"Please," he begged.

I looked up from the file. "I'm sorry, Eddie."

His eyes narrowed, both of them, on the next twitch. "Warden, I can always go out and commit another anti-social act."

"I'm afraid not, Eddie. The file shows you are capable of only one crime. And you don't have a wife any more, and she doesn't have a lover."

Horbit laughed. "Your files aren't infallible, Warden."

With one gesture, he ripped open his tunic and tore into his own flesh. No, not his own flesh. Pseudo-flesh. He took out the gun that was underneath.

"The beamer is made of X-ray-transparent plastic, Warden, but it works as well as one made of steel and lead."

"Now that you've got it in here," I said in time with the pulse in my throat, "what are you going to do with it?"

"I'm going to make you go down to the vaults and put me back to sleep, Warden."

I nodded. "I suppose you can do that. But what's to prevent me from waking you up as soon as I've taken away your gun?"

"This!" He tossed a sheet of paper onto my desk.

"What's this?" I asked unnecessarily. I could read it.

"A confession that you accepted a bribe to put me back to sleep," Horbit said, his tic beating out a feverish tempo. "As soon as you've signed it, I'll use your phone to have it telefaxed to the Registrar of Private Documents."

I had to admire the thought behind the idea. Horbit was convinced that I was only a figment of his unfocused imagination, but he was playing the game with uncompromising logic, trusting that even madness had hard and tight rules behind it.

There was also something else I admired about the plan.

It could work.

Once he fed that document to the archives, I would be obligated to help him even without the gun. My word would probably be taken that I had been forced to do it at gunpoint, but there would always be doubts, enough to wreck my career when it came time for promotion.

Nothing like this had ever happened in 

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