She thought about the two alternatives facing her.

Tomorrow would be an emotional moment. She was sure nothing could possibly match the anticipation of mounting the stairs over The Hole. She had a horror of breaking down completely, of having to be restrained and thrown over the brink rather than stepping off by her own volition.

On the other hand, she felt reasonably calm now. All hope was gone. Could she meet her death now, by her own hand, in private? Was it better to go that way?

It seemed to her that it was. She told herself that three times in succession and reached for the knife. She drew it over her wrist. Shuddered, and felt her heart pound. She opened her eyes and looked down and there wasn't even a red line. She was sure she had been bearing down. Something trickled over her cheek. Alarmed, she brushed it away.

She sat in her chair beside the small table and gritted her teeth. She leaned over the table and rested her forearm on the surface. She put the knife blade to the soft part, looked at it, looked away, dragged her eyes back and felt them drying out as she refused to blink.

There was a red trickle of blood.

"Put the knife down, Lilo."

She jumped, and dithered with the bloody knife in her hand, blushing furiously. Trying to hide it in the cushions of the chair, she turned to see who had entered the room behind her.

"Is it serious?" he asked, walking toward her.

She looked at it. Just a small cut, the bleeding almost stopped already. He tossed her a cloth, which she used to dab at the blood on her hands. Taking a seat a few meters from her, he waited until she had cleaned herself.

"There's someone I'd like you to meet," he said, and gestured toward the cell door. It opened, and her blue-uniformed male guard entered, followed by a nude woman. She was tall, staggered slightly as she walked, and looked drugged. Her brown hair was plastered over her shoulders in ropes and nets; she dripped a thick, syrupy liquid from her hands and nose and chin. Her eyes met Lilo's for a moment, without comprehension, then she bumped into a chair and fell over. The guard helped her to her feet and half-carried her to the bathroom. A woman, also dressed in blue, entered the cell, and closed the door. She followed the other two. There was the sound of water running.

Lilo managed to look away. The woman's face had been terribly familiar. It was her own face.

Gold. Everything was yellow-gold. I opened my eyes underwater and knew that I was not breathing. For some reason, it didn't bother me. I sat up and felt thick liquid roll sluggishly from my body.

I choked, tried to cough, and a great amount of fluid came out of my throat. For a moment I couldn't cope with it. I was drowning. But someone was slapping me on the back and then I was gasping.

Being born is not easy.

Her eyes wouldn't focus. Someone was holding something out to her and all she could see was the end of an arm holding the object. It was a cup. She recoiled, but it followed her. She took it, and drank deeply.

She was sitting in a glass tank, wheat-colored liquid up to her waist. Wires trailed from her body, which still twitched from time to time under the influence of the muscle-tone program, winding down now after three months of enforced exercise.

Disorientation. She couldn't string two thoughts together. The tank should have meant something to her, but it didn't.

"Come on, let's get up," someone said. It was a woman in blue, who reached over and helped the naked woman out of the tank, to stand dripping, swaying, leaning on a strong shoulder with a hand holding her firmly around the waist. She wanted to go back to sleep.

"Is she ready?"

"I think so." There was a second person, a man, also dressed in blue. "This won't take long."

She knew they were talking about her. She tried to shake the hand off, but she was too weak. It annoyed her, hearing them talk. She wanted them to stop.

"Leave me alone," she said.

"What did she say?"

They were leading her down the hall, helping her step up through the doorways, dogging them behind her. She couldn't hold her head up; it kept falling to the side. All she could see was her bare feet, her legs, and wetness dripping from her body onto the carpet. It struck her as funny; she laughed, nearly slipping from the woman's arms.

"What's the matter with her?"

She didn't hear the reply, she was laughing so hard. There was another door. They stopped in front of it and she became aware of someone slapping her face. She tried to make him stop but he wouldn't and she started to cry. Then a harder slap that rocked her back against the far wall. She recoiled, realized that she was standing on her own and looking into the man's face.

"Are you awake now?" He peered into her eyes.

"Yes... I..." She coughed, and tried to look around her, but he kept pulling her head back until she thought she would cry again. "I... that is..."

"She's all right. Take her in."

The man again. "You follow me, you hear? Just follow me."

She nodded. He seemed to think it was very important and she was willing to do anything if he'd let go of her head. But she was all wet, her hair was all over the place, and she felt clammy. She tried to tell him that, but he had already gone into the room. She felt a shove on her shoulder, and staggered over the lip of the door.

She got a glimpse of the people sitting in the room. There was a man in a funny coat who tickled her memory. She knew him, but couldn't remember the name. And there was a woman in a chair. She knew that one. It was herself.

I never thought I'd meet ex-President Tweed face to face. You can't avoid him on the cube; he's there all the time on one program or another, pushing his crazy schemes. He'd been a fixture on the telepolitical scene since the time I was born.

Tweed dressed like a political cartoon from the turn of the twentieth century. He had allowed himself to develop a paunch, always wore striped pants and a clawhammer coat, top hat, and spats. He smoked a cigar, and when elected, called the Presidential Warren "Tammany Hall." And he won elections. Though I never followed it closely, I knew he had been elected to three consecutive terms.

He paved the way for the current Lunar clown show we call government. Recognition is all, and the public had shown a perhaps understandable confusion between political rhetoric and the fantasies that surround it on the cube. So now we have our Tweeds, our Churchills, and our Kennedys. There is a Hitler, a Bonforte, a Lewiston, and a Trajan. Put them all in the same place and you might as well call it a circus.

Luckily, elected officials don't do that much any more; the posts are largely ceremonial or supervisory over the computers who do the actual governing. I've never been sure if that's such a good thing, but Tweed made me thankful for it. Not that my opinions mattered at the moment.

I put political ruminations aside and prepared to listen to whatever pitch he was about to make. It had to be better than what I was facing.

"Don't get any ideas," he said, in that famous bass rumble. "I'm protected against anything you might try to do."

Lilo realized he was talking about attempts on his life. Nothing could have been further from her mind. He was here, where he had no legal right to be, he had just shown her what had to be an illegal clone; she could think of no reason he would have done these things unless he had something to offer her, and she was very interested in hearing it.

"You will find in our future dealings that I am invariably protected."

"I don't see how that information can be of any use to me unless I'm going to be dealing with you in the future. As you know, my future is limited at this moment." She tried to keep it light, to keep the hope out of her voice, but it was impossible. The guilty weight of the knife pressing against her thigh and the trickle of blood on her arm testified to how much bargaining leverage she could bring to the conversation.