Obediently, I stripped and placed my garments in a hopper that debouched from the wall in response to some silent signal. The hopper closed again; I suspected that my clothes would be fumigated and purified while they were in there, and I was correct. I stood naked but for my mask, Everyman reduced to his final prop, as scanners and sensors played a subtle greenish light over my body, searching for the chancres of venereal disease, most likely. The examination lasted some sixty seconds. Then the screen invited me to extend my arm, and I did so, whereupon a needle descended and speedily removed a small sample of my blood. Unseen monitors searched that fragment of mortality for the tokens of corruption, and evidently found nothing that threatened the health of the personnel of this establishment, for in another moment the screen flashed some sort of light pattern that signified I had passed my tests. The wall near the washstand opened and a girl came through.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Esther, and I’m so glad to know you. I’m sure we’re going to be great friends.”

She was wearing a gauzy smock through which I could see the outlines of her slender body. Her hair was red, her eyes were green, her face bore the look of intelligence, and she smiled with a fervor that was not altogether mechanical, I thought. In my innocence I had imagined that all prostitutes were coarse, sagging creatures with gaping pores and sullen, embittered faces, but Esther did not fit my preconceived image. I had seen girls much like her on the campus at Irvine; it was quite possible that I had seen Esther herself there. I would not ask her that time-hoared question: What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? But I wondered. I wondered.

Esther eyed my body appraisingly, perhaps not so much to judge my masculinity as perhaps to hunt out any medical shortcomings that the sensor system might have overlooked. Yet she managed to transform her glance into something more than a merely clinical one; it was provocative as well. I felt curiously exposed, probably because I am not accustomed to meeting young ladies for the first time under such circumstances. After her quick survey Esther crossed the room and touched her hand to a control at the base of the screen. “We don’t want them peeping at us, do we?” she asked brightly, and the screen darkened. I hazarded a private guess that this was part of the regular routine, by way of convincing the customer that the great staring eye of the computer would not spy on his amours; and I guessed also that despite the conspicuous gesture of turning off the screen, the room was still being monitored and would continue to be under surveillance while I was in it. Surely the designers of this place would not leave the girls wholly at the mercies of any customer with whom they might be sharing a cubicle. I felt queasy about going to bed with someone knowing that my performance was being observed and very likely taped and coded and filed, but I overcame my hesitation, telling myself that I was here purely on a lark. This bordello was clearly no place for an educated man. It invited too much suspicion. But no doubt it suited the needs of those who had such needs.

As the glow of the screen darkened, Esther said, “Shall I turn the room light off?”

“It doesn’t matter to me.”

“I’ll turn it down, then.” She did something to the knob and the room dimmed. In a quick lithe gesture she slipped off her smock. Her body was smooth and pale, with narrow hips and small, girlish breasts whose translucent skin revealed a network of fine blue veins. She reminded me very much of Aster Mikkelsen as Aster had looked on that spy pickup the week before. Aster… Esther… for one moment of dreamy confusion I confounded the two and wondered why a world-famous biochemist would be doubling as a tart. Smiling amiably, Esther stretched out on the bed, lying on her side with her knees drawn up; it was a friendly, conversational posture, nothing blatant about it. I was grateful for that. I had expected a girl in such a place to lie back, part her legs, and say, “Come on, buddy, get aboard,” and I was relieved that Esther did no such thing. It occurred to me that in my interview below, the computer had sized up my personality, marked me as a member of the inhibited academic class, and had passed along to Esther, preparing herself for work, a memorandum to the effect that I was to be treated in a dignified manner.

I sat down alongside her.

“Would you like to talk awhile?” she asked. “We have plenty of time.”

“All right. You know, I’ve never been here before.”

“I do know.”

“How?”

“The computer told me. The computer tells us everything.”

“Everything?My name?”

“Oh, no, not your name! I mean, all the personal things.”

I said, “So what do you know about me, Esther?”

“You’ll see in a little while.” Her eyes sparkled mischievously. Then she said, “Did you see the man from the future when you came in?”

“The one called Vornan-19?”

“Yes. He’s supposed to be here today. Just about this time. We got a special notice over the master line. They say he’s awfully handsome. I’ve seen him on the screen. I wish I’d get a chance to meet him.”

“How do you know you aren’t with him right now?”

She laughed. “Oh, no! I know I’m not!”

“But I’m masked. I could be—”

“You aren’t. You’re just teasing me. If I was getting him, they would have notified me.”

“Maybe not. Maybe he prefers secrecy.”

“Well, maybe so, but anyway I know you’re not the man from the future. Mask or no mask, you aren’t fooling me.”

I let my hand roam along the smoothness of her thigh. “What do you think of him, Esther? Do you believe he’s really from the year 2999?”

“Don’t you think so?”

“I’m asking you what you think.”

She shrugged. Taking my hand, she drew it slowly up over her taut belly until it was cupping the small cool mound of her left breast, as though she hoped to deflect my troublesome questions by leading me into the act of passion. Pouting a little, she said, “Well, they all say he’s real. The President and everyone. And they say he’s got special powers. That he can give you a kind of electric shock if he wants.” Esther giggled suddenly. “I wonder if — if he can shock a girl while he’s — you know, while he’s with her.”

“Quite likely. If he’s really what he says he is.”

“Why don’t you believe in him?”

I said, “It all seems phony to me. That a man should drop out of the sky — literally — and claim to come from a thousand years in the future. Where’s the proof? How am I supposed to know he’s telling the truth?”

“Well,” Esther said, “there’s that look in his eyes. And his smile. There’s something strange about him, everyone says. He talks strange too, not with an accent, exactly, but yet his voice comes out peculiar. I believe in him, yes. I’d like to make love with him. I’d do it for free.”

“Perhaps you’ll have the chance,” I said.

She grinned. But she was growing restless, as though this conversation exceeded the boundaries of the usual sort of small talk she was in the habit of making with dilatory clients. I pondered the impact that Vornan-19 had had even on this crib-girl, and I wondered what Vornan might be doing elsewhere in this building at this very moment. I hoped someone in Kralick’s outfit was monitoring him. Ostensibly I was in here to keep an eye on him, but, as they must have known, there was no way for me to make contact with Vornan once we were past the lobby, and I feared an outbreak of our guest’s by-now-familiar capacity for creating chaos. It was beyond my control, though. I slid my hands across Esther’s accessible sleekness. She lay there, lost in dreams of embracing the man from the future, while her body undulated in the passionate rhythms she knew so well. The computer had prepared her adequately for her task; as our bodies joined, she slid into the position I had chosen, and she discharged her duties with energy and a reasonable counterfeit of desire.