Abe scrapes the stone’s side clear of dirt. No date. “Might be on the other side.…”

“Gee, Abe,” says Tash, nudging Sandy with an elbow. “How much do you think that stone weighs?”

Abe gives it a kick. “I don’t know. Maybe a ton.”

“Ah, come on!” says Jim.

“Yeah, okay … maybe only seven, eight hundred pounds.”

“Ah, hahahahahahaha.”

“How about a piece of this beam for a souvenir,” Abe suggests to Jim. “Just a starter, of course.” He takes the oscilloscopic saw and neatly slices off a triangular section that looks like a wooden prism, or an antique ruler. He hands it up to Jim. “Don’t touch the black side for a minute or two.”

Jim regards it dubiously. So this is the past.…

“Whoops!” says Sandy, who has ESP in these matters. He looks around the corner and out to the street. “Police.” He has an escape route already planned, and without a pause he is gone down an alley between the supermarket and the ap wall, into the applex. Sandy can’t afford even casual conversations with the police, much less an arrest for violating a parking lot surface.

The others snatch up Abe’s tools and follow Sandy, just as a cosmic white light xenon beam snaps into existence and torches the parking lot with its glare. Amped-up voices of authority command them to stop, but they’re already into the warren of the applex, as safe as roaches under the refrigerator. Except this time the police are in after them, can’t let these hoodlums be tearing up the parking lots of OC, and it’s chase time, the four friends dodging in irregular dispersal from the closetlike courtyards to second- and third-story walkways, dumpster nooks, doorway niches … The applex is typical L-5 architecture, dominant form of the twenty-first century, but it’s smaller than most OC applex mazes, and there just aren’t as many good spots to scurry into. Crossing one twelve-by-twelve courtyard Jim stumbles over a kid’s robot and drops his archaeological find, it clatters away and he’s hopping around trying to locate it when Sandy runs into him and drags him off into a nearby elevator nook. Just in time, because a policeman wearing a helmet with an IRHUD happens by and well, who knows but what he can see the heat of their footprints right there on the ground!

Maybe so. He’s paused in the courtyard. Sandy and Jim, praying that their shoe soles have been thick enough, crouch in the dark elevator doorway and watch the policeman’s headlamps swing around the minicourtyard.

For a moment the beam of light illuminates the fragment of wood, there under a dead bush.

“Now, that’s a piece of wood,” Sandy whispers in Jim’s ear. “And that”—gesturing after the departing policeman—“is a night in jail. You have to weigh your priorities, Jim. You’ve got to think before you act.…”