"Uh, how does a dipper figure in religion, philosophy, and romance?" I asked.
She paused, there on the hilltop, and stared at it, wrinkling her nose in a most becoming fashion. "You want to talk principles or you want to talk cases?" she asked.
"Sorry."
"You want religion and philosophy—romance and adventure, too—there!" She waggled a finger at the western sky and a constellation I had never seen before appeared—a great snaky showpiece twisted into the rough approximation of a figure eight, glowing with a multicolored mass of gemlike stars.
"My God! That's lovely!" I said.
"From my home world—Serpena—Ouroboros can be seen. And there is God's Web, from Arachne V." She indicated its net-like lineaments in the northeast. "... And the Reflected Face." she said, pushing aside the Dipper to hang a blazing countenance, only vaguely human, at midheaven.
Walking on, discussing life, cosmology, ethics, and the fine structure constant, she continued to rearrange the skies, announcing, periodically, "The Finger of Manu," "Mother Tree," and "Heaven's Staff Car."
Finally, with great care and explanation, she created some of her own, to demonstrate the complexes of psychological, anthropological, and animistic/philosophical notions which must have colored our primitive ancestors' thinking when they turned their gaze skyward. Glory's own constellations were graceful, profound, to the point.
Gathering our picnic supplies, we moved to exit the world she had made, somehow wiser, pleased that our relationship had graduated from the merely physical to higher intellectual levels where we experienced each other's thought processes with amazing congruity and full agreement as to life's major values and the ends of philosophy. Reaching for the door to our other reality, I bade the night good night.
Back in our kitchen drinking a cup of coffee, I did a sudden review of my situation: If I were to believe what I had been told, I was a clone, identical to seven guys hanging in the Hellhole. I was also, somehow, from the distant future. For these reasons, Adam had made me a temporary junior executive so that he could keep an eye on me. Medusa, my Glory, may or may not have set out initially to seduce me only to learn what information she could, but now it was for real. Now it was genuine affection we felt for each other. Of course, she had learned everything she could about me along the way. . . .
I had to admit that I hadn't thought much lately concerning my ability to defend myself, as the need to do so had not occurred in recent years. Had I really picked all that up on the street, in the old neighborhood? I knew I hadn't gotten it at Brown.
''Glory," I said, looking across the room to where she was preparing herself a small ethnic dish I did not wish to scrutinize too closely, "I want to get to the bottom of this thing as badly as you do, so here's my plan."
"Yes?" she responded.
"I am going to finish my coffee, throw the Switch, and wish myself to my office at Rigadoon magazine in New York."
"They may be closed. Hard to say what the time will be."
I shrugged.
"In that case, I will go to my apartment and call my boss, Jerome Egan. It's no coincidence that I was given this assignment—not with my clones hanging around in there." I gestured toward the Hellhole. "I've got to find out how it came about, who set it up. I've got to learn how I could be the two different people I'd pretty much have to be."
"And if you can learn that?"
"I'll come back and tell you, and we can figure out what to do about it."
"Either that, or it will remind you of your agenda, and when you return we will no longer be friends."
"Granting that such a thing might happen, you have no way of knowing it for certain."
She shook her head, a slow undulation.
"Then you shall accompany me, to learn for yourself whatever I learn."
She tasted the thing in the pan and smiled, then transferred it to a dish.
"And if I learn something terrible shall I kill you?" she asked.
I laughed, a little too tightly.
"We all do what we must," I said. "Sometimes that includes trust."
She cut a portion of the fare and ate it. "Very well," she said then. "I'll go with you."
We both laughed. I watched her sharp teeth flash as I finished my coffee.
Looking eminently rested and respectable in the foyer's small mirror, I moved to the niche and threw the Switch. Then I went to the door and flung it wide. Evening shadows lay upon the Etruscan Forum.
"Morning in New York," I said. "I think my timing's good."
Then my gaze was caught by a wine bottle where before I had seen a bundle of rags. I stooped and retrieved it from the entranceway, held it up, and turned it slowly.
"Strange shape," Glory remarked.
I passed it to her.
"Classic Klein bottle format," I said, "the visualization of which was once explained by Isaac Asimov as follows: Imagine a goose that bends its neck forward and begins eating its way downward into its own midsection. After a time, its head emerges from its anus and it opens its beak wide. Quietus. Freeze-frame. This is how these things are done."
"Fascinating," she said, setting it atop a side-table as I secured the door. "And that is the bottle you gave to Urtch?"
"Yes. Ruffino."
She nodded and took my arm.
"The universe chooses to address us in a typical fashion. Take me to your office, Alf."
"Indeed, m'lady."
I adjusted my ascot, visualized, and wished.
A moment later we stood in my office in Manhattan. I cast a quick glance about me. Everything seemed to be where I'd left it.
"They don't seem to have fired me in my absence," I said.
I opened my door and stepped into the larger, outer office.
Empty. Still. According to the clock, it should be bustling. I moved to the nearest desk and consulted its day-calendar.
"Sunday," I announced. "It's what I get for losing track. Easily remedied, though. We can wish our way back, then have the singularity deliver us two days ago, or tomorrow. ..."
"No!" she said. "It's not good to play with Time in matters which ultimately involve Time."
"A future superstition?"
"More than that. There are ways for Time to gang up on you."
"Okay. No problem. I'll just phone Jerry from here." I returned to my office, got an outside line, punched his number.
"Jerry," I said, "it's me, Alf."
"Where are you?"
"Here in town. At the office."
"Was there a story? Or are you writing it off?"
"No story yet, but there's a lot of interesting material. I just came back for a few things I need. I wanted to ask you something about this assignment, though."
There followed a silence. Then, "Like what?" he said.
"Oh, how it came to be—just now. Why I got—"
"Alf. Go home."
"But—"
"Just go home and wait."
He hung up.
"We're meeting at my apartment," I said. "Is it okay to jump back to Rome and then jump there, so long as I don't mess with Time? Or—"
"Take a taxi," she told me.
Growling, I led her through the offices. How could I have been plotting bizarre plots when I remembered working here for so long?
We descended and walked a couple of blocks before we located a cab. It was easy to be spoiled by the Hellhole.
My place was as I had left it, relatively neat—as the cleaning lady had been by that final morning—and I showed Glory the living room, dining room, kitchen, and den. We entered the bedroom, where she gazed at the king-sized bed, and said, "We really ought to, before we go back."
"Indeed," I replied. "It would be a shame—" and the callbox buzzed.
"Alf here, "I said.
"There's a Mr. Egan wants to see you."