She had often wondered about the men who called her. Over the years she had gotten to recognize six separate voices. For a long time, she had tried to engage them in conversation. But they never said anything more than "Hi, honey. All's well." And then they hung up.

Sometimes she wondered if what she was doing was . . . well, was proper. It seemed like very little to do for fifteen thousand a year. She had expressed this concern to the dry little man from Washington who had recruited her almost twenty years earlier.

He had tried to reassure her. "Don't worry, Mrs. Sinkings," he had said. "What you're doing is very, very important." It was during the atomic bomb scares of the 1950's and Mrs. Sinkings had giggled nervously and asked, "What if the Russians bomb us ? What then,"

And the man had looked very serious and said simply, "Then everything will take care of itself and none of us have to worry about it."

He had double-checked again with her. Her mother had lived to be ninety-five and her father ninety-four. Both sets of grandparents had lived into their nineties.

Amelia Sinkings had been sixty when she took the job. She was almost eighty now.

She watched as the second hand finished its sweep around the clock and the time neared

9

10:55. She reached her hand for the telephone, anticipating the ring.

Fifty-nine seconds. Sixty. Her hand touched the telephone.

One second after 10:55. Two seconds. Three seconds.

The telephone had not rung. She waited another thirty seconds before she realized that her hand was still on the telephone and it was beginning to ache from being held over her head that way. She lowered her hand to the table and sat there watching the clock.

She waited until the time went past 10:59 A.M. She sighed and, with difficulty, rose to her feet. She removed her gold Elgin wristwatch and placed it carefully on the table, then opened the back door and tottered down the steps into her backyard.