"Too much."

"Probably where you got those notions about new branches."

"As a matter of fact, I did pick up a lot of the theory, and it is more complicated than you probably think."

"Hogwash! It was that way once, it can be that way again."

"Have it your way, but we won't have you messing around like this."

"People do it every day. Why else would they travel the Road? Everywhere they go, they alter the branches some way or other."

Tony's teeth clicked.

"I know, and that's frightening enough. This whole thing ought to be better controlled, check points set up—"

"But the Road has always been here, and those of us who can travel it always have. The world goes on, the Road goes on—from creation to destruction, amen, for all you know. What's your point?"

"I've known you for forty years—or thirty, or five or six. You haven't changed. I can't talk to you. —Okay. We can't control most of the traffic, we can't stop the minor changes. We can look out for big things, though, and we do. You're always involved with the big ones. I'm trying to be nice and let you go with another warning."

"That's all you can do, and you know it You can't prove where I was headed with this equipment. You can confiscate, you can lecture, you can make things rough for me for a while. But it won't last—and you know as well as I do that you are handing me another line. This isn't policy or guarding the peace or anything like that. You are harassing me, personally, for a particu, lar reason. Someone's down on me and I'd like to know

who, and why."

Tony reddened. His partner passed them with a carton of grenades.

"You're getting paranoid. Red," he finally said.

"Uh-uh. Care to give me a hint?" His eyes were fixed on the other's as he struck a match on an ammo box and relit his cigar. "Who could it be?"