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neither his speech nor his carriage, which have their roughness, but the way in which he assumes them, as though the surface where speech and carriage are flush were somehow inflamed.
    "Hey, Tak?"
    "Yeah?"
    "How long have you been here?"
    "If you told me today's date, I could figure it out. But I've let it go. It's been a while." After a moment, Loufer asked, in a strange, less blustery voice: "Do you know what day it is?"
    "No, I…" The strangeness scared him. "I don't." He shook his head while his mind rushed away toward some other subject. "What do you do? I mean, what did you work at?"
    Tak snorted. "Industrial engineering."
    "Were you working here, before… all this?"
    "Near here. About twelve miles down, at Helmsford. There used to be a plant that jarred peanut butter. We were converting it into a vitamin C factory. What do you do—? Naw, you don't look like you do too much in the line of work." Loufer grinned. "Right?"
    He nodded. It was reassuring to be judged by appearances, when the judge was both accurate and friendly. And, anyway, the rush had stopped.
    "I was staying down in Helmsford," Loufer went on. "But I used to drive up to the city a lot. Bellona used to be a pretty good town." Tak glanced at a doorway too dark to see if it was open or shut. "Maybe it still is, you know? But one day I drove up here. And it was like this."
    A fire escape, above a street lamp pulsing slow as a failing heart, looked like charred sticks, some still aglow.
    "Just like this?"
    On a store window their reflection slid like ripples over oil.
    "There were a few more places the fire hadn't reached; a few more people who hadn't left yet—not all the newcomers had arrived."
    "You were here at the very beginning, then?"
    "Oh, I didn't see it break out or anything. Like I say, when I got here, it looked more or less like it does now."
    "Where's your car?"
    "Sitting on the street with the windshield busted, the tires gone—along with most of the motor. I let a lot of stupid things happen, at first. But I got the hang of it after a while." Tak made a sweeping gesture with both hands—and disappeared before it was finished: they'd passed into complete blackness. "A thousand people are supposed to be here now. Used to be almost two million."
    "How do you know, I mean the population?"
    "That's what they publish in the paper."
    "Why do you stay?"
    "Stay?" Loufer's voice neared that other, upsetting tone. "Well, actually, I've thought about that one a lot. I think it has to do with—I got a theory now—freedom. You know, here—" ahead, something moved—"you're free. No laws: to break, or to follow. Do anything you want. Which does funny things to you. Very quickly, surprisingly quickly, you become—" they neared another half-lit lamp; what moved became smoke, lobling from a window sill set with glass teeth like an extinguished jack-o-lantern—"exactly who you are." And Tak was visible again. "If you're ready for that, this is where it's at."
    "It must be pretty dangerous. Looters and stuff."
    Tak nodded. "Sure it's dangerous."
    "Is there a lot of street mugging?"
    "Some." Loufer made a face. "Do you know about crime, Kid? Crime is funny. For instance, now, in most American cities—New York, Chicago, St. Louis—crimes, ninety-five per cent I read, are committed between six o'clock and midnight. That means you're safer walking around the street at three o'clock in the morning than you are going to the theater to catch a seven-thirty curtain. I wonder what time it is now. Sometime after two I'd gather. I don't think Bellona is much more dangerous than any other city. It's a very small city, now. That's a sort of protection."
    A forgotten blade scraped his jeans. "Do you carry a weapon?"
    "Months of detailed study on what is going on where, the movements and variations of our town. I look around a lot. This way."
    That wasn't buildings on the other side of the street: Trees rose above the park wall, black as shale. Loufer headed toward