said, 'that the 'Starmen have nothing to lose; if they know they can't win—' He could imagine Freneksy's reaction to this information. The nihilism, the destructive violence of the 'Starmen, would be inconceivable.

'True,' Willy K agreed. 'So your Secretary is wise to walk softly. Now perhaps you can comprehend why his illness pattern must be so vast, why he must push himself actually over the brink, into repeated death, to serve his people. And why he would hesitate to provide you with the antidote to JJ-180; if 'Star intelligence agents – and your wife may be one – learned that he possessed it, they might—' Willy K was silent. 'It is hard, as you yourself might observe, to predict the behavior of psychotics. But this much is clear: they would not ignore the situation.'

'They'd find a way to get it away from him,' Eric said.

'You've missed the point. Their attitude would be punitive; they would know that Molinari possesses too much power, that by having unhindered use of JJ-180, without the possibility of addiction, of neural deterioration, he can't be controlled by them. This is why, on a deep, psychosomatic basis, Molinari can defy Minister Freneksy. He is not entirely helpless.'

'This is all over my head,' Taubman said. 'Excuse me.' He walked off.