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psychic driving force behind all the trips he

had ever made? That would explain why the recreated scenes were always

crisis points, times when the course of his life had taken a disastrous

turn. Could it be that he was a frustrated time traveler, anchored in

the present by the immovable reality of his corporeal body, but managing

to release some immaterial aspect of his identity to look back through

time and hammer on the invisible walls of the past? If that was the case,

then -- God help him -- he was going to relive that awful, final scene

with Kate until he died. And the three elm trees had begun to loom. . . .

I've got to get out of here, Breton thought, and find a good noisy diner

with a juke box, checkered table cloths, huge vulgar plastic tomatoes

on the tables, and normal human beings arguing about the things normal

human beings argue about.

He put on lights all over the house, freshened himself up, changed his

clothes and was going out through the front door when a slightly shabby

sedan swung in the gateway and wallowed up the snow-covered drive. The

passenger door opened and Hetty Calder got out, surveyed the snow with

obvious disgust, and blew some cigarette ash onto it in a gesture of

retaliation.

"Going out? Harry and I came over to see if there was anything we

could do."

"There is." Breton was amazed at just how much pleasure the sight of her

thick, tweedy figure was able to inspire in him. "You can be my guests

at dinner. I'd be glad of your company."

He got into the rear seat and exchanged brief greetings with Harry Calder,

a balding, bookish man of about fifty. The clutter of shopping bags,

scarves and magazines around him on the broad seat gave Breton a

comforting feeling of being securely back in the world of uncomplicated

normalcy, He studied the pre-Christmas store displays as they drove across

the city, absorbing every detail, leaving no room for thoughts of Kate.

"How're you feeling now, Jack?" Hetty peered back into Breton's homely

little kingdom. "You didn't look too good when I dropped you off today."

"Well, I wasn't feeling too wonderful right then, but I'm fine now."

"What was wrong?" Hetty persisted.

Breton hesitated, and decided to experiment with the truth. "As a matter

of fact, I wasn't seeing very well. Sort of colored lights had spread

over most of my right eye.

Unexpectedly, Harry Calder turned his head and clucked sympathetically.

"Prismatic, zigzag patterns, eh? So you're another one?"

"Another one? What do you mean, Harry?"

"I get them too -- and then the pain starts," Harry Calder said. "It's

a common preliminary symptom of migraine."

"Migraine!" Breton felt something heave convulsively in his subconscious.

"But I never get headaches."

"No? Then you must be one of the lucky ones -- what I go through after

those pretty colors start marching isn't ordinary. You wouldn't believe

it."

"I never knew there was any coiniection between that sort of thing and

migraine," Breton said. "As you say -- I must be one of the lucky ones."

Even to his own ears, his voice did not carry much conviction.

Breton's belief in the possibility of time travel was born painfully,

over a period of months.

He returned to his business, but found himself unable to make valid

judgments on even the most clear-cut administrative issues, while

technical decisions had receded to another plane of comprehension

altogether. With the assistance of the three staff engineers, Hetty

guided the consultancy into something approximating its normal channels

of operation. At first, Breton sat at his desk staring at meaningless

drawings for hours at a stretch, unable to think of anything but Kate

and the part he had played in her death. There were times when he tried

to write poetry, to crystallize and perhaps depersonalize his feeling

about Kate. The heavy snows of the Montana winter buried the world in

silence, and Breton watched it silt across the arrays of parked