k the morning after. But even then I thought I was also
seizing a chance to undo historic wrongs, work for peace." His voice was
getting wilder all the time. Just beyond our circle, I noticed the New
Girl watching him worshipfully. "But what did I find the Spiders wanted
me for? Only to fight more wars, over and over again, make them crueler
and stinkinger, cut the swath of death a little wider with each Big
Change, work our way a little closer to the death of the cosmos."

Sid touched my wrist and, as Bruce raved on, he whispered to me, "What
kind of ball, think you, will please and so quench this fire-brained
rogue? And you love me, discover it."

I whispered back without taking my eyes off Bruce either, "I know
somebody who'll be happy to put on any kind of ball he wants, if he'll
just notice her."

"The New Girl, sweetling? 'Tis well. This rogue speaks like an angry
angel. It touches my heart and I like it not."

Bruce was saying hoarsely but loudly, "And so we're sent on operations
in the past and from each of those operations the Change Winds blow
futurewards, swiftly or slowly according to the opposition they breast,
sometimes rippling into each other, and any one of those Winds may shift
the date of our own death ahead of the date of our Resurrection, so that
in an instant--even here, outside the cosmos--we may molder and rot or
crumble to dust and vanish away. The wind with our name in it may leak
through the Door."

* * * * *

Faces hardened at that, because it's bad form to mention Change Death,
and Erich flared out with, "_Halt's Maul, Kamerad!_ There's always
another Resurrection."

But Bruce didn't keep his mouth shut. He said, "Is there? I know the
Spiders promise it, but even if they do go back and cut another
Doubleganger from my lifeline, is he me?" He slapped his chest with his
bare hand. "I don't think so. And even if he is me, with unbroken
consciousness, why's he been Resurrected again? Just to refight more
wars and face more Change Death for the sake of an almighty power--" his
voice was rising to a climax--"an almighty power so bloody ineffectual,
it can't furnish one poor Soldier pulled out of the mud of
Passchendaele, one miserable Change Commando, one Godforsaken Recuperee
a proper issue of equipment!"

And he held out his bare right hand toward us, fingers spread a little,
as if it were the most amazing object and most deserving of outraged
sympathy in