The Siege of Eternity

Even a Bureau agent was entitled to an afternoon off now and then. Once Dannerman had supervised the changing of shifts for the guards at the Observatory and the apartment, and the other guard at the hospital where poor Pat Five was flat on her back in the ob-gyn wing, he was free for personal business.

Which, of course, was Anita Berman. He met her for a pleasant, if inexpensive, lunch not far from his room in Rita Gammidge's condo, and when he suggested they go up to his place afterward she was not surprised.

The landlady popped out of her own room to see who was coming into her condo in the middle of the day, but when she saw Anita she smiled and closed the door. Then Dannerman and Anita did what they had come there to do; and that went well, too. Then, satisfied, they lay spooned in the bed, Dannerman's arm over her, his face in the sweet, red hair at the nape of her neck. He was quite content. When she spoke he didn't hear her at first, she spoke so softly. "I said," she repeated, "what happens next?"

"Oh," he said. He stretched, yawned and tried to collect his thoughts. "Well, I guess I kind of get back to my life. I'm still waiting for the damn payroll people to clear my status, now that there are two of me. The big problem is-"

But it wasn't Dannerman's file and pension account she wanted to talk about. She said, "That isn't what I meant. I meant, what happens next with us?"

"Oh," he said again, suddenly thoughtful. He readjusted his mind. He had been asked that "what about us?" question more than once before, by more than one other young woman. When you decoded it, it usually turned out to mean, "Are we going to get married?"

All the other times he had been asked that question the answer had been pretty much out of his control, often enough because the woman who asked it happened to be a suspect in his ongoing mission. But now . .

She wasn't waiting for his answer. She had something else on her mind. "Listen," she said tentatively, "there's something I didn't tell you."

Oh, hell, he thought, because he could decode that one, too; it meant a lot of things, and one of them might be that another man had suddenly appeared in her life.

But not this time. "Dan," she said, "have you ever thought of leaving the Bureau?"

He propped himself up to look at her, honestly puzzled. "And do what?"

"Well, I always had the idea that you really wanted to be an actor. Am I wrong?"

That came right out of left field. Be an actor? He'd certainly thought about it, especially while he was taking all those drama courses in college. It had been a sort of dream-time thought, the way he'd also now and then thought about how nice it would be to win the Olympic decathlon or run for President. It was a daydream and not at all realistic. . . .

No, that wasn't true anymore. It hadn't been realistic before because of his job. The Bureau wouldn't let him go public as an actor. By definition actors were there to be seen, while a Bureau agent's chief asset was his invisibility.

Uncle Cubby financed Dan Dannerman's education right through graduate school, whence he emerged with a doctorate in theater arts-just in time to be called up for active duty from the Police Reserve Officers Training Corps he had ill-advisedly joined as an undergraduate. Working for the Bureau didn't end his interest in theater, it just made it hard to do anything about it... until he was assigned to a drug case in New York City, and found the Off-Off-Off Broadway Theater Aristophanes Two, and the girl named Anita Herman who acted in it.

But he wasn't invisible anymore. That had been taken care of by the Scarecrows.

"If I quit," he said thoughtfully, "I'd be able to collect all my back pay. I guess I'd have to split with the other guy, but there should be enough there to live on, maybe."

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, they don't pay much at Theater Aristophanes Two-"

"Oh, Dan! Who said anything about Theater Aristophanes Two? Do you know who Ron Zigler is?"

"The producer?"

"Yes, the producer. He came backstage at the theater the other night and he wanted to talk to me. Did you ever hear of Star Trek!"

"Star Trek?" Dannerman tracked down an old memory. "Oh, sure. Back in-what was it, the 1980s? Uncle Cubby was a Trekkie when he was a kid; that's what got him into the astronomy business."