You know the sound when a butcher slams a chunk of beef down on the chopping block? I heard that now, Only much bigger.-I blinked my eyes and there was a body on its back in the middle of the empty space and the finest spray of blood was misting down on the grey side- walk.
I sprang forward and knelt beside the body, vaguely aware that the man who had pushed between the cops was doing the same from the other side. I studied the face of the man who had leaped to his death.
The face was unmarred, though it was rather closer to the sidewalk than it would have been if the, back of the head had been intact. It was a face with a week's beard on it that rose higher than the cheekbones—the big fore- head was the only sizable space on it dear of hair. It was the tormented face of a drunk, but now at peace. It was a face I knew, in fact had always known. It was simply the face my conductress had not let me see, (he face of the person I had doomed to die: myself.
I lifted my hand and this time I let it touch the weeks growth of beard matting my face. Well, I thought, I had given the crowd an exciting half hour.
I lifted my eyes and there on the other side of the body was &e dirty-sleeved man. It was the same beard- matted face as that on the ground between us, the same beard-matted face as my own.
On the forehead was a black S that looked permanent.
He was staring at my face—and then at my forehead— with a surprise* and then a horror, that I knew my own features were registering too as I stared at him. A hand touched my shoulder.
My conductress bad told me that you never know whether the side into which you are born or reborn is "right" or "good." Now, as I turned and saw the shim- mering silver man-high Door behind me, and her hand vanishing into it, and as I stepped through, past a rim of velvet blackness and stars, I clung to that memory, for I knew that I would be fighting on both sides forever.