"That's it. Now—my time's running out fast. I'm going to trigger all sorts of safeguards shortly, and I won't be able to visit you again—this is my last avenue. Olmy isn't what he seems. He's—"

What happened next, happened so fast Patricia could hardly follow it. The rogue's image wobbled violently and something fizzled in the far wall. A jagged beam of red shot from the auxiliary pictor across the room and hit her slate on the nightstand. The rogue vanished. The bedroom lights dimmed.

The furniture and walls were indistinct and gray. "Brighter, please," she said.

"Many regrets," the room voice, now harsh and dissonant, replied. "Pictors in your quarters are malfunctioning. Please be patient. Repairs are in progress."

She sat on the edge of the bed. As her eyes adjusted, she realized that all detail had gone out of the room. She sat on a basic white bed-form, surrounded by basic white furniture-forms. The walls were blank. She picked up her slate to see if it had been damaged by the flash.

On the screen, a crude line drawing of the rogue in his high-fashion togs appeared, followed by a string of numbers and then an end-of-string triangle. Beyond the triangle, in the next register, were three equations and a code equivalency. She integrated the two registers and performed a basic operation with the equations.

Words appeared on the slate, flashing: Olmy knew Korzenowski. Knows him yet. In Thistledown City.

Olmy's quarters were in Axis Nader most of the time; he never kept a residence beyond four months, but he did stay in that section of the Axis City more often than not. He never decorated his quarters, relying on a minimum of elaboration to make the rooms livable. He seemed, in fact, to avoid as many as he could of the services most Axis Citizens regarded as basic.

Yet he was not an ascetic. He simply had no need for such accoutrements; he did not criticize those who did.

He sat in the all-white living room, waiting for his trace to be completed. Olmy had patterned his tracer after the central mental programs of an old terrestrial species of dog known as a short-haired terrier, supplemented with several of his own partial personalities. It was a tough trace to elude, hardy and resourceful. It rarely failed him.

By Axis City law, rogues in City Memory were fair game. Citizens could not wipe the rogues they located, but they could corner them and call down an immediate inactivation.