"Yes?" he said.

"This is, ah, Miss Traeger. I was wondering if you would care to join me for a night on the town."

"Are you free?"

"Nobody's watching. They trust me. I'm a criminal now, just like them."

He wasn't completely certain he believed that.

He met her at Tavern on the Green, in the Chestnut Room, which was one of the few rooms in the restaurant where people lurking out in Central Park couldn't watch them through the glass walls. He had taken a few circuits of the building before he'd gone in, just in case, and seen nothing, not even a detached eyeball.

Shad wore a blue blazer, gray wool slacks, and regimental tie. Lisa Traeger was in her late thirties, white, darkhaired, dark-eyed, and handsome. She carried a leather briefcase that Shad suspected was stuffed with bearer bonds. She wore a black off-the-shoulder Donna Karan evening dress and a Georges Kaplan fox wrap with the price tag still on it. Emeralds shone at her throat and ears. She ordered champagne and a warm chicken-salad appetizer with bacon and spinach.

"Brilliant," she said. "It went without a hitch. Traeger'll be held till tomorrow morning, and then I'll have to get the hell outta town."

"How do you feel?"

"Glorious. That joker body was old. I'm young againwell, younger. And my senses are much better. I can taste things again." She laughed as champagne went up her nose. Her skin glowed against the background of polished brass and rare wormy chestnut.

Sadness whispered through Shad's bones. "Traeger's hurting," he said. "Wherever she is."

Shelley considered that for a moment. "She'll make them the same deal I did. Wouldn't you?" She gave him a shaky smile. "I don't want to think about that anymore. I just want to be human again." She gave a brittle laugh. "I want to be safe for a little while, okay?"

She ordered the Muscovy duck in juniper sauce. Shad, to be polite, ordered the veal escalope and ate a few bites. He hadn't had solid food in days, and his stomach griped at him. His nerves kept giving little jumps as new people entered the room, as he checked them against his mental files of people connected with the jumpers' scheme. He saw nobody he knew. She ordered a bottle of Puligny Montrachet Latour '82, and Shad sipped a glass. Alcohol danced warm spirals in his head.

Outside, a cold winter wind flogged at the trees of Central Park. Shad put on No Dice's leather trench coat and got on his bike. Shelley gave a laugh and climbed on behind him, her hose-covered thighs gripping him. They sped up Central Park West, heading uptown. He danced the Vincent left and right, eyes straining, awareness reaching out, trying to make sure he wasn't followed. He stole heat from the cars and buildings they passed, a degree or two at a time, until his body roared with fire.

Shelley took his shoulders, leaned forward, spoke into his ear. "Wherever you want to go."

Wherever. Right.

Wherever ended up being a suite at the Carlyle. Shelley paid with Lisa Traeger's Gold Card. She hadn't been human for a long time. She wanted to do the most human thing of all.

Blindly, he reached for her. Her eyes glowed in shadowed sockets, and columns of flame pulsed in her throat. "You'll keep me safe, won't you?" she said.

He felt masks sliding away one by one. He felt less safe than he had in years.

"I'll do what I can," he said.

Shelley slept like a baby. Shad prowled the two-room suite, trying to work things out in his head. Strange little Miles Davis etudes sang through his thoughts. He kept hoping the situation would define itself, that he'd look out the window and see a human eyeball on the sill outside staring at him; then he would know what needed doing.

No eyeball. No clue.

He kept thinking about that green landscape glowing on the sidewalk. There, maybe, people wouldn't need masks. In the pale predawn Shelley woke with a laugh. She threw up her arms and rolled across the Carlyle's sheets, giggling like a girl. Then she glanced up at Shad, who sat on the edge of the bed. Her eyes narrowed. "What's that on your shoulder?" she said. She reached out, touched the skin. "It's the CBS eye," Shad said.

Her face wrinkled in puzzlement. "You had it done? Why?"

"Scar tissue," Shad said. "Somebody carved it into me when I was little."

Shock rolled across her face.

"I don't want to talk about it," Shad said.

She sat up in bed, put her arms around him. "I can't understand how somebody could-"

"Somebody did. And somebody jumped you and put you in a joker body."

And some people string others up from lampposts. "People do these things," he said.

She rested her cheek on his shoulder. "I can't believe I didn't see those scars before." Her eyes narrowed. "Is that another one around your throat?"

Where the garrote had sawn into him and the tracheotomy had gone into the windpipe. Shad nodded. "The light's at the right angle or something. It happened years ago. It's hardly visible anymore."

She looked at him. "So what do you do with your time? You just live in hotels and carry a lot of cash with you and help people feel safe?"

"What are you going to do?"

She seemed surprised. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, what are you going to do? You've got money, a new body. A credit card that's probably good for a few more hours. So what's your plan?"

She lay back on the sheets. He looked at the dark nipples atop her soft mature breasts, and he couldn't help remembering the breasts of the old Shelley-smaller, firmer, with a dusting of freckles.

"I don't know," she said. "I feel too good to think about it right now. All I know is that I want to be safe again."

"People are going to start looking for Lisa Traeger in a little while, and I don't figure you want to be found."

"No." She leaned forward again, propped her chin on her knee. "I can pay you back your twenty grand. I've got enough with me."

"You don't have to. It wasn't my money anyway."

"You steal it or something?"

"Yes." Looking at her. "That's exactly what I did."

"Anyone get hurt?"

"Lots of anyones."

She frowned at him. "You're not making me feel safe anymore."

He shook his head. "I've never been what you'd call safe, Shelley."

She signed. Carefully her eyes queried his. "I know how to be safe if I have to."

"Yes?"

"I take the jumpers up on their offer. And I do the jump again and again, until I'm rich beyond my wildest dreams of avarice. And then I get jumped into a body more my own age-you know this Traeger body is all of thirty-eight?-and I live happily ever after in the Bahamas or wherever it is that retired jumpers go."

He looked at her. "I think you should quit while you're ahead. You don't want anything more to do with those people."

"I've lost twenty years. This body is going to be wanted by the police. And you say I'm ahead?"

"You're ahead of where you were a week ago. I'd settle for that."

"Twenty years." He saw tears in her eyes. "I've lost damn near twenty years. I don't want to be thirty-eight."

"Shelley." He reached out, took her hand. "Bad things are going to start happening to those people."

"Bad things. Meaning you."

"Me and about two hundred million other people. They can't keep this up. Not all those impersonations. Not people like Tachyon or Nelson Dixon or Constance Loeffler."

"Connie Loeffler?" Shelley sniffled, then shook her head. "She isn't being ridden."

"Then what does she have to do with all this?"

"They did jump her, yes. Put her in a joker body, one of the really disgusting ones, for a few hours. That was all it took." She shrugged. "She was a pretty young woman, okay? A pretty young woman with money, like I used to be. She jumped-heh, sorry-she jumped at the deal they offered. She pays fifty grand a month protection and allows them use of some of her cars and facilities. And she's living in L.A. now, to keep away from them, but that won't keep them away if they want her. The only way to keep safe from these people is to do what they want."