No one asked me any questions as I entered the town. I just walked through the gates and wandered the streets and got a haircut and cleaned my gun and bought some new clothes and stopped on a streetcorner to ask a red-haired man if he knew the guy I was looking for. "Sure, I know him--just go up a couple of blocks and check at Elsie's. But I wouldn't mess with him if I were you. He's a pretty tough guy, and he really knows what's what."

Elsie told me more about him. "He had a pretty happy childhood--a basically good kid. It was just one thing, one little thing, that stuck in his head, made him what he is today, but you wouldn't know it. It was like this: One day he was walking down the street on his way home. He was wearing a red-and-blue-striped Health-Tex t-shirt, Fruit of the Loom underwear, Lee's jeans, generic white tube socks, and Trax tennis shoes--K mart standard children's attire. He saw a leaf on the ground, and stopped to look at the branching structure of its veins. At that exact important moment he was ten years, five months, twelve days, four hours, six minutes and twenty-seven seconds old. That was one of the only two events that have ever really mattered in his life. He went on to become a good student in high school and college--even got into Who's Who."

I walked up the stairs to his room, cautiously. I pushed open the door, slowly. I drew out my weapon, silently. I kicked open the door the rest of the way and saw him in the center of the room and pointed my gun at him and said "Here I am" and looked him right in the eyes. He didn't even blink. He just kept on eating his It's-It.

When he was finished, he said, "The other important event occurred while I was flying over a large ice floe. I was wearing a pink fouillard tie, a white Arrow button-down shirt, a charcoal-gray pinstripe two-piece suit, black Gold-Toe socks, and black Florsheim wing-tip shoes--a control outfit, a costume of power. I smoothed back my hair and looked out the window to look at the branching structure of a crack in the ice. I was twenty-seven years, eight months, twenty-one days, eight hours, ten minutes, and three seconds old." Then he seemed to recognize me. He stuttered, "You're--you--"

I smiled. He started to back away. He said, "Wait!", nervously. He said, "Stop!", pleadingly. He said, "Don't you want to know why these two events were the only important things that have ever happened to me?", desperately. I said "No" and fired and threw his body through the window into the river and no one asked me any questions as I left the town. I never went back, and that's that.