"You're going to let me leave? Just like that?" I said.

"Of course." She smiled again. "You're free to go wherever you wish, to your aunt's or back to Chicago. I was glad to get your portrait. In return, I'll send you one of the prints. And would you like one of your aunt's? Actually, when she came in to have her picture taken it was for the purpose of sending it to you. She was my first customer. I've taken a special liking to her and given her several pictures."

"Yes," I said. "I would like one of Aunt Matilda."

When I emerged from the shop I discovered to my surprise that the train was just pulling into the depot. An urge to get far away from Sumac possessed me. I trotted to the cafe to get my bag, and when the train pulled out I was on it.

There's little more to tell. In Chicago once again, I spent a most exasperating two days trying to inform the F.B.I., the police, or anyone who would listen to me. My fingers couldn't dial the correct phone number, and at the crucial moment each time I grew tongue-tied. My last attempt was a letter to the F.B.I., which I couldn't remember to mail, and when I finally did remember I couldn't find it.

Then the express package from Sumac came. With fingers that visibly trembled I took out the two framed pictures, one of Aunt Matilda in the process of dusting the front room. All of her pictures that she had hidden from me were back in their places on the walls. While I watched her move about, she went into the sewing room, and there I saw a picture on the wall that looked familiar.

It was of me, an opened express package at my feet, a framed picture held in my hands, and I was staring at it intently.

In the picture I was holding, Aunt Matilda looked in my direction and waved, smiling in the prim way she smiles when she is contented. I understood. She had me with her now.

I laid the picture down carefully, and took the second one out of the box.

It was not a picture at all, it was a mirror!

It couldn't be anything except a mirror. And yet, suddenly, I realized it wasn't. The uncanny feeling came over me that I had transposed into the mirror and was looking out at myself. Even as I got that feeling I shifted and was outside the mirror looking at my image.

I found that I could be in either place by a sort of mental shift, something like staring at one of the geometrical optical illusions you can find in any psychology textbook in the chapter on illusions, and seeing it become something else.

It was strange at first, then it became fun, and now, as I write this, it is a normal thing. My portrait is where it should be—on the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, where the mirror used to be.

But I can transpose to any of the copies of my portrait, anywhere. To Aunt Matilda's sewing room, or to the museum, or to Lana's private collection. The only thing is, it's almost impossible to tell when I shift, or where I shift to. It just seems to happen.

The reason for that is that my surroundings, no matter in what direction I look, are exactly identical with my real surroundings. My physical surroundings are duplicated exactly in all my portraits, just as Aunt Matilda's are in the portrait of her that hangs on my study wall. She is the invariant of each of her iconic Mantrams and her surroundings are the variables that enter and leave the screen. I am the invariant in my own portraits, wherever they are. So, except for the slight twist in my mind that takes place when I shift, that I have learned to recognize from practice in front of my "mirror" each morning when I shave, and except for the portrait of Aunt Matilda, I would never be able to suspect what happens.

If Lana had taken my picture without my knowing it and I had never seen one of her collection of portraits, nor ever heard of an iconic Mantram, I would have absolutely nothing to go on to suspect the truth that I know. Except for one thing.

I don't quite know how to explain it, except that I must actually