She stepped back and looked him up and down. “Well, I suppose that’s not impossible. Being blond, six four, and gorgeous shouldn’t be an insurmountable handicap. We all have our crosses to bear. Mine’s a deadline, yours is your appearance. You do realize somewhere behind those deep blue eyes of yours that there are misguided people in this world who would not object to trading places with you?”

“I know, I know. But whether you believe me or not I’d rather not look like this.”

“Not even for one hundred fifty thou per picture? You can always go do Ibsen at the local Y.”

“I have,” he told her.

“Sure, and twenty people came to see it. Keep plugging away, Carter. You’re not such a bad guy, even if you are closemouthed. So I don’t think I’ll do a number on you just yet. Right now I’m more interested in Peters’s mattress wars. We have a lot in common, you and I.”

“We have nothing in common,” Carter told her.

“No? You get the leads in the B-minus pictures, and I get to cover the stars of the B-minus pictures. We’re both working our way up. Down the coast they’re doing that space shuttle hijack picture with Scheider and Kostner. You think I could get assigned to that? No such luck.”

“If you didn’t have the morals of a cobra and the literary aspirations of a turnip I might get to like you a little, Ho.”

“Don’t,” she warned him. “It’s dangerous. You’re too sensitive to like me. Although if you changed your mind about being a source I could do wonders for your career.”

“I’ll handle my career just fine, thank you.”

“Sure you will. What’s that next picture your agency has you lined up for?” She frowned theatrically. “Something with you and three bimbos down in Brazil where you all lose your money, your inhibitions, and your clothes while drifting down some obscure tributary of the Amazon on a reject riverboat from The African Queen?”

He turned away. “I haven’t agreed to do that.”

“Bullshit. Your agent’s verbally committed you.”

He whirled on her. “How do you find these things out?”

“Hey, it’s my job.” She pocketed her recorder. “Think about it, Carter. You give me something and I’ll see you get some good space. If not,” and she was grinning as she strolled away, “I’ll just have to make do with the best I can.”

Carter followed her with his eyes. Her petite Asian shape was quite attractive. But when considering poisonous creatures one always had to keep in mind the general rule that the smaller they were, the more toxic.

The crew did their best to ignore the muffled shouts emanating from the vicinity of Peters’s trailer, indication that Nahfoud’s ongoing conversation with his leading lady was proceeding in a manner less than smooth.

He was abruptly aware that people were pointing at him. A cluster of tourists, well dressed and privileged, was visiting the set. He smiled back automatically, provoking disparate responses from the women in the group. It was so easy for him, a talent he’d discovered and grown bored with in his teens.

He drank his tea and like a good team player let them snap pictures until their guide, someone from the film’s PR team, urged them along. Then he headed for his own trailer.

It was not as big as Peters’s. That was specified in the contracts, along with everything else down to how many oxygen molecules per day were to be allotted to each performer. He didn’t care. He would’ve been happy to sleep in a tent in the Georgia woods.

Something shiny in the grass caught his attention. At first he thought it might be a piece of jewelry, but when he knelt he saw it was a metal disc two inches in diameter. As he picked it up the afternoon light cued a rainbow on its surface.

He wiped dirt from both sides. It didn’t look bent or otherwise damaged. Interestingly enough, there was no label.

A quick look around showed no one nearby examining the ground for lost property or asking anxious questions of the crew. As he continued toward his trailer he showed the disc to everyone he encountered. No one admitted to having lost anything like it, nor did they know anyone who had.

Gathering clouds had begun to shed afternoon rain by the time he reached his home away from home. A low rumble reverberated through the damp air, though whether it came from overhead or from the direction of Peters’s abode he couldn’t say. It might well have been Nahfoud: even if he managed to mollify his leading lady there would be no more shooting today. The light was gone.

Carter was glad of the respite. He could relax and read. The rain on the roof was imitating a snare drum on uppers as he carefully put the unlabeled compact disc on the kitchenette table and went to ferret out a magazine.

II

O’lal had been aware of the disturbance for some time. It was subtle in character, unmistakable in nature. Something was very wrong with The Way Things Were. The shift in the plenal equilibrium was sufficient to alarm her, though it was premature to consider alerting any Others. Not that anyone could be spared to assist her anyway. The Monitors were spread too thin as it was, and this world was her responsibility.

The exquisite delicacy of the disturbance suggested that whoever was responsible was aware of the serious nature of the interference they were causing. As presently constituted it was impossible for her to trace it without revealing herself, and that of course she could not do. Not without damaging the course of social evolution on the very world whose development she was charged with safeguarding. Over the centuries she had grown very protective of her simple charges.

Now someone was trying to make trouble.

No reason yet for serious concern. The interference was still little more than a tremulous suggestion of unease sliding across her field of perception. Its source might be wholly natural in nature, distorted by some causational trick of mutaphysical mimicry. No need to panic.

But when it did not vanish and continued to perpetuate itself on her consciousness she began to believe that another Shihararaneth was responsible. It had the distinctive thrust of the Kind. Yet all of the Shihararaneth in this Quadrant were accounted for. So her instincts must necessarily be playing her false.

Only, she didn’t think so.

One of the primitive Kind sauntered across her physical plane of perception. Non-Shihar, it resembled her closely. It paused to consider her, able to utilize only a tiny fraction of that great range of cognizance which characterized the mature Shihararaneth. The root Kind of this world were still evolving, still maturing. They had a long ways to travel before approaching the level of the Monitors.

Though beginning to properly comprehend their surroundings and their environment, their first hesitant explorations of the spacetime continuum still exceeded their capacity for deductive cognition. Mastery of both was required to qualify for true sentience.

They were still restricted to those places where matter had concentrated itself sufficiently to generate retentive gravitation, unlike the Shihararaneth, who could travel through progressively less organized reality with ease.

Such jumps remained beyond the ability of the primitive locals. Occasionally, haltingly, one of them would stumble clumsily between the planes of existence and emerge safely elsewhere without knowledge of how it had accomplished the mature feat of transposition. They invariably survived such accidents of maturity undamaged but confused.

So she was not surprised when the male confronting her made an inquisitive noise and started to approach. His eyes were intent on hers: the true Shihar stare, she was pleased to note, though devoid of adequate accompanying intelligence. She gazed back appraisingly.

He was a handsome specimen, lean and muscular. A pity she was not one of those who enjoyed dallying with primitives. Its attitude signaled a confused mix of hostility, curiosity, and lust, a not uncommon combination among undeveloped elemental Kind.

When it was very close she tensed, chose her angle of departure carefully, and jumped. She passed above and beyond, vanishing into the open place the primitive could sense but not enter. She felt the curved plane she’d chosen slip glutinously beneath her, the one above brush lightly at her head. Up and down had no meaning during the jump, directions having become momentarily as irrelevant as gravity.

Greatly puzzled, the immature Kind blinked and looked around wildly for the one he’d been stalking. There was no sign of her. O’lal had jumped from one reality nexus to another by means of a gap in real space. For a mature Shihar such dissimilarities were easy to negotiate.

She emerged near in time but quite a distance away in space, landing neatly on her feet in another city on the other side of the world. This time no one saw her, though on several occasions she had been observed. It did not matter. Unequipped to correctly interpret her means of locomotion, the primitives of this world satisfied themselves with comforting rationalizations. Besides, the elemental Kind they shared this world with occasionally made similar if undirected voyages. So O’lal’s arrival provoked no comment.

More than ever, she was convinced that the persistent disturbance was the product of a fully mature Shihar. It clung to the fringes of her consciousness, refusing to go away. She’d been feeling it now for years. Each time she had tried to pursue, it had fled, its echoes dissipating untraceably in the pockets of emptiness that occupied the plenum between ordinary mass, mocking her attempts to carry out her monitoring functions. She was persistent and dedicated, but not even the most experienced Monitor could capture a taunt.

Nor could she expend very much energy tracking disquieting phantoms. Too many other tasks made demands on her time and talents. There were the immature Shihar of this world to nurture, and the promising Others to guide and cajole toward civilization. Yet the disturbance never left her entirely, and occasional widely spaced reminders of its presence served to keep her alert for any chance to pounce.

Somewhere an unregistered Shihar was biding its time, planning disruption, intending inimical influence. It was her task to ensure that did not take place while simultaneously preserving her anonymity.

So much work to be done, so many seemingly inconsequential yet vital details to attend to. Endless was the task of Monitor, yet also endlessly rewarding. Not one but two species benefited from her untiring attention: the domestic immature Kind, and the Others. The rewards of monitoring lay in watching her charges progress.

She had no intention of seeing her hard-won accomplishments jeopardized by some unregistered, mischievous Renegade.

Somewhere there must be a god, Jason thought, who looks after fools, idiots, and suicidal film directors. Not only did the cloud cover break and the rain stop falling, so did most of the crap.

After a lengthy conversation with his agent, a gentleman of no taste and impeccable credentials within the field who expounded tersely to his client on the virtues of working in any capacity as opposed to not working at all, Melrose Fleet returned to the set to deliver the remainder of his lines with a subservient aplomb that left even jaded crew members applauding.

Amanda Peters (nee Ethel Berkowitz of Tope, Oklahoma) executed her final scenes with vigor and style, managing to appear at once distraught waif, noble southern belle, and period costume nymphomaniac. The fact that her three erstwhile attackers concluded their parts with their parts more the worse for wear than hers constituted a kind of poetic justice, not to mention license. Once the director had been assured by his sound man that her occasional out-of-character four-letter outbursts could be easily edited out of the live track, he pronounced himself delighted.

As for the lingering clouds, they provided the kind of diffuse dramatic lighting the best matte artists could not have surpassed. Only after the final covering shots were in the can did the rain return, in the form of a deluge heavy enough to have extinguished the real burning of Atlanta had it fallen a hundred and some years earlier.