"Is it too hot?" Nicholas asked him. "What do their readings give?"

"Their readings give nothing. Because they never survive. My own metallic companions destroy them; how hot this area has become is my business alone. But--you see, that makes my leadies dangerous. Try to understand, Nick; I had to pick those who were old vets of the war; I needed their toughness, their training and ability. Yance-men-- you understand that term?--prize the new, undented, undamaged leadies being minted below. But I have such a special problem; I must defend myself." His voice, hauntingly melodic, was almost a chant, as if only half-uttered; Nicholas had to strain to hear it. As if, he thought, Lantano was becoming unreal. Fading.

And, as he looked once more at the dark man he again made out the lines of age, and this time, with those lines, a familiar configuration. As if, in aging, Lantano had become--someone else.

"Nick," Lantano said softly, "what was that about my skin?"

There was silence; he did not say.

"Go ahead," Lantano said.

"You're a--" He scrutinized Lantano intently and now, instead of age he saw--a youth. A supple man, younger than himself; no more than nineteen or twenty. It must be the radiation, Nicholas thought; it consumes him, the very marrow of his bones. Withers, calcifies, speeds up the destroying of cell-walls, of tissue; he is sick--Blair was right.

And yet the man rehealed. Visibly. It was as if he oscillated; he swung into degeneration, into submission to the radioactivity with which he had, twelve hours a day, to live... and then, as it ate him, he pulled himself back from the edge; he was recharged.

Time curled and poked at him, tinkered insidiously at the metabolism of his body. But--never totally overtook him. Never really won.

"'Blessed,' " Nicholas said, " 'are the peacemakers.' " He then was silent. That seemed to be the extent of his contribution. He could not say what he knew, what his hobby of years, his interest in North American Indians and their artifacts and culture, had provided him as a basis for understanding what these other ex-tankers around him had not, could not; their own phobias about radiation, phobias developed while still below in their tanks, and now augmented, had misled them, concealed from them what was to his eyes obvious.

And yet he was still puzzled, because obviously Lantano had allowed them to think of him this way, as injured, burned. And--he did seem to be wounded. Not, perhaps, in regard to his skin, but more deeply. And so, fundamentally, the ex-tankers' view was correct.

"Why," Lantano said, "are the peacemakers blessed?"

That stumped Nicholas. And it was he who had said it.

He did not know what he meant; the idea had arisen as he contemplated Lantano; that was all he knew, just as a moment ago another outside-of-time observation had risen, unsolicited to his conscious mind, that about the man who was despised and rejected. And that man had been--well, in his own mind he knew who that man had been, even though most persons at the Tom Mix had attended the Sunday services as a mere formality. For him, however, it had been real; he had believed. Just as he had also believed--although _feared_ was a more accurate word--that someday they might need to know how the North American Indians had survived, because they themselves might need to know the art of chipping flint arrowheads and processing animal hides.

"Come and see me," Lantano said to him, "at my villa. Several rooms are complete; I am able to live comfortably while the noisy metal men bang away at the job of hauling concrete slabs and chunks which once made up bank buildings and freeway ramps and drive-ins and--"

Nicholas interrupted, "Can I stay there? Instead of here?"

After a pause Lantano said, "Of course. You can see that my wife and children are safe from the predations of the leadies of the four neighboring demesnes while I'm at the Agency; you can strawboss my little defensive police force." Turning, he signaled to his retinue; it began to file from the basement.

"Well I see," Blair said enviously, "you made it big."

Nicholas said, "I'm sorry." He did not know why Lantano awed him, why he wanted to go with him. A mystery, he thought; there is an enigma about this man who when you first catch sight of him is old, then not so old, is middle-aged, and then when you are up close he is all at once a youth. A wife and child? Then he can't be as young as he now seems. Because David Lantano, striding out of the basement ahead of him, moved like a man in his early twenties, in the full vigor of youth before it became weighed down by the responsibilities of wife, children: of marriage.

_Time_, Nicholas thought. _It's as if a force that grips us all in a one-way path of power, a total power on its part, none on ours, has for him divided; he is moved by it and yet simultaneously, or perhaps alternately, he seizes it and grips it and he then moves on to suit his own needs._

He followed after Lantano and his file of leadies, out of the basement, up into the gray light of a partial day.

"There are colorful sunsets," Lantano said, pausing and glancing back. "Which make up for the dinginess of the daytime atmosphere. Did you ever see Los Angeles in the days of the smog?"

"I never lived on the West Coast," Nicholas said. And then he thought, _But smog ceased to afflict Los Angeles by 1980; I wasn't even born, then_. "Lantano," he said, "_how old are you?_"

There was no answer from the man ahead of him.

In the sky something passed slowly, very high. From east to west.

"A satellite," Nicholas said, excitedly. "My god, I haven't seen one in all these years."

"An eye-spy," Lantano said. "Taking photographs; it's reentered the atmosphere to get a clearer shot. I wonder why. What would interest anyone here? Rival demesne owners? Domini who'd like to see me a corpse? Do I look like a corpse, Nick?" He halted. "Answer me. Am I here, Nick, _or am I dead?_ What's your opinion? Is the flesh that hung--" He became silent, then; all at once he turned and continued on.

Nicholas, despite his fatigue from the four-hour hike to Cheyenne from the tunnel, managed to keep up. Hoping, as he trudged on, that it was not far.

"You've never seen a demesne villa, have you?" Lantano said.

"I've never even seen a demesne," Nicholas said.

"Then I'll fly you over a few of them," Lantano said. "By flapple. It will interest you, the view from above; you'll think it's a park--no roads, no cities. Very pretty, except that the animals are all dead. All gone. Forever."

They trudged on. Overhead, the satellite had almost disappeared beyond the line of the horizon, into the gray smoglike haze that, Nicholas realized, would remain in suspension for generations to come.

Poring over the segment of positive, Cencio, the loupe in his right eye, said, "Two men. Ten leadies. Walking through the Cheyenne ruins in the direction of Lantano's incomplete villa. Want a blowup?"

"Yes," Webster Foote said, instantly. It had been worth instructing the corporation's satellite briefly to reenter; they would possess a much better picture, now.

The room darkened and then the square of white appeared on the wall, and then that square was modified as the film segment was fed into the projector which at the same time, at 1200x, magnified. The animator, his dearly prized gadget, began to work; the twelve figures shuffled forward.

"The same man," Cencio said, "who was with the two destructed leadies. But that's not Lantano with him; Lantano is a young man, in his twenties. That man there is middle-aged. I'll get the folio on him and show you." He disappeared. Webster Foote, alone, continued to watch the animated, developing episode; the twelve figures in motion, toiling along, the ex-tanker clearly quite tired, the man with him-- certainly it was David Lantano. Yet, as Cencio said, clearly a man in his late middle-age. Strange, Webster Foote said to himself. The radiation must account for it. It's killing him and this is the fashion that his death is taking; a premature aging. Lantano had better get out of there before it's too late; before it doesn't matter.