He thought, Thank God for the weaknesses built into a vast, complicated, convoluted, planetwide apparatus. Too many people; too many machines. This error began with a pol inspec and worked its way to Pol-Dat, their pool of data at Memphis, Tennessee. Even with my fingerprint, footprint, voiceprint and EEG print they probably won’t be able to straighten it out. Not now; not with my form on file.

“Shall I book him?” the uniformed officer asked McNulty.

“For what?” McNulty said. “For being a diesel mechanic?” He slapped Jason convivially on the back. “You can go home, Mr. Tavern. Back to your child-faced sweetheart. Your little virgin.” Grinning, he moved off into the throng of anxious and bewildered human men and women.

“You may go, sir,” the uniformed officer told Jason.

Nodding, Jason made his way out of the 469th Precinct police station, onto the nighttime street, to mix with the free and self-determined people who resided there.

But they will get me finally, he thought. They’ll match up the prints. And yet—if it’s been fifteen years since the photo was taken, maybe it’s been fifteen years since they took an EEG and a voiceprint.

But that still left the finger– and footprints. They did not change.

He thought, Maybe they’ll just toss the Xerox copy of the file into a shredding bin, and that will be that. And transmit the data they got out of me to Memphis, there to be incorporated in my—or rather “my”—permanent file. In Jason Tavern’s file, specifically.

Thank God Jason Tavern, diesel mechanic, had never broken a law, had never tangled with the pols or flats. Good for him.

A police flipflap wobbled overhead, its red searchlight glimmering, and from its PA speakers it said, “Mr. Jason Tavern, return to 469th Precinct Police Station at once. This is a police order. Mr. Jason Tavern—” It raved on and on as Jason stood stunned. They had figured it out already. In a matter not of hours, days, or weeks, but minutes.

He returned to the police station, climbed the styraplex stairs, passed through the light-activated doors, through the milling throng of the unfortunate, back to the uniformed officer who had handled his case—and there stood McNulty, too. The two of them were in the process of frowningly conferring.

“Well,” McNulty said, glancing up, “here’s our Mr. Tavern again. What are you doing back here, Mr. Tavern?”

“The police flipflap—” he began, but McNulty cut him off.

“That was unauthorized. We merely put out an APB and some figtail hoisted it to flipflap level. But as long as you’re here”—McNulty turned the document so that Jason could see the photo—“is that how you looked fifteen years ago?”

“I guess so,” Jason said. The photo showed a sallow-faced individual with protruding Adam’s apple, bad teeth and eyes, sternly staring into nothing. His hair, frizzy and corn-colored, hung over two near-jug ears.

“You’ve had plastic S,” McNulty said.

Jason said, “Yes.”

“Why?”

Jason said, “Who would want to look like that?”

“So no wonder you’re so handsome and dignified,” McNulty said. “So stately. So”—he groped for the word—“commanding. It’s really hard to believe that they could do to that”—he put his index finger on the fifteen-year-old photo—“something to make it look like that.” He tapped Jason friendlily on the arm. “But where’d you get the money?”

While McNulty talked, Jason had begun swiftly reading the data printed on the document. Jason Tavern had been born in Cicero, Illinois, his father had been a turret lathe operator, his grandfather had owned a chain of retail farm-equipment stores—a lucky break, considering what he had told McNulty about his current career.

“From Windslow,” Jason said. “I’m sorry; I always think of him like that, and I forget that others can’t.” His professional training had helped him: he had read and assimilated most of the page while McNulty was talking to him. “My grandfather. He had a good deal of money, and I was his favorite. I was the only grandson, you see.”

McNulty studied the document, nodded.

“I looked like a rural hick,” Jason said. “I looked like what I was: a hayseed. The best job I could get involved repairing diesel engines, and I wanted more. So I took the money that Windslow left me and headed for Chicago—”

“Okay,” McNulty said still nodding. “It fits together. We are aware that such radical plastic surgery can be accomplished, and at not too large a cost. But generally it’s done by unpersons or labor-camp inmates who’ve escaped. We monitor all graft-shops, as we call them.”

“But look how ugly I was,” Jason said.

McNulty laughed a deep, throaty laugh. “You sure were, Mr. Tavern. Okay; sorry to trouble you. Go on.” He gestured, and Jason began to part the throng of people before him. “Oh!” McNulty called, gesturing to him. “One more—” His voice, drowned out by the noise of the milling, did not reach Jason. So, his heart frozen in ice, he walked out.

Once they notice you, Jason realized, they never completely close the file. You can never get back your anonymity. It is vital not to be noticed in the first place. But I have been.

“What is it?” he asked McNulty, feeling despair. They were playing games with him, breaking him down; he could feel, inside him, his heart, his blood, all his vital parts, stagger in their processes. Even the superb physiology of a six tumbled at this.

McNulty held out his hand. “Your ID cards. I want some lab work on them. If they’re okay you’ll get them back the day after tomorrow.”

Jason said protestingly. “But if a random pol-check—”

“We’ll give you a police pass,” McNulty said. He nodded to a great-bellied older officer to his right. “Get a 4-D photo of him and set up a blanket pass.”

“Yes, Inspector,” the tub of guts said, reaching out an overstuffed paw to turn on the camera equipment.

Ten minutes later, Jason Taverner found himself out once more on the now almost deserted early evening sidewalk, and this time with a bona fide pol-pass—better than anything Kathy could have manufactured for him … except that the pass was valid only for one week. But still …

He had one week during which he could afford not to worry. And then, after that.

He had done the impossible: he had traded a walletful of bogus ID cards for a genuine pol-pass. Examining the pass under the streetlights, he saw that the expiration notice was holographic … and there was room for the insertion of an additional number. It read seven. He could get Kathy to alter that to seventy-five or ninety-seven, or whatever was easiest.

And then it occurred to him that as soon as the pol lab made out that his ID cards were spurious the number of his pass, his name, his photo, would be transmitted to every police checkpoint on the planet.

But until that happened he was safe.