It didn't do any good, unless an unworthy feeling of redemption could be regarded as a good. I knew as well as they did that the readings they had taken before we left had been invalidated by the chaotic state of the timestream. We all should have realized that we could no longer count on the time tanks to tell us anything reliable.

And once again, there had been changes during my brief absence.

Apparently, as soon as my team had stepped through the Gate, many things had suddenly become clearer in the time tanks. Some of the censorship had eased, and the operators could see things that had previously been clouded. One of the first things they saw was that Smith had entered the hangar at 10:30. They even were able to see him find the stunner, pick it up, and, like a fool, start poking around in it. The whole thing had gone off pretty much as Minoru had described it. And, of course, by the time they saw it was too late to call us back.

Martin was having a fit trying to understand why the temporal censorship was lifting. I certainly didn't have anything to contribute; I've never been a theoretician. If I had an opinion in the matter it was simply that God was having his innings, playing his little jokes on us.

Free will, indeed!

The other big change was Sherman. His mouth was now a much more realistic creation.

He had added a nose to his facial accomplishments. He was still quite unlikely to pass for human, even on the darkest night, but he had at least become an interesting humanoid..

I kept looking at his mouth. I finally convinced myself there really was no resemblance at all. Only a badly frightened, obsessed, defensive and emotionally exhausted zombie could have found a lopsided grin on that plastic face.

I was the only one who even wanted to consider Window B. I still hadn't revealed to anyone that I had ruled out Window C, so that made it harder to argue my position. Everyone kept looking to Sherman for guidance. He kept quiet.

Then we heard I was being summoned to the Council again, so the decision was postponed. Martin and Lawrence admitted they welcomed the delay, since they wanted to run tests on their temporal equipment. The goal was to create a statistical universe that had some things in common with the "real" universe, whatever that meant at this point. They knew they couldn't look into the past any more and be sure what they were seeing was reality or probability, but they hoped to at least be able to express things in percentages. I thought that might be nice, especially if they were going to send me back again. So far we'd had a quarter-

mile miss in one spatial dimension, and a one-hour miss in the time dimension. Martin once told me that twelve dimensions were involved in operating the Gate. I didn't want to miss in any of the remaining ten.

The Council meeting was more of the same. I offered my resignation twice, and I think the second time they almost took it. I told them once again that this mission was vital to the success of the Gate Project, but I suspect that was starting to wear a little thin.

I couldn't follow a lot of it. Much of it was technical, way over my head. The rest seemed tied up in the internal politics of the Council. There were at least three factions -- actually, not too bad a split for a group as large as that -- and one of them kept swaying back and forth. In the end, I was authorized for another trip.

Martin had conquered his distaste for the Council chamber and was with me during this second meeting. He told the members that nothing could be done for at least ten hours. I said a silent prayer of thanks to whatever gods there be. I hadn't had a rest in almost two days.

And I needed to talk to Sherman.

Sherman said, "Call me Jesus."

I threw my cigarette at him, simply because I didn't have anything heavier close at hand.

The butt never reached him. There's a little laser mounted in one corner of my room, equipped with a little radar and a little brain; it tracked the butt and zapped it to plasma before it had gone two feet. I know, I know, what will modern science think of next, but it beats hell out of ashtrays.

"I'll call you an ambulance in a minute."

"There are some things I honestly can't tell you, Louise," he said.

"What can you tell me, then?"

He seemed to think it over for a while.

"Did your message really say you couldn't tell anybody what was in it?" I prompted.

"Yes. With certain exceptions."

"Like what?"

"Like you. I am allowed to tell you certain things. At certain times."

"To manipulate me."

" Yes."

I stared at him bleakly, and he stared back. To give him credit, he didn't look smug about it.

"So many levels ... " I said.

"Yes."

"I mean, you telling me, admitting to me, that you can tell me certain things at certain times, for purposes of manipulation ... that's manipulation right there."

"Yes."

"It makes me feel so ... responsible! I know you're using me, and I have to assume it's for a good reason, so I ought to do what you want me to do ... but how do I know what that is?"

"You simply must behave naturally. Do what you would normally have done."

"But what you just told me alters the equation. Now that I know that you're guiding me -- however subtly -- the awareness of it will make me do things differently than ... " I sputtered to a stop. He was still regarding me innocently.

"So I have to assume that these layers of confusion are just part of your plan, whatever it may be ... " That wasn't going anywhere, either.

"Fuck you," I said.

"Wonderful," he said, and clapped his hands together. "You're back on track."

I had to smile at that.

"I'm going to melt you down and use the scrap to make a tin can, then kick the can."

"Great, great, get it all out."

"Your mother was a vending machine and your father was a roto-rooter."

"My, didn't that twentieth-century tape work well? Every little detail of daily life, at your fingertips."

I gave him a few more half-hearted insults in modern idiom, but they were just as useless.

You can't argue with Sherman. Even trying to is frustrating, and that's the last thing I needed.

So I tried to clear it all out of my mind and start from scratch.

"Okay. You're Jesus. Will you tell me what you mean by that?"

"Yes. Jesus Christ was a prevalent myth-figure in the twentieth century, the Son of the Supreme Being, worshipped by a sect whose chief fetishes were a cross, a chalice or grail, and -- "

"Crap, I know all that. Their big line was 'He died for our sins.'" I looked hopeful. "Is that what you had in mind?"

"Not precisely. I had in mind his role as saviour of humankind."

I looked at him. Remember, at this stage his face was a simple cartoon, so ineptly drawn that Walt Disney must have been spinning in his cryo-suspension fluid. Parts of his body were straight out of The Wizard of Oz. I won't say he clanked when he walked, but one look at him and you just knew he was the lineal descendant of a video arcade. This was the entity holding himself up to me as humanity's savior.

"Call me dubious," I said.

"Nevertheless, it's true. The message in my time capsule was quite lengthy. It delineated the events of the past few days in great detail, and went on to describe the events of the next .

.. six days. Having read it, I immediately saw what I must do, and when, to effect the salvation of the human race. Musing on this, I was struck by the parallels with the biblical story of Jesus. Perhaps this is hubris on my part, and I don't intend to seriously stress it, but if you cast the Big Computer as God, it's not unreasonable to see me -- the only robot ever to receive a time-capsule message -- as its only begotten son."