He kicked at the slidewalk in frustration, was only half startled to see a narrow crack appear in the slowly moving pavement. Quickly he looked around to make sure no one had seen him. He would have to work at controlling his temper. It still stimulated something awesome and enigmatic within him. One thing he did not want now was to attract attention to himself.

There was no one he could turn to for help, no one he could trust. No one to help him find the answers he desperately needed to know.

But there were other ways of obtaining information. It might not be necessary to confront maybe-friends or certain enemies.

He entered a bar and went to the phone. The tiny directory screen lit up when he deposited a coin. A few quick punches of the keyboard produced the address he wanted.

Then he was back out on the street, no longer wandering aimlessly but with a definite destination in mind. Thoughts of Lisa drove him through the crowds.

The station was located beneath a District Administration building downtown, near the Battery. The aboveground floors were shuttered for the night, but the subterranean elevators were still operational and full of people.

His lift dropped him ten stories into solid granite bedrock and deposited him in a long hall. It wasn’t crowded nor was it deserted. It was very late, or very early, depending on how you arranged your day. The thirst for knowledge never dries up, no matter what the hour. Some of the supplicants were sleepy-eyed, others wide-awake.

He found a place in one of the shortest lines, and it wasn’t long before he was admitted to another, narrower hallway. Soft carpet muffled footsteps. To left and right stretched a long row of glass-enclosed booths. He walked to his left until he found a booth where the fiberoptic glass wall was bright green. Stepping inside he secured the door behind him. As he did so the glass turned crimson.

Sitting down in the comfortable, adjustable chair, he touched a switch which killed the audio. Not that he was likely to have any eavesdroppers to worry about, but he felt better confronting only a visual display. He could block that from sight with his upper body.

The screen responded immediately to his touch. “Welcome to your local Colligatarch Subsidiary Service Terminal . Through the miracle of modern science and communications, you, the ordinary citizen, have the same rights as anyone in the world to utilize the vast repository of knowledge that composes the Colligatarch Authority. Your requests will be handled by Nueva York Subsidiary Center.

“Please insert your identity credit card into the slot on your left and leave it there until you have concluded your session. Your account will be billed automatically according to the difficulty of your request and the length of time required to process it. The Colligatarch Subsidiary Service Terminal, Nueva York Center, is now open for your personal use.” The period that ended the sentence flashed green on the screen.

Surprisingly, he discovered he was homesick. The terminal wasn’t all that different from his bedroom console back in New River. The setting was less luxurious and the design more utilitarian, the keyboard and screen fashioned of far tougher materials, but the setup was similar. It had to be tougher, since it had to resist the heavy hands of ordinary citizens as well as the strawberry soda and melted chocolate applied by insufficiently supervised children.

Certainly some kind of tracer had been put on his altered card. If so, it would alert the authorities to his presence here. That still might not matter if he had enough time to extract what he needed from the machine’s data banks. The best solution would be to try to obtain an answer without using the names Eric Abbott or Lisa Tambor. He would need to be as concise and nonspecific as possible.

“I need to know the location of a friend,” he entered.

“Use the public directory,” the machine immediately responded. “If the name is not listed, I am not permitted to give out the information.”

“It’s not a question of its being listed or not,” he entered. “I have reason to believe the person in question may no longer be within the city limits. She was compelled to travel on short notice and was unable to leave a forwarding address.”

“In that case it is unlikely I can be of help to you, citizen.” The neat letters flashed on the screen. “If your friend has not informed you of her new destination, it is unlikely I will be able to do so.”

“You may have more information pertaining to her movements,” Eric supplied. He paused. There was no way of working around it anymore. Quickly he entered Lisa’s name, address, and phone number.

“I need any information on this woman’s location and/or movements you can supply,” Eric added. “It may be necessary for you to contact the Nueva York police department files for details.”

“If this is a matter involving police files, I still cannot help you,” said the machine. “I will, however, make the requested inquiry.”

Eric waited nervously. How many alarms would his roundabout inquiry set off? If so, how long would he have to escape this underground facility before Tarragon’s people arrived?

On the screen the word WORKING appeared. As the delay stretched into five minutes his nervousness increased. He found himself glancing frequently up the long hallway. The appearance of two policemen gave him a bad start, but they entered a booth half a dozen cubicles up the hall from his, to remove a drunk who’d chosen the warmth and privacy of a Colligatarch terminal to try to sleep it off.

Probably the drunk had used the usual ploy of setting the machine to solve some impossible task. Eventually watchdog monitors had overridden the program and alerted security to the fact that someone was occupying the booth for other than acceptable reasons. That was why the booths were fashioned of transparent material. Legitimate users had nothing to hide.

He waited another couple of minutes before asking, “Is there some difficulty with my request?”

The machine replied immediately. “You have supplied very little hard information. Therefore a considerable amount of secondary searching is necessary.” Eric thought to dig further, decided against it.

No more police appeared. It occurred to him that despite having been awake for some time now, he was not in the least bit sleepy. No doubt the tension was keeping him alert.

A flash of letters drew his attention back to the screen. Hope turned quickly to confusion.

He expected another declaration of helplessness from the machine but there was always a chance it might come up with some bit of useful information He got neither.

Instead, the glowing sentence said, “Go to Sublevel Six, Booth B.”

He considered a moment, then asked, “What about the whereabouts of Lisa Tambor? Does my query require rephrasing?”

And again only the message, “Go to Sublevel Six, Booth B.”

Had he finally triggered an alarm of some kind? Were they trying to ease him out of this busy public corridor so they could hustle him out of sight unseen by witnessing eyes?

What else could it be? Surely the machine wouldn’t say blithely, “Go to Sublevel Six, Booth B, where there is a trap waiting for you and we may arrest you in peace and quiet.” But that was the effect of its reply. And that made no sense either.

Stalling, he entered, “Does this relate to my query as to the whereabouts of Lisa Tambor?” The machine replied with commendable brevity.

“It does.”

Rising, he removed his credit card. Perhaps they hadn’t noted the newest change yet. He left the booth. No one watched him return to the elevator bay. Even as he entered the first available lift he was unsure how to proceed. He could request street level and vanish back into the rush of early-morning Manhattan, or he could follow the machine’s seemingly innocent instructions.

His hand hovered over the controls and almost compulsively demanded Sublevel Six. The car rose quietly as he tried to decide if he should change his mind and redirect it.

He was as tense as he’d been all night when the doors parted. No ranks of heavily armed police waited to greet him. Instead he found himself on a busy, round-the-clock service floor. For a wild moment it was as if he was back in Phoenix, emerging onto any of a number of similarly laid-out floors in the Selvern Tower.

Ahead stretched a broad, carpeted corridor. The vast room was divided by modular cubicles, movable walls some two meters high. Within, people worked busily at soundproofed machines.

Since no one appeared to question his presence, he walked idly down the corridor. In one large cubicle he saw several people working with a large screen a meter and a half square. It was built into the floor. They would move long light pens over the vitreous surface while arguing in low voices about respective entries. Some of the cubicles contained consoles akin to the one he’d just utilized four floors below.

As he stood gazing, somebody’s grandmother came up and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. She had lovely green eyes and spoke with the voice of authority.

“Can I help you, young man?”

He tried to put something like a smile on his face. “Excuse me. I’ve had a rough night.”

“You certainly look it.” She studied him closely. “Where are you supposed to be? I don’t believe you belong to my section.”

“I don’t belong to anybody’s section. I’m a civilian.” Why did he think he could trust this woman? He rushed on. “I just came up from SL Ten.”

“Oh, a citizen. That doesn’t tell me what you’re doing up here. We have no public facilities on this level.”

“I put my request to a public booth and it told me to come up here. Sublevel Six, Booth B.”

Her brows drew together. “Booth B. Are you sure?”

“Yes ma’am.” As they conversed politely he was ready to bolt and run.

“Well, we can check that quick enough.”