f the Century?"

CHAPTER 12

Now is a bearable burden. What buckles the back is the added weight
of the past's mistakes and the future's fears.

I had to learn to close the front door to tomorrow and the back door
to yesterday and settle down to here and now.

--Anonymous

A BIG OPPORTUNITY

Nobody laughed at Erich's screwball sarcasms and still I thought, "Yes,
perish his hysterical little gray head, but he's half right--Lili's got
the big thing now and she wants to serve it up to the rest of us on a
platter, only love doesn't cook and cut that way."

Those weren't bad ideas she had about the Maintainer, though, especially
the one about the Ghostgirls doing the Introverting--it would explain
why there couldn't be Introversion drill, the manual stuff about blue
flashes being window-dressing, and something disappearing without
movement or transition is the sort of thing that might not catch the
attention--and I guess they gave the others something to think about
too, for there wasn't any follow-up to Erich's frantic sniping.

But I honestly didn't see where there was this big opportunity being
stuck away in a gray sack in the Void and I began to wonder and I got
the strangest feeling and I said to myself, "Hang onto your hat, Greta.
It's hope."

"The dreadful thing about being a Demon is that you have all time to
range through," Lili was saying with a smile. "You can never shut the
back door to yesterday or the front door to tomorrow and simply live in
the present. But now that's been done for us: the Door is shut, we need
never again rehash the past or the future. The Spiders and Snakes can
never find us, for who ever heard of a Place that was truly lost being
rescued? And as those in the know have told me, Introversion is the end
as far as those outside are concerned. So we're safe from the Spiders
and Snakes, we need never be slaves or enemies again, and we have a
Place in which to live our new lives, the Place prepared for us from the
beginning."

She paused. "Surely you understand what I mean? Sidney and Beauregard
and Dr. Pyeshkov are the ones who explained it to me. The Place is a
balanced aquarium, just like the cosmos. No one knows how many ages of
Big Time it has been in use, without a bit of new material being brought
in--only luxuries and people--and not a bit of waste cast off. No one
knows how many more ages it