Though she had enjoyed moving Zasu from Chaplin to Pickford, she wasn’t sure if she would try it again with someone else. She was more concerned about this “love” business, which had bothered her since San Francisco. She checked the kettle. Watched pots did indeed boil when you were as patient as she was. And—

She startled; something seemed to move in her peripheral vision. She looked toward the window and saw just her own reflection. Outside, it was dark and raining. The leaves of the cypress tree next door rattled and tacked against the glass. How had her reflection moved when she hadn’t?

A couple of days before, she had taken the trolley into the canyon and then walked a little into the hills. She wanted to get a view of the city, but the pathway she chose was fenced off with barbed wire. She could hear a grinding noise—definitely a motor—getting closer. But what kind of motor was in the hills? It was too steep for an automobile, and no truck could make it this far. Patient and ponderous and strong, it was guttural, sounding as if nothing would stand in its way.

It was not an automobile, but something like a steam tractor. Except that its wheels had been replaced with endless tracks, exactly like a tank’s. It was called a bulldozer. Its blade lowered, tearing up the topsoil and brush and weeds, scattering rocks that had lain in place for a million and a half years. The engine growled and whined but hardly complained, its treads turning easily, for they had been taken from tank design, and they worked far better in California than under fire in France.

Her mind made the connection between this and the end of the Liberty Loan Drive immediately. But there was a strange, subtle difference to the message now, which she could not sort out yet. Real bulldozers based on ersatz tanks, and they weren’t here to build morale, but—what?

A reservoir. Why were they putting water up in the hills? Where was it coming from? Just then, a man wearing dungarees yelled at her to leave, so she did. For now. They had roused her curiosity.

As she walked back on the trail along the hillside, she tried to suppress a fear she had of running into herself. She dressed differently every day (except wearing her Silver Fish badge, no matter the outfit) in the vague superstition that her double would not be able to keep up. In the Bible, there were always stories of people running into themselves coming in the other direction, and it always ended badly. Demons, dybbuks, tricks played on you, prophecies.

So now, in the kitchen, she regarded her reflection as if it might not actually be her, as if her image might be a separate creature.