"But paradoxes don't trouble us. We live in paratime, Laz-Lor are acute cases of parapsychology, we operate under paradoctrines. Why, take your family-four doctors. A double pair o' docs."

"Dora!"

"Pappy, you're jealous. But I'll say this for Lazarus: He's slow but he gets there and has believed all his life that any paradox can be paradoctored. Happens he had lots of time to think after he chucked Lib to a fiery grave because he stayed in that primitive era and got his arse shot off and this caused a long convalescence.

"It occurs to him that, if he found the corpse through going back to shortly after he placed it in orbit, he might learn something interesting if he went back just before he put Lib's remains in orbit. So when he's well again, he does so, with his whole first team, headed by Doctor Ishtar, the greatest in the business, and I'm outfitted as a hospital with everything from microtomes to cloning capsules.

"So we go there and wait-we don't land. Along comes Lazarus in the clunker that he and Lib used to risk their lives in, and Pappy comes out in a pressure suit and detaches the LOX tank, and Lib is buried in space, waiting for judgment day. We respect Pappy's griefjust long enough for him to get out of the way, then I take the tank inside me. Ish gets to work, along with many others. Lots of live cells suitable for cloning. Brain intact. Dead but intact- okay, as all Ish wants are the memory configurations.

"In the course of this, Ishtar learns that the late lamented had the potential to go either way-which is why the Families' best telepathic hypnotist is sent for and keeps asking this clone: When you wake up, what do you want to be? Man or woman?"

"It was much later, Dora. I was already awake."

"Lib hon, you ask Ish. You had to decide long before you woke. Ish and her hormone artists had to work on you while you were still labile. Matter of fact, you never answered at all; the telepath kept reporting on your emotional state whenever you imagined yourself male, and your state when you imagined yourself female. Ish says that it made you happy to think of yourself as female."

"That's true. I've been ever so much happier as Elizabeth Long than I was as Andy Libby."

"That's it, folks. How Ish turned a mixed-up male into a happy female, fully functional and horny as Howard females always are."

"Dora! We have guests." Lazarus glowered.

"All married. Deety is youngest. Deety, did my bluntness shock you?"

"No, Dora. I'm horny enough to be a Howard myself. And terribly interested in how the great Slipstick Libby turns out to be my twin and female."

"Female without surgery-none of those fakes done with a knife. But even

Ish couldn't have done it had not Lib supplied XXY, so that Ish could balance the clone either XX or XY by careful attention to endocrinal glands. Or could she? Must ask. Ish is genius-cubed, smarter than most computers. Lazarus can now explain his next sleight-of-hand-slightly illegal."

"Hey!" I protested. "How about the corpse jettisoned into the Ozarks, Dora? Who was that?"

"Why, that was Lib."

"Lib is right here. I've got my arm around her."

That computer went tsk-tsk-tsk. "Deety. Doctor Deety. Ijust finished telling you that the Lib you are cuddling is a clone. After they drained every memory out of that frozen brain, what was left was dog food. Lib got slashed in the spine by the local equivalent of a cave bear. Ripped out her-his-backbone. Once Ish was through with it, Laz froze it again, we took it back and placed it in orbit, where we found it later-to our great surprise."

"How could you be surprised when you put it there yourselves?"

Dora announced, loudly, "Is there a mathematician in the house?"

"Stop it, Dora. Thank you for recounting my saga; I learn a little every time I hear it." Lib turned toward me and said softly, "Biological time versus durational time, Twin. Follow the entropy arrow through the loops of biological time and you will see that Lazarus was honestly surprised at every step even though he had-will-had-rigged every surprise. No grammar for it. Deety, I understand that you have studied semantics. Shall we try to devise a grammar for space-time complexities in six curved dimensions? I can't contribute much but I can try to punch holes in your work."

"Love to!" I wasn't fooling. My twin is so sweet that maybe Deety is fairly sweet herself.

"A cat can be caught in almost any trap once-"

Jacob:

If A, then B. I trust I am a rational mathematician, not one of the romantics who have brought disrepute to our calling through such inanities as defining "infinity" as a number, confusing symbol with referent, or treating ignorance as a datum. When I found myself in the Land of Oz, I did not assume that I had lost my reason. Instead it prepared me emotionally to meet other "fictional" characters.

Stipulated: I may be in a locked ward. But to assume that to be factual serves no purpose other than suicide of personality. I shall act on what my senses report. I am not the bumpkin who said on seeing a giraffe: "There ain't no sich animal."

I find myself in bed with my lovely wife Hilda in sumptuous quarters of star yacht Dora as guests of the utterly fictional "Lazarus Long." Is this a reason to try to find the call button in order to ask a still-more-fictional nurse for a nonexistent shot to end this hallucination? This is an excellent bed. As for Hilda Solomon has reason to env5i me; Mahomet with all his houris is not as blessed as I.

Tomorrow is soon enough to unravel any paradox. Or the Day After Tomorrow. Better yet, Not This October. After The End of Eternity may be best.

Why disturb a paradox? As Dora pointed out, Hilda and I are a pair o' docs ourselves . with no wish to be disturbed, and most certainly not to be unravelled.

Since Hilda married me, I have not once taken a sleeping pill.

No one called us. I woke up feeling totally rested, found my wife in the fresher brushing her teeth with, Yes, Pepsodent-removed brush from mouth, kissed her, placed brush back in her mouth. When she finished brushing her teeth, I asked, "Seen the kids?"

"No, Jacob."

"So. Dora!"

"No need to shout; I'm sitting on your shoulder. Would you like breakfast trays in bed?"

"Have we missed the breakfast hour?"

"Professor Burroughs, breakfast hour in me starts at midnight and ends at noon. Lunch is at thirteen, tea at sixteen-thirty, dinner at twenty, snacks and elevenses at any time. Dinner always formal, no other meal."

"Hmm- How formal is 'formal'?" Hilda now had more wardrobe-but Beulahiand is not high style.

"Formal' means formal dress of your culture or ours, or it means skin. No casual dress. As defined by the Commodore: 'Whole hawg or none.' Amendment: Jewelry, perfume, and cosmetics are not proscribed by the no-casualdress rule. Ship's services include sixty-minute cleaning and pressing, and a variety of formal dress of New-Rome styling, washables for the convenience of guests who do not travel with formal dress, prefer to be dressed at a formal meal, and do not choose to dine alone."

"Very hospitable. Speaking of washables, we found everything but a dirtyclothes hamper. I have a laplap to put in."

"But that's a washable, Doctor."

"That's what I said. I've worn it; it should be washed."

"Sir, I am not as fluent in English as in Galacta. By 'washable' I mean: Step into a shower while wearing it; it will go away."

Hilda said, "We'll take a dozen gross."

"Captain Hilda, 'dozen' and 'gross' are not in my memories. Will you please rephrase?"