The end of everything heralded itself as a metallic hum near Montoya's left ear.

He kept his eyes on the stairs under his feet and marched upward -- one short, brown-skinned, gray-haired, slightly overweight man in a crowd of workers at the end of their munitions factory shift.

No need to turn around and look. The hum had to come from a one-eye: a lead-colored object, about the size of a human torso, with a single staring camera eye and a bristling, spiky penumbra of antennae. It was gliding behind Montoya's head, intercepting and reading his thoughts.

Montoya knew his only chance for survival was to keep from thinking about...

The small case rested lightly in his hand. He ignored it, shut his eyes to it, hummed a tuneless tune to forget about it.

What the case held was of no monetary worth yet was valuable beyond reckoning. To possess it here, on the planet of Rampart, was a crime punishable by death.

Montoya's anxiety made him short of breath. His legs felt rubbery as he trudged. The one-eye hummed behind him like a giant chrome mosquito.

He was near the top of the stairs. He could see cold light from the sun, rho Ophiuchi, slanting through the dusty panes of the factory's outer wall, silhouetting the vacant-eyed men and women who waited in line at the timeclock.

Montoya took sanctuary in the thought of his wife by enfolding himself in her smooth brown arms, replaying the last time they had made love. He sought the most vivid, tactile moments. He involved his entire mind and body, trying to confuse the one-eye hovering behind him.

In spite of his efforts, fugitive thoughts that lurked in the shadows of his mind tried to interrupt the imagined scene.

He heard the one-eye come closer.

He switched his thoughts to the sound and movement around him, the clang and hum of the machines, the tired clunk-steps of the workers above and below him on the stairs, industrious but lost little people like...

In the right temporal lobe of Montoya's brain, an evanescent web of electrochemical impulses danced for a scant second, expending only a millionth of a volt, as a certain image formed in his mind.

It was an image of the very thing in his case. An entire society of tiny humans, scuttling around in there, waiting for a very large revelation.

The thought died away, but Montoya knew the one-eye must have picked it up. It swung from behind his head, hummed to a position in front of his face, and stopped. Montoya was forced to halt his steps at the top of the stairs to avoid collision. The workers below him had to halt as well. A pool of silence widened around him as he looked directly into the camera lens and antennae of the one-eye.

Two broad-shouldered figures, their white uniforms bearing the blue Cephalic Security logo, walked with smartly clicking steps as they threaded their way along the upper floor to the top of the stairs, where they confronted Montoya.

Montoya would not look at them. He didn't want to indulge himself in contempt now. There had to be something better to do as one's last act.

They were saying something to him about arrest, clamping handcuffs on him.

One of the CS men pulled at the case in Montoya's hand. Montoya let it slip out. They guided him along the wall to a cage-like elevator. Their one-eye floated along behind Montoya's head. He saw the service-issue radiation guns the CS men carried on their belts. That might be a better way to go, he supposed, than what they had planned for him.

As the lift ascended toward the helipad on the roof, Montoya stared at the grating under his feet. He allowed himself to be overcome with sadness by thinking about the tragic course of his life, and rubbing salt on it. He smote himself for the momentary lapse -- just one stray thought! -- that would mean the arrest of friends and family. He started to weep.

The lift emerged onto the roof. A strong hand gripped him and pushed him out onto the tarmac. The white tilt-rotor hovercraft ahead of them started its engines and chopped at the air.

Montoya let the sobs shudder through him, tears streaming down his face. The CS men led him within a few meters of the roof's edge as they approached the door of the hovercraft.

Suddenly Montoya flailed out with his cuffed hands, causing the surprised CS man to lose his grip. With all his strength Montoya grabbed at his case, ripping it out of the other CS man's hands. He whirled toward the edge of the roof and flicked the catch on the case. Both CS men scrambled to hold on to him and the case, but Montoya was too fast. With a triumphant yell he flung the case outward; it opened as it fell toward the ground far below. Yellowed old pages fluttered free and scattered in widening gyres on the wind.

The CS men regained control of Montoya. The small man let them push him into the hovercraft. As it took off he leaned toward the window and saw the pages being borne in all directions.

He smiled to himself. His trick, his sadness, had worked, a sop for the one-eye so the device wouldn't guess at his spontaneous last act and kill him to prevent it. He kept his eyes on the pages as they grew smaller and smaller.

For several minutes after the hovercraft took Montoya away, the pages from his case floated and drifted down, coming to rest on the streets of the metropolis called Verity.

A hundred CS officers and special agents converged on the area where the pages had fallen. They all wore protective helmets with electronic visors that turned printed words into gibberish for their eyes.

They quickly set up roadblocks and evacuated residents, then set to work finding the scattered pages and burning them in portable mini-incinerators.

When the clean-up was complete, the streets were reopened. But one-eyes remained; they floated among the pedestrians and traffic, their antennae hunting for the mind-echoes of the pages that were now ash.

One page had floated far; it alone had escaped the CS and their incinerators. It lay nakedly on a small patch of grass behind an elementary school.

At noon recess, a red-haired girl from the third-grade class chased a ball and came upon the page. She had never seen such an old and discolored piece of paper. She picked it up, and with big green inquisitive eyes, looked at an illustration on the page.

It appeared to be of a man tied onto a kind of sled and surrounded by a busy swarm of people no bigger than his finger.

She read the words on the page.

About four Hours after we began our Journey, I awaked by a very ridiculous Accident; for the Carriage being stopt awhile to adjust something that was out of Order, two or three of the young Natives had the Curiosity to see how I looked when I was asleep; they climbed up into the Engine, and advancing very softly to my Face, one of them, an Officer in the Guards, put the sharp End of His Half-Pike a good way up into my left Nostril, which tickled my Nose like a Straw, and made me sneeze violently...

The green-eyed girl laughed.

She looked at the top of the page and saw a title line:

"GULLIVER'S TRAVELS -- A VOYAGE TO LILLIPUT."

She sensed that the page was something forbidden, something the grown-ups told you to never ever touch or look at, or you'd get a disease. But looking at it now she found that she didn't believe all that. They always told you not to do the things that were fun. Besides, how could you catch a disease from a piece of paper?

Her fascination with the page overcame her caution. She hid the page in her dress, hoping to take it home that day.