Render rounded a previously unnoticed corner andstood before him, a blind beggar.
Caesar grasped the front of his garment.
"Have you an ill omen for me this day?"
"Beware!" jeered Render.
"Yest Yes!" cried Caesar. "'Bewarel' That is good!Beware what?"
"The ides—"^Yes? The ides—?-
"—of Octember."He released the garment.
"What is that you say? What is Octember?"
"A month."
"You liel There is no month of Octemberi"
"And that is the date noble Caesar need fear—the"non-existent time, the never-to-be-calendared occasion."
Render vanished around another sudden corner.
"Wait! Come backl"
Render laughed, and the Forum laughed with him.The bird-cries became a chorus of inhuman jeers.
"You mock me!" wept Caesar.
The Forum was an oven, and the perspiration formedlike a glassy mask over Caesar's narrow forehead, sharpnose and chinless jaw.
"I want to be assassinated tool" he sobbed. "It isn'tfairl"
And Render tore the Forum and the senators and thegrinning corpse of Antony to pieces and stuffed theminto a black sack—with the unseen movement of a singlefinger—and last of all went Caesar.
Charles Render sat before the ninety white buttons andthe two red ones, not really looking at any of them. Hisright arm moved in its soundless sling, across the lap-levelsurface of the console—pushing some of the buttons, skipping over others, moving on, retracing its path to press thenext in the order of the Recall Series.
Sensations throttled, emotions reduced to nothing,Representative Erikson knew the oblivion of the womb.
There was a soft click.
Render's hand had glided to the end of the bottomrow of buttons. An act of conscious intent—will, if you