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up at me and grinned.
"I love solving other people's problems," he said, "because they're always so
easy. You've got yourself tangled up in a problem that doesn't exist, Agent
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Dannerman. I've met your Patrice, you know, briefing me on Threat Watch now
and then. Seems like a very nice woman to me. Why do you think she isn't the
real one?"
I frowned. "Because she's a copy, naturally."
"Naturally she is," he agreed, "but so are you, aren't you?
And how 'real' do you think you are? Shit, man! Marry the girl, if she'll have
you. Only," he said apologetically, "don't count on any long honeymoons,
because I've got to say no to making any more translators just now. See,
you're all I've got."
I can't say I didn't hear the last part of what he said. It was on a sort of
delay circuit, though, shunted aside while I considered what he had said about
me and Patrice. As the man said, other people's problems were the easiest to
solve, especially when-as he said-the problem didn't exist, but was only
something I had put into my own head.
Then I woke up to his last remarks. I said. "What?"
He was patient with me. "The thing is, as long as you're the one and only
person who can talk to these, ah, persons from other planets, everybody has to
be reasonable. I'll make damn sure this job is made as easy as possible for
you, Dannerman, I give you my word. But until further notice, I'm afraid
you're stuck. If that's all right with you?" he added, just as though I had a
choice.
I said glumly, "I guess."
He grinned and stood up, shaking my hand to show that the interview was over.
He didn't let go of it right away, though. He said, "I know what you're
thinking, Dannerman. You're saying to yourself, 'Gripes, I just got these guys
out of the worst trouble they've ever been in, so doesn't that settle it?'
Only it doesn't, Dan. It never does. You solve one problem and another one
comes up and starts biting you on the ass before you have a chance to catch
your breath. Welcome to the real world, where the only final solutions come
when you die. And," he added, dexterously turning me toward the door as he let
go of my hand, "if these people are right, maybe not even then."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author, Frederik Pohl has done just
about everything one can do in the science fiction field. His most famous work
is undoubtedly the novel Gateway, which won the Hugo, Nebula, and John W.
Campbell Memorial awards for Best SF novel. Man Plus won the
Nebula Award. His mature work is marked by a serious intellectual agenda and
strongly held sociopolitical beliefs, without sacrificing narrative drive. In
addition to his successful solo fiction, Pohl has collaborated successfully
with a variety of writers, including C. M. Kornbluth and Jack Williamson. The
Pohl/Kornbluth collaboration, The Space Merchants, is a longtime classic of
satiric science fiction. TheStarchild Trilogy with Williamson is one of the
more notable collaborations in the field. Pohl has been a magazine editor in
the field since he was very young, piloting Worlds of If to three successive
Hugos for Best Magazine. He also has edited original-
story anthologies, including the early and notable Star series of the early
1950s. He has at various times been a literary agent, an editor of lines of
science fiction books, and a president
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0Far%20Shore%20Of%20Time.txt of the Science Fiction Writers of America. For a
number of years he has been active in the World
SF movement. He and his wife, Elizabeth Anne Hull, a prominent academic active
in the Science
Fiction Research Association, live outside Chicago, Illinois.
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