back on the sheets. He looked at the dark nipples atop her soft mature breasts, and he couldn't help remembering the breasts of the old Shelley-smaller, firmer, with a dusting of freckles.
"I don't know," she said. "I feel too good to think about it right now. All I know is that I want to be safe again."
"People are going to start looking for Lisa Traeger in a little while, and I don't figure you want to be found."
"No." She leaned forward again, propped her chin on her knee. "I can pay you back your twenty grand. I've got enough with me."
"You don't have to. It wasn't my money anyway."
"You steal it or something?"
"Yes." Looking at her. "That's exactly what I did."
"Anyone get hurt?"
"Lots of anyones."
She frowned at him. "You're not making me feel safe anymore."
He shook his head. "I've never been what you'd call safe, Shelley."
She signed. Carefully her eyes queried his. "I know how to be safe if I have to."
"Yes?"
"I take the jumpers up on their offer. And I do the jump again and again, until I'm rich beyond my wildest dreams of avarice. And then I get jumped into a body more my own age-you know this Traeger body is all of thirty-eight?-and I live happily ever after in the Bahamas or wherever it is that retired jumpers go."
He looked at her. "I think you should quit while you're ahead. You don't want anything more to do with those people."
"I've lost twenty years. This body is going to be wanted by the police. And you say I'm ahead?"
"You're ahead of where you were a week ago. I'd settle for that."
"Twenty years." He saw tears in her eyes. "I've lost damn near twenty years. I don't want to be thirty-eight."
"Shelley." He reached out, took her hand. "Bad things are going to start happening to those people."
"Bad things. Meaning you."
"Me and about two hundred million other people. They can't keep this up. Not all those impersonations. Not people like Tachyon or Nelson Dixon or Constance Loeffler."
"Connie Loeffler?" Shelley sniffled, then shook her head. "She isn't being ridden."
"Then what does she have to do with all this?"
"They did jump her, yes. Put her in a joker body, one of the really disgusting ones, for a few hours. That was all it took." She shrugged. "She was a pretty young woman, okay? A pretty young woman with money, like I used to be. She jumped-heh, sorry-she jumped at the deal they offered. She pays fifty grand a month protection and allows them use of some of her cars and facilities. And she's living in L.A. now, to keep away from them, but that won't keep them away if they want her. The only way to keep safe from these people is to do what they want."
"That's not safe," Shad said. "It's as safe as I'm going to get."
"Listen," Shad said. "I can make you disappear. I can get you new ID, a place to live, whatever it takes.. ."
"And I put my new money in a trust fund, right? And then someone in the trust department gets jumped, and-"
"It doesn't have to be New York."
"There are more jumpers all the time, right? It's a mutant wild card-like what that carrier spread a few years ago, only slower. In another few years there won't be anyplace safe. The only way to keep safe is to keep on their good side."
A melancholy warning bell tolled slowly in Shad's heart. "I told you once," Shad said. "I told you bad things would start to happen. You didn't listen then."
"What about my missing years? How do I get them back?" Her voice was a wail.
"Think of the years you've got left. Make those the important ones."
"Shit! Shit!" She turned away and beat a pillow with her fist.
He reached for her, tried to stroke her shoulders and back. "You're ahead of the game. You've got lots of options."
"I was young!"
She clutched a pillow to her. Tears spilled from her eyes, and Shad's nerves twisted. "You were a joker," he said. "You're not anymore."
"I want to be safe."
"There isn't anyplace safe. The Rox least of all."
A vision of cool green fields passed before his mind. Shad held her till she stopped trembling. Then she jumped up and went to the bathroom to find some tissues. A few minutes later, she was back, red-faced and red-eyed, and began to pick up her clothing.
"I should think about getting out of here," she said. "I can hide you."
She frowned, considered,