FOUR FOR TOMORROW

Copyright ©, 1967, by Roger Zeiazny
An Ace Book. All Rights Reserved

COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

The Furies, copyright ©, 1965, by Ziff-Davis Publishing
Co.

The Graveyard Heart, copyright ©, 1964, by Ziff-Davis
Publishing Co.

The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, copy-
right ©, 1965, by Mercury Press, Inc.

A Rose for Ecclesiastes, copyright ©, 1963, by Mercury
Press, Inc.

AUTHOR'S DEDICATION:

To My Mother
First Ace printing: March, 1967
Second Ace printing: February, 1973
Printed in U.SA.

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION                        7

THE FURIES                          14
THE GRAVEYARD HEART                59

THE DOORS OF HIS FACE,
THE LAMPS OF HIS MOUTH            130

A ROSE FOR ECCLESIASTES              171




INTRODUCTION
by Theodore Sturgeon

There has been nothing like Zeiazny in the science fic-
tion field since—

Thus began the first draft of this introduction and there
it stayed for about 48 hours while I maundered and
chuntered on ways to finish that sentence with justice and
precision. The only possible way to do it is to knock off
the last word. And even then it misses the truth, for the
term "science fiction" gives the comment a kind of club
membership which trims verity. So much which is pub-
lished as science fiction is nothing of the kind. And more
and more, science fiction is produced and not called
science fiction (and paid for heartily—i.e. On the Beach,
Dr. Strangelove, Seven Days in May, 1984, etc. ect. et
al—which makes the pro science fiction writers candi-
dates for persecution mania). Suffice it for now to say
that you'll be hard put to it to find a writer like Zeiazny
anywhere.

Genuine prose-poets we have seen, but quite often
they fail when the measures of pace and structure are
applied. And we have certainly had truly great story-
tellers, whose narrative architecture is solidly based,
soundly built, and well braced clear to tower-tip; but

more often than not, this is done completely with a
homogenized, nuts-and-bolts kind of prose. And there
has been a regrettably small handful of what I call "peo-
ple experts"—those especially gifted to create memor-
able characters, something more than real ones well-
photographed . . ...living ones who change, as all living
things change, not only during the reading, but in the
memory as the reader himself lives and changes and
becomes capable of bringing more of himself to that
which the writer has brought him. But there again, "peo-
ple experts" have a tendency to turn their rare gift into a
preoccupation (and create small ardent cliques who
tend to the same thing) and skimp on matters of struc-
ture and content. An apt analogy would be a play su-
perbly cast and skilfully mounted, for which somebody
had forgotten to supply a script.

And if you think I am about to say that Zeiazny de-
livers all these treasures and avoids all these oversights,
that he has full measures of substance and structure,
means and ends, texture, cadence and pace, you are
absolutely right.

Three factors in Zeiazny's work call for isolation and
examination; and the very cold-bloodedness of such a
declamation demands amendment. Let me revise it to
two and a pointing finger, a vague and inarticulate
wave toward something Out (or Up, or In) There
which can be analyzed about as effectively as the in-
ternal effect of watching the color-shift on the skin of a
bubble or that silent explosion somewhere inside the
midriff which is one of the recognitions of love.

First, Zeiazny's stories are fabulous. I use this word in
a special and absolutely accurate sense. Aesop did not,
and did not intend to, convey a factual account of an
improbably vegetarian fox equipped with speech and
with human value judgments concerning a bunch of un-
reachable grapes. He was saying something else and

something larger than what he said. And it has come to
me over the years that the greatness of literature and
the importance of literary entities (Captain Ahab, Billy
Budd, Hamlet, Job, Uriah Heep) really lies in this fabu-
lous quality. One may ponderously call them Jungian
archetypes, but one recognizes them, and/or their situ-
ational predicaments, in one's own daily contacts with
this landlord, that employer, and one's dearly beloved.
A fable says more than it says, is bigger than its own
parameters. Zeiazny always says more than he says; all
of his yams have applications, illuminate truths, donate
to the reader tools (and sometimes weapons) with
which he was not equipped before, and for which he can
find daily uses, quite outside the limits of his story.

Second, there is, as one reads more and more of this
extraordinary writer's work, a growing sense of excite-
ment, a gradual recognition of something which (in me,
anyway) engenders an increasing awe. It conies,
strangely enough, not from any of his many excellences,
but from his flaws. For he has flaws—plenty of them.
One feels at times that a few (a very few, I hasten to
add) of his more vivid turns of phrase would benefit by
an application of Dulcote (an artists' material, a trans-
parent spray which uniformly pulls down brightness and
gloss where applied). Not because they aren't beautiful
—because most of them are, God knows—but because
even so deft a wordsmith as Zeiazny can forget from
time to time that such a creation can keep a reader from
his speedy progress from here to there, and that his
furniture should be placed out of the traffic pattern. It
I bang my shin on a coffee table it becomes a little be-
side the point that it is the most exquisitely crafted arti-
fact this side of the Sun King. Especially since it was the
Author himself who put me in a dead run. And there is the
matter of exotic references—the injection of one of those
absolutely precise and therefore untranslatable German

philosophic terms, or a citation from classical mythology.
This is a difficult thing to criticize without being mis-
understood. A really good writer has the right, if not the
duty, of arrogance, and should feel free to say anythng
he damn pleases in any way he likes. On the other hand,
writing, like elections, copulation, sonatas, or a punch in
the mouth, is communication, an absolute necessity to
the very existence of human beings in every area, con-
crete or abstract, which may be denned as that per-
formed by human beings which evokes response in kind
from other human beings. Communication is a double-
ended, transmitter-receiver phenomenon or it doesn't
exist. And if it evokes a response not in kind ("what the
hell does that mean?" instead of "well of course!") it
exists but it is crippled. There is a fine line, and hazy,
between following the use of an exotic intrusion with a
definition, which can be damned insulting to a reader
who does understand it, and throwing him something
knobby and hard to hold without warning or subsequent
explanation. Yes, a reader should do part of the work;

the more he does the more he participates, and the more
he is led to participate the better the story (and writer).
On the other hand, he shouldn't be stopped, thrown out
of the current in which the author has placed him, by
such menaces to navigation, however apt. It comes down
to an awareness of who's listening—to whom the com-
munication is addressed—and what he deserves. He de-
serves a great deal, because he's at the other end of
something which could not exist without him. Those of
him (for he is many) who need pampering do not de-
serve it. Those who can take anything a really good
author can throw at him are an author's joy—but always
a small part of that multifaceted and very human entity.
The Reader. There is always, for a resourceful writer, a
way to maximize communication by means acceptable
to a writer's arrogance; all he has to do is to think of it.

10

In a writer less resourceful than Zeiazny we readily
forgive his inability to think of it, but this writer doesn't
have that excuse. Which brings this comment down to its
point: Roger Zeiazny is a writer of such merit that one
judges him by higher standards than those one uses on
others—a cross he will bear for all his writing life. Hap-
pily, the shoulders that bear it are demonstrably well
muscled.

The larger point, derived from this consideration of
flaws, has to do with the kind of flaws they are. For in
none of the things I have mentioned, nor in the ones I
could, is a single one stemming from inability. Every
single one is the product of growth, expansion, trial,
passage, flux. There is nothing so frightening to be said
about a writer (although some writers are not frightened
by it) as the laudatory comment "finish." A perfectly
faceted diamond is beautiful to behold, and is by its very
existence proof of high skill and hard work; but it has
nowhere to go, intrinsically, from there. A great tree
reaches its ultimate "finish" when it is killed; and it may
then become toothpicks or temples, but as a tree it is
dead and gone. Only that which is in constant, day-by-
day, cell-by-cell change is alive. And it is in this area
that I have detected and increasingly feel a sense of awe
in Zeiazny's work, for he is young and already a giant;

he has the habit of hard work and of learning, and shows
no slightest sign of slowing down or of being diverted.
I do not know him personally, but if I did, if I ever do, I
would want more than anything else to convey to him
the fact that he can and has evoked this awe—that the
curve he has drawn with his early work can be extended
into true greatness, and that if he follows his star as a
writer all other things will come to him. If ever anything
seems more important to him—he must know that it isn't
If ever anything diverts him from writing, he must know
to the marrow that whatever it is or appears to be, it is a

n

lesser thing than his gift. He gives no evidence to date
that he has stopped growing or that he ever will.
Do you know how rare this is?

The four stories in this book, listed here by my own in-
tensely personal (and therefore, to you, perhaps fallible)
system of ascending excellence, are all of that wondrous
species which makes me envy anyone who has not read
them and is about to.

The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth is all
size and speed, which would be a good story if told
purely in a write-what-happens, this-is-the-plot style, and
which would also be a good story if it confined itself to
what went on in the heads and in the hearts of its peo-
ple, and which is a good story on both counts.

The Furies is a tour de force, the easy accomplishment
of what most writers would consider impossible, and a
few very good ones insuperably difficult. Seemingly with
the back of his hand, he has created milieu, characters
and a narrative goal as far out as anyone need go; he
makes you believe it all the way, and walks off breathing
easily leaving you gasping with a fable in your hands.

The Graveyard Heart is in that wonderful category
which is, probably, science fiction's greatest gift to lit-
erature and to human beings: the "feedback" story, the
"if this goes on" story; an extension of some facet of the
current scene which carries you out and away to times
and places you've never imagined because you can't;

and when it's finished, you turn about and look at the
thing he extended for you, in its here-and-now reality,
sharing this very day and planet with you; and you know
he's told you something, given you something you didn't
have before, and that you will never look at this aspect
of your world with quite the same eyes again.

A Rose for Ecclesiastes is one of the most important
stories I have ever read—perhaps I should say it is one

12

of the most memorable experiences I have ever had. It
happens (well, I told you this was an intensely personal
assignment of ranki) that this particular fable, with all
its truly astonishing twists and turns, up to and most
painfully including its wrenching denouement, is an
agonizing analogy of my own experience; and this astro-
nomically unlikely happenstance may well make it what
it is to me and may not reach you quite as poignantly. If
it does it will chop you up into dog meat. But as objec-
tive as I can be, which isn't very, I still feel safe in stat-
ing that it is one of the most beautiful written, skillfully
composed and passionately expressed works of art to
appear anywhere, ever.

Briefly, let me commend to your attention two novels
by Roger Zeiazny, This Immortal and The Dream
Master,9 and sum up everything I have said here, and
a good many things I have not said; sum up all the
thoughts and feelings I hold concerning the works of
Roger Zeiazny, past and to come; sum up what has
struck me at each of the peaks of all of his narratives,
and without fail, so far, at that regretful moment when I
have turned down the last page of any and all of them;

sum up all this in one word, which is:

Grateful.

Theodore Sturgeon
Sherman Oaks, California.
*Both ACE Books.

13

THE FURIES

As an afterthought, -Nature sometimes tosses a bone to
those it maims and casts aside. Often, it is in the form of
a skill, usually useless, or the curse of intelligence.

When Sandor Sandor was four years old he could name
all the one hundred forty-nine inhabited worlds in the
galaxy. When he was five he could name the principal
land masses of each planet and chalk them in, roughly,
on blank globes. By the time he was seven years old he
knew all the provinces, states, countries and major cities
of all the main land masses on all one hundred forty-nine
inhabited worlds in the galaxy. He read Landography,
History, Landology and popular travel guides during
most of his waking time; and he studied maps and travel
tapes. There was a camera behind his eyes, or so it
seemed, because by the time he was ten years old there
was no city in the galaxy that anyone could name about
which Sandor Sandor did not know something.

And he continued.

Places fascinated him. He built a library of street
guides, road maps. He studied architectural styles and
principal industries, and racial types, native life forms,
local flora, landmarks, hotels, restaurants, airports and
seaports and spaceports, styles of clothing and personal
ornamentation, climatic conditions, local arts and crafts,

14

dietary habits, sports, religions, social institutions, cus-
toms.

When he took his doctorate in Landography at the age
of fourteen, his oral examinations were conducted via
closed circuit television. This is because he was afraid to
leave his home—having done so only three times before
in his life and having met with fresh trauma on each
occasion. And this is because on all one hundred forty-
nine inhabited worlds in the galaxy there was no remedy
for a certain degenerative muscular disease. This disease
made it impossible for Sandor to manipulate even the
finest prosthetic devices for more than a few minutes
without suffering fatigue and great pain; and to go out-
side he required three such devices—two legs and a right
arm—to substitute for those which he had missed out on
receiving somewhere along the line before birth.

Rather than suffer this pain, or the pain of meeting per-
sons other than his Aunt Faye or his nurse, Miss Barbara,
he took his oral examinations via closed circuit television.

The University of Brill, Dombeck, was located on the
other side of that small planet from Sander's home, else
the professors would have come to see him, because they
respected him considerably. His 855-page dissertation,
"Some Notes Toward a Gravitational Matrix Theory
Governing the Formation of Similar Land Masses on
Dissimilar Planetary Bodies," had drawn attention from
Interstel University on Earth itself. Sandor Sandor, of
course, would never .see the Earth. His muscles could
only sustain the gravitation of smaller planets, such as
Dombeck.

And it happened that the Interstel Government, which
monitors everything, had listened in on Sander's oral ex-
aminations and his defense of his dissertation.

Associate Professor Baines was one of Sander's very
few friends. They had even met several times in person,
in Sandor's library, because Baines often said he'd

15

wanted to borrow certain books and then came and spent
the afternoon. When the examinations were concluded,
Associate Professor Baines stayed on the circuit for sev-
eral minutes, talking with Sandor. It was during this
time that Baines made casual reference to an almost
useless (academically, that is) talent of Sander's.

At the mention of it, the government man's ears had
pricked forward (he was a Rigellian). He was anxious
for a promotion and he recalled an obscure memo. . . .

Associate Professor Baines had mentioned the fact that
Sandor Sandor had once studied a series of thirty ran-
dom photos from all over the civilized galaxy, and that
the significant data from these same photos had also
been fed into the Department's L-L computer. Sandor
had named the correct planet in each case, the land mass
in 29, the county or territory in twenty-six, and he had
correctly set the location itself within fifty square miles
in twenty-three instances. The L-L comp had named the
correct planet for twenty-seven.

It was not a labor of love for the computer.

So it became apparent that Sandor Sandor knew just
about every damn street in the galaxy.

Ten years later he knew them all.

But three years later the Rigellian quit his job, dis-
gusted, and went to work in private industry, where the
pay was better and promotions more frequent. His
memo, and the tape, had been filed, however. . . .

Benedick Benedict was born and grew up on the wa-
tery world of Kjum, and his was an infallible power for
making enemies of everyone he met.

The reason why is that while some men's highest plea-
sure is drink, and others are given to gluttony, and still
others are slothful, or lechery is their chief delight, or
F?innn-doing, Benedick's was gossip—he was a loud-
mouth.

16

Gossip was his meat and his drink, his sex and his
religion. Shaking hands with him was a mistake, often a
catastrophic one. For, as he clung to your hand, pump-
ing it and smiling, his eyes would suddenly grow moist
and the tears would dribble down his fat cheeks.

He wasn't sad when this happened. Far from it. It was
a somatic conversion from his paranorm reaction.

He was seeing your past life.

He was selective, too; he only saw what he looked for.
And he looked for scandal and hate, and what is often
worse, love; he looked for lawbrealdng and unrest, for
memories of discomfort, pain, futility, weakness. He saw
everything a man wanted to forget, and he talked about
it.

If you are lucky he won't tell you of your own. If you
have ever met someone else whom he has also met in
this manner, and if this fact shows, he will begin talking
of that person. He will tell you of that man's or woman's
life because he appreciates this form of social reaction
even more than your outrage at yourself. And his eyes
and voice and hand will hold you, like the clutch of the
Ancient Mariner, in a sort of half dream-state; and you
will hear him out and you will be shocked beneath your
paralysis.

Then he will go away and tell others about you.

Such a man was Benedick Benedict. He was probably
unaware how much he was hated, because this reaction
never came until later, after he had said "Good day," de-
parted, and been gone for several hours. He left his hear-
ers with a just-raped feeling—and later fear, shame, or
disgust forced them to suppress the occurrence and to
try to forget him. Or else they hated him quietly, be-
cause he was dangerous. That is to say, he had powerful
friends.

He was an extremely social animal: he loved atten-
tion; he wanted to be admired; he craved audiences.

17

He could always find an audience too, somewhere. He
knew so many secrets that he was tolerated in important
places in return for the hearing. And he was wealthy too,
but more of that in a moment.

As time went on, it became harder and harder for him
to meet new people. His reputation spread in geometric
proportion to his talking, and even those who would hear
him preferred to sit on the far side of the room, drink
enough alcohol to partly deaden memories of themselves,
and to be seated near a door.

The reason for his wealth is because his power ex-
tended to inanimate objects as well. Minerals were rare
on Kjum, the watery world. If anyone brought him a
sample he could hold it and weep and tell them where
to dig to hit the main lode.

From one fish caught in the vast seas of Kjum, he
could chart the course of a school of fish.

Weeping, he could touch a native rad-pearl necklace
and divine the location of the native's rad-pearl bed.

Local insurance associations and loan companies kept
Benedict Files—the pen a man had used to sign his con-
tract, his snubbed-out cigarette butt, a plastex hanky
with which he had mopped his brow, an object left in
security, the remains of a biopsy or blood test—so that
Benedick could use his power against those who renege
on these companies and flee, on those who break their
laws.

He did not revel in his power either. He simply en-
joyed it. For he was one of the nineteen known para-
norms in the one hundred forty-nine inhabited worlds in
the galaxy, and he knew no other way.

Also, he occasionally assisted civil authorities, if he
thought their cause a just one. If he did not, he suddenly
lost his power until the need for it vanished. This didn't
happen too often though, for an humanitarian was Bene-
dick Benedict, and well-paid, because he was labora-

18

tory-tested and clinically-proven. He could psychomet-
rize. He could pick up thought-patterns originating out-
side his own skull. . . .

Lynx Links looked like a beachball with a beard, a fat
patriarch with an eyepatch, a man who loved good food
and drink, simple clothing, and the company of simple
people; he was a man who smiled often and whose voice
was soft and melodic.

In his earlier years he had chalked up the most im-
pressive kill-record of any agent ever employed by In-
terstel Central Intelligence. Forty-eight men and seven-
teen malicious alien life-forms had the Lynx dispatched
during his fifty-year tenure as a field agent. He was one
of the three men in the galaxy to have lived through
half a century's employment with ICI. He lived com-
fortably on his government pension despite three wives
and a horde of grandchildren; he was recalled occasion-
ally as a consultant; and he did some part-time mission-
ary work on the side. He believed that all life was one
and that all men were brothers, and that love rather
than hate or fear should rule the affairs of men. He had
even killed with love, he often remarked at Tranquility
Session, respecting and revering the person and, the
spirit of the man who had been marked for death.

This is the story of how he came to be summoned
back from Hosanna, the World of the Great and Glorious
Flame of the Divine Life, and was joined with Sandor
Sandor and Benedick Benedict in the hunt for Victor
Corgo, the man without a heart.

Victor Corgo was captain of the Wallaby. Victor Corgo
was Head Astrogator, First Mate, and Chief Engineer
of the Wallaby. Victor Corgo was the Wallaby.

One time the Wallaby was a proud Guardship, an
ebony toadstool studded with the jewel-like warts of

19

fast-phrase projectors. One time the Wallaby slapped
proud about the frontier worlds of Interstel, meting out
the unique justice of the Uniform Galactic Code—in
those places where there was no other law. One time the
proud Wallaby, under the command of Captain Victor
Corgo of the Guard, had ranged deep space and become
a legend under legendary skies.

A terror to brigands and ugly aliens, a threat to Code-
breakers, and a thorn in the sides of evildoers every-
where, Corgo and his shimmering fungus (which could
bum an entire continent under water level within a sin-
gle day) were the pride of the Guard, the best of the
best, the cream that had been skimmed from all the rest.

Unfortunately, Corgo sold out.

He became a heeL      ,

... A traitor.

A hero gone bad . . .

After forty-five years with the Guard, his pension but
half a decade away, he lost his entire crew in an ill-
timed raid upon a pirate stronghold on the planet Kilsh,
which might have become the hundred-fiftieth inhabited
world of Interstel.

Crawling, barely alive, he had made his way half
across the great snowfield of Brild, on the main land
mass of Kilsh. At the fortuitous moment. Death making
its traditional noises of approach, he was snatched from
out of its traffic lane, so to speak, by the Drillen, a
nomadic tribe of ugly and intelligent quadrapeds, who
took him to their camp and healed his wounds, fed him,
and gave him warmth. Later, with the cooperation of the
Drillen, he recovered the Wallaby and all its arms and
armaments, from where it had burnt its way to a hun-
dred feet beneath the ice.

Crewless, he trained the Drillen.

With the Drillen and the Wallaby he attacked the
pirates.

20

He won.

But he did not stop with that.

No.

When he learned that the Drillen had been marked for
death under the Uniform Code he sold out his own spe-
cies. The Drillen had refused relocation to a decent
Reservation World. They had elected to continue occu-
pancy of what was to become the hundred-fiftieth in-
habited world in the galaxy (that is to say, in Interstel).

Therefore, the destruct-order had been given.

Captain Corgo protested, was declared out of order.

Captain Corgo threatened, was threatened in return.

Captain Corgo fought, was beaten, died, was resur-
rected, escaped restraint, became an outlaw.

He took the Wallaby with him. The Happy Wallaby,
it had been called in the proud days. Now, it was just
the Wallaby.

• As the tractor beams had seized it, as the vibrations
penetrated its ebony hull and tore at his flesh, Corgo had
called his six Drillen to him, stroked the fur of Mala,
his favorite, opened his mouth to speak, and died just
as the words and the tears began.

"I am sorry . . ." he had said.

They gave him a new heart, though. His old one had
fibrillated itself to pieces and could not be repaired. They
put the old one in a jar and gave him a shiny, anti-
septic egg of throbbing metal, which expanded and con-
tracted at varying intervals, dependent upon what the
seed-sized computers they had planted within him told
of his breathing and his blood sugar and the output of
his various glands. The seeds and the egg contained his
life.

When they were assured that this was true and that it
would continue, they advised him of the proceedings of
courts-martial.

He did not wait, however, for due process. Breaking

21

his parole as an officer, he escaped the Guard Post, talc-
ing with him Mala, the only remaining Drillen in the
galaxy. Her five fellows had not survived scientific in-
quiry as to the nature of their internal structures. The
rest of the race, of course, had refused relocation.

Then did the man without a heart make war upon
mankind.

Raping a planet involves considerable expense. Enor-
mous blasters and slicers and sluicers and refiners are re-
quired to reduce a world back almost to a state of primal
chaos, and then to extract from it its essential (i.e., com-
mercially viable) ingredients. The history books may tell
you of strip-mining on the mother planet, back in ancient
times. Well, the crude processes employed then were
similar in emphasis and results, but the operations were
considerably smaller in size.

Visualize a hundred miles of Grand Canyon appearing
overnight; visualize the reversal of thousands of Land-
ological millenia in the twinkling of an eye; consider all
of the Ice Ages of the Earth, and compress them into a
single season. This will give you a rough idea as to time
and effect.

Now picture the imported labor—the men who drill
and blast and slice and sluice for the great mining com-
bines: Not uneducated, these men; willing to take a big
risk, certainly though, these men—maybe only for one
year, because of the high pay; or maybe they're career-
ists, because of the high pay—these men, who hit three
worlds in a year's time, who descend upon these worlds
in ships full of city, in space-trailer mining camps, out of
the sky; coming, these men, from all over the inhabited
galaxy, bringing with them the power of the tool and the
opposed thumb, bearing upon their brows the mark of
the Solar Phoenix and in their eyes the cold of the spaces
they have crossed over, they know what to do to make

22

the domes of atoms rise before them and to call down
the tomado-probosci of suckvortices from the freighters
on the other side of the sky; and they do it thoroughly
and efficiently, and not without style, tradition, folksongs,
and laughter—for they are the sweat-crews, working
against time (which is money), to gain tonnage (which
is money), and to beat their competitors to market
(which is important, inasmuch as one worldsworth in-
fluences future sales for many months); these men, who
bear in one hand the flame and in the other the whirl-
wind, who come down with their families and all their
possessions, erect temporary metropoli, work their magic
act, and go—after the vanishing trick has been com-
pleted.

Now that you've an idea as to what happens and who
is present at the scene, here's the rub:

Raping a planet involves considerable expense.

The profits are more than commensurate, do not mis-
understand. It is just that they could be even greater....

How?

Well— For one thing, the heavy machinery involved is
quite replaceable, in the main. That is, the machinery
which is housed within the migrant metropoli.

Moving it is expensive. Not moving it isn't. For it is
actually cheaper, in terms of material and labor, to man-
ufacture new units than it is to fast-phase the old ones
more than an average of 2.6 times.

Mining combines do not produce them (and wouldn't
really want to); the mining manufacturing combines like
to make new units as much as the mining combines like
to lose old ones.

And of course it is rented machinery, or machinery on
which the payments are still being made, to the financing
associations, because carrying payments makes it easier
to face down the Interstel Revenue Service every fiscal
year.

23

Abandoning the units would be criminal, violating
either the lessor-lessee agreement or the Interstel Com-
mercial Code.

But accidents do happen . . .

Often, too frequently to make for comfortable statis-
tics ...

Way out there on the raw frontier.

Then do the big insurance associations • investigate,
and they finally sigh and reimburse the lien-holders.

. . . And the freighters make it to market ahead of
schedule, because there is less to dismantle and march-
order and ship.

Time is saved, commitments are met in advance, a
better price is generally obtained, and a head start on
the next worldsworth is supplied in this manner.

All of which is nice.

Except for the insurance associations.

But what can happen to a transitory New York full of
heavy equipment?

Well, some call it sabotage.

. . . Some call it mass-murder.

. . . Unsanctioned war.

. . . Corgo's lightning

But it is written that it is better to bum one city than
to curse the darkness.

Corgo did not curse the darkness.

. . . Many times.

The day they came together on Dombeck, Benedick
held forth his hand, smiled, said: "Mister Sandor . . ."

As his hand was shaken, his smile reversed itself. Then
it went away from his face. He was shaking an artificial
hand.

Sandor nodded, dropped his eyes.

Benedick turned to the big man with the eyepatch.

24

". . . And you are the Lynx?"

"That is correct, my brother. You must excuse me if I
do not shake hands. It is against my religion. I believe
that life does not require reassurance as to its oneness."

"Of course," said Benedick. "I once knew a man from
Dombeck. He was a gnil smuggler, named Worten Wor-

tan—"

"He is gone to join the Great Flame," said the Lynx.

"That is to say, he is dead now. ICI apprehended him
two years ago. He passed to Flame while attempting to

escape restraint."
"Really?" said Benedick. "He was at one time a gnil

addict himself—"
"I know. I read his file in connection with another

case."

"Dombeck is full of gnil smugglers"—Sandor.

"Oh. Well, then let us talk of this man Corgo."

"Yes"—the Lynx.

"Yes"—Sandor.

"The ICI man told me that many insurance associa-
tions have lodged protests with their Interstel represen-
tatives."

"That is true"—Lynx.

"Yes"—Sandor, biting his lip. "Do you gentlemen mind

if I remove my legs?"

"Not at air—the Lynx. "We are co-workers, and infor-
mality should govern our gatherings."

"Please do," said Benedick.

Sandor leaned forward in his chair and pressed the
coupling controls. There followed two thumps from be-
neath his desk. He leaned back then and surveyed his

shelves of globes.

"Do they cause you pain?" asked Benedick.

"Yes—" Sandor.

"Were you in an accident?"

25

"Birth"-Sandor.

The Lynx raised a decanter of brownish liquid to the
light. He stared through it.

"It is a local brandy"—Sandor. "Quite good. Some-what
like the xmili of Bandia, only nonaddictive. Have some."

The Lynx did, keeping it in front of him all that eve-
ning.

"Corgo is a destroyer of property," said Benedick.

Sandor nodded.

". , . And a defrauder of insurance associations, a de-
facer of planetary bodies, a deserter from the Guard—"

"A murderer"—Sandor.

". . . And a zoophilist," finished Benedick.

"Aye"—the Lynx, smacking his lips.

"So great an offender against public tranquility is he
that he must be found."

". . . And passed back through the Flame for purifica-
tion and rebirth."

"Yes, we must locate him and kill him," said Bene-
dick.

"The two pieces of equipment . . . Are they pres-
ent?"—the Lynx.

"Yes, the phase-wave is in the next room."

". . . And?" asked Benedick.

"The other item is in the bottom drawer of this desk,
right side."

"Then why do we not begin now?"

"Yes. Why not now?"—the Lynx.

""Very well"—Sandor. "One of you will have to open
the drawer, though. It is in the brown-glass jar, to the
back."

"I'll get it," said Benedick.

A great sob escaped him after a time, as he sat there
with rows of worlds at his back, tears on his cheeks, and
Corgo's heart clutched in his hands.

26

It is cold and dim. . . ,"

"Where?"-the Lynx.

"It is a small place. A room? Cabin? Instrument panels
... A humming sound . . . Cold, and crazy angles ev-
erywhere . . . Vibration . . . Hurti"

"What is he doing?"—Sandor.

". . . Sitting, half-lying—a couch, webbed, about him.
Furry one at his side, sleeping. Twisted—angles—every-
thing—wrong. Hurt!"

"The Wallaby, in transit—Lynx.

"Where is he going?"—Sandor.

"HURT!" shouted Benedick.

Sandor dropped the heart into his lap.

He began to shiver. He wiped at his eyes with 1
backs of his hands.

"I have a headache," he announced.

"Have a drink"—Lynx.

He gulped one, sipped the second.

"Where was I?"

The Lynx raised his shoulders and let them fall.

"The Wallaby was fast-phasing somewhere, and Corgo
was in phase-sleep. It is a disturbing sensation to fast-
phase while fully conscious. Distance and duration grow
distorted. You found him at a bad time—while under
sedation and subject to continuum-impact. Perhaps to-
morrow will be better. . . ."

"I hope so."

"Yes, tomorrow"—Sandor.

"Tomorrow . . . Yes.

"There was one other thing/' he added, "a thing in his
mind . . . There was a sun where theie was no sun be-
fore."

"A bum-job?"—Lynx.

"Yes."

"A memory?"—Sandor.

"No. He is on his way to do it."

27

The Lynx stood.

"I will phase-wave ICI and advise them. They can
check which worlds are presently being mined. Have
you any ideas how soon?"

"No, I can not tell that."

"What did the globe look like? What continental con-
figurations?"—Sandor.

"None. The thought was not that specific. His mind
was drifting—mainly filled with hate."

"I'll call in now—and we'll try again. . . . ?"

"Tomorrow. I'm tired now."

"Go to bed then. Rest."

"Yes, I can do that. . . .'"

"Good night. Mister Benedict."

"Good night. . . ."

"Sleep in the heart of the Great Flame."

"I hope not. . . ."

Mala whimpered and moved nearer her Corgo, for she
was dreaming an evil dream: They were back on the
great snowfield of Brild, and she was trying to help him
—to walk, to move forward. He kept slipping though,
and lying there longer each time, and rising more slowly
each time and moving ahead at an even slower pace,
each time. He tried to kindle a fire, but the snow-devils
spun and toppled like icicles falling from the seven
moons, and the dancing green flames died as soon as
they were born from between his hands.

Finally, on the top of a mountain of ice she saw them.

There were three . . .

They were clothed from head to toe in flame; their
burning heads turned and turned and turned; and then
one bent and sniffed at the ground, rose, and indicated
their direction. Then they were racing down the hill-
side, trailing flames, melting a pathway as they came,

28

springing over drifts and ridges of ice, ther arms ex-
tended before them.

Silent they came, pausing only as the one sniffed the
air, the ground. . . .

She could hear their breathing now, feel their heat.

In a matter of moments they would arrive....
Mala whimpered and moved nearer her Corgo.

For three days Benedick tried, clutching Corgo's heart
like a Gypsy's crystal, watering it with his tears, squeez-
ing almost to life again. His head ached for hours after,
each time that he met the continuum-impact. He wept
long, moist tears for hours beyond contact, which was
unusual. He had always withdrawn from immediate
pain before; remembered distress was his forte, and a
different matter altogether.

He hurt each time that he touched Corgo and his mind
was sucked down through that subway in the sky; and
he touched Corgo eleven times during those three days,
and then his power went away, really.

Seated, like a lump of dark metal on the hull of the
Wallaby, he stared across six hundred miles at the blaz-
ing hearth which he had stoked to steel-tempering
heights; and he felt Like a piece of metal, resting there
upon an anvil, waiting for the hammer to fall again, as
it always did, waiting for it to strike him again and
again, and to beat him to a new toughness, to smash
away more and more of that within him which was base,
of that which knew pity, remorse, and guilt, again and
again and again, and to leave only that hard, hard form
of hate, like an iron boot, which lived at the core of the
lump, himself, and required constant hammering and
heat.

29

Sweating as he watched, smiling, Corgo took pictures.

When one of the nineteen known paranorms in the one
hundred forty-nine inhabited worlds in the galaxy sud-
denly loses his powers, and loses them at a crucial mo-
ment, it is like unto the old tales wherein a Princess is
stricken one day with an unknown malady and the King,
her father, summons all his wise men and calls for the
best physicians in the realm.

Big Daddy ICI (Rex ex machina-Uke.} did, in similar
manner, summon wise men and counselors from various
Thinkomats and think-repairshops about the galaxy, in-
cluding Interstel University, on Earth itself. But alasi
While all had a diagnosis none had on hand any sugges-
tions which were immediately acceptable to all parties
concerned:

"Bombard his thalamus with Beta particles."
"Hypno-regression to the womb, and restoration at a
pretraumatic point in his life."
"More continuum-impact."

"Six weeks on a pleasure satellite, and two aspirins
every four hours."

"There is an old operation called a lobotomy. . . ."
"Lots of liquids and gieen leafy vegetables."
"Hire another paranorm."

For one reason or another, the principal balked at all
of these courses of action, and the final one was impossi-
ble at the moment. In the end, the matter was settled
neatly by Sander's nurse Miss Barbara, who happened
onto the veranda one afternoon as Benedick sat there
fanning himself and drinking xmili.

"Why Mister Benedict!" she announced, plopping her
matronly self into the chair opposite him and spiking
her redlonade with three fingers of xmili. "Fancy meet-
ing you out herel I thought you were in the library with

30

the boys, working on that top secret hush-hush critical
project called Wallaby Stew, or something."

"As you can see, I am not," he said, staring at his knees.

"Well, it's nice just to pass the time of day sometimes,
too. To sit. To relax. To rest from the hunting of Victor
Corgo . . ."

"Please, you're not supposed to know about the proj-
ect. It's top secret and critical—"

"And hush-hush too, I know. Dear Sandor talks in his
sleep every night—so much. You see, I tuck him in each
evening and sit there until he drifts away to dreamland,
poor child."

"Mm, yes. Please don't talk about the project, though."

"Why? Isn't it going well?"

"Nol"

"Why not?"

"Because of me, if you must know! I've got a block of
some kind. The power doesn't come when I call it."

"Oh, how distressing! You mean you can't peep into
other persons' minds any more?"

"Exactly."

"Dear me. Well, let's talk about something else then.
Did I ever tell you about the days when I was the high-
est-paid courtesan on Sordido V?"

Benedick's head turned slowly in her direction.

"Nooo . . ." he said. "You mean the Sordido?"

"Oh yes. Bright Bad Barby, the Bouncing Baby, they
used to call me. They still sing ballads, you know."

"Yes, I've heard them. Many verses. . . ."

"Have another drink, I once had a coin struck in my
image, you know. It's a collectors' item now, of course.
Full-length pose, flesh-colored. Here, I wear it on this
chain around my neck—Lean closer, it's a short chain?"

"Very—interesting. Uh, how did all this come about?"

"Well-it all began with old Pruria Van Teste, the
banker, of the export-import Testes. You see, he had this

31

thing going for synthofemmes for a long while, but when
he started getting up there in years he felt there was
something he'd been missing. So, one fine day, he sent
me ten dozen Hravian orchids and a diamond garter,
along with an invitation to have dinner with him. . . ."

"You accepted, of course?"

"Naturally not. Not the first time, anyway. I could see
that he was pretty damn eager."

"Well, what happened?"

"Wait till I fix another redlonade."

Later that afternoon, the Lynx wandered out into the
veranda during the course of his meditations. He saw
there Miss Barbara, with Benedick seated beside her,
weeping.

"What troubles thy tranquility, my brother?" he in-
quired.

"Nothing! Nothing at alll It is wonderful and beauti-
ful, everything! My power has come back—1 can feel it!"
He wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

"Bless thee, little lady!" said the Lynx, seizing Miss
Barbara's hand. "Thy simple counsels have done more
to heal my brother than have all these highly-paid med-
ical practitioners brought here at great expense. Virtue
lies in thy homely words, and thou art most beloved of
the Flame."

"Thank you, I'm sure."

"Come brother, let us away to our task again!"

"Yes, let us!—Oh thank you, Bright Barbyl"

"Don't mention it."

Benedick's eyes clouded immediately, as he took the
tattered blood-pump into his hands. He leaned back,
stroking it, and moist spots formed on either side of his
nose, grew like well-fed amoebas, underwent mitosis,
and dashed off to explore in the vicinity of his shelf-like
upper lip.

32

He sighed once, deeply.

"Yes, I am there."

He blinked, licked his lips.    \   ''

". . . It is night. Late. It is a primitive dwelling. Mud-
like stucco, bits of straw in it ... All lights out, but for
the one from the machine, and its spillage—"

"Machine?"—Lynx.

"What machine?"—Sandor.

". . . Projector. Pictures on wall . . . World—big, fill-
ing whole picture-field—patches of fire on the world, up
near the top. Three places—"

"Bhave VII!"—Lynx. "Six days ago!"

"Shoreline to the right goes like this . . . And to the
left, like this. . . ."

His right index finger traced patterns in the air.

"Bhave VII'-Sandor.

"Happy and not happy at the same time—hard to sep-
parate the two. Guilt, though, is there—but pleasure with
it. Revenge. . . . Hate people, humans . . . We adjust
the projector now, stop it at a flare-up—Bright! How
good!—Oh good! That will teach them!—Teach them to
grab away what belongs to others ... To murder a
racel—The generator is humming. It is ancient, and it
smells bad. . . . The dog is lying on our foot. The foot
is asleep, but we do not want to disturb the dog, for it is
Mala's favorite thing—her only toy, companion, living
doll, four-footed. .'. . She is scratching behind its ear
with her forelimb, and it loves her. Light leaks down
upon them. . . . Clear they are. The breeze is warm,
very, which is why we are unshirted. It stirs the tasseled
hanging. . . . No force-field or windowpane . . . In-
sects buzz by the projector—pterodactyl silhouettes on
the burning world—"

"What kind of insects ?"-Lynx.

"Can you see what is beyond the window?"—Sandor.

". . . Outside are trees—short ones—just outlines,

33

squat. Can't tell where trunks begin . . . Foliage too
thick, too close. Too dark out—Off in the distance a tiny
moon . . . Something like this on a hill . . ." His hands
shaped a turnip impaled on an obelisk. "Not sure how far
off, how large, what color, or what made of . . ."

"Is the name of the place in Corgo's mind?"—Lynx.

"If I could touch him, with my hand, I would know it,
know everything. Only receive impressions this way,
though—surface thoughts. He is not thinking of where he
is now. . . . The dog rolls onto its back and off of our
foot—at last! She scratches its tummy, my love dark . . .
It kicks with its hind leg as if scratching after a flea-
wags its tail. Dilk is puppy's name. She gave if that
name, loves it ... It is like one of hers. Which was
murdered. Hate people—humans. She is people. Better
than . . . Doesn't butcher that which breathes for selfish
gain, for Interstel. Better than people, my pony-friends,
better ... An insect lights on Dilk's nose. She brushes
it away. Segmented, two sets of wings, about five milli-
meters in length, pink globe on front end, bulbous, and
buzzes as it goes, the insect—you asked . . ."

"How many entrances are there to the place?"—Lynx.

"Two. One doorway at each end of the hut."

"How many windows?"

"Two. On opposing walls—the ones without doors. I
can't see anything through the other window—too dark
on that side."

"Anything else?"

"On the wall a sword—long hilt, very long, two-handed
—even longer maybe—three? four?—short blades, though,
two of them—hilt is in the middle—and each blade is
straight, double-edged, forearm-length . . . Beside it, a
mask of—flowers? Too dark to tell. The blades shine;

the mask is dull. Looks like flowers, though. Many little
ones. . . . Four sides to the mask, shaped like a kite, big
end down. Can't make out features. It projects fairly far

34

out from the wall, though. Mala is restless. Probably
doesn't like the pictures—or maybe doesn't see them and
is bored. Her eyes are different. She nuzzles our shoul-
der now. We pour her a drink in her bowl. Take another
one ourself. She doesn't drink hers. We stare at her. She
drops her head and drinks.—Dirt floor under our sandals,
hard-packed. Many tiny white—pebbles?—in it, powdery-
like. The table is wood, natural . . . The generator sput-
ters. The picture fades, comes back. We rub our chin.
Need a shave . . . The hell with it! We're not standing
any inspections! Drink—one, two—all gone! Another!"

Sandor had threaded a tape into his viewer, and he
was spinning it and stopping it, spinning it and stopping
it, spinning it and stopping it. He checked his worlds
chronometer.

"Outside," he asked, "does the moon seem to be mov-
ing up, or down, or across the sky?"

"Across."

"Right to left, or left to right?"

"Right to left. It seems about a quarter past zenith."

"Any coloration to it?"

"Orange, with three black lines. One starts at about
eleven o'clock, crosses a quarter of its surface, drops
straight down, cuts back at seven. The other starts at
two, drops to six. They don't meet. The third is a small
upside-down letter 'c*—lower right quarter . . . Not big,
the moon, but clear, very. No clouds."

"Any constellations you can make out?"—Lynx.

". . . Head isn't turned that way now, wasn't turned
toward the window long enough. Now there is a noise,
far off ... A high-pitched chattering, almost metallic.
Animal. He pictures a six-legged tree creature, half the
size of a man, reddish-brown hair, sparse ... It can go
on two, four, or six legs on the ground. Doesn't go down
on the ground much, though. Nests high. An egg-layer.

35




Many teeth. Eats flesh. Small eyes, and black—two.
Great nose-holes. Pesty, but not dangerous to men—eas-
ily frightened."

"He is on Disten, the fifth world of Blake's System,"
said Sandor. "Night-side means he is on the continent
Didenlan. The moon Babry, well past zenith now, means
he is to the east. A Mellar-mosque indicates a Mella-
Muslim settlement. The blade and the mask seem Hor-
tanian. I am sure they were brought from further inland.
The chalky deposits would set him in the vicinity of Lan-
dear, which is Mella-Muslim. It is on the Dista River,
north bank. There is much jungle about. Even those peo-
ple who wish seclusion seldom go further than eight
miles from the center of town—population 153,000—and
it is least settled to the northwest, because of the hills,
the rocks, and—"

"Fine! That's where he is then!"—Lynx. "Now here is
how we'll do it. He has, of course, been sentenced to
death. I believe—yes, I know!—there is an ICI Field Of-
fice on the second world—whatever its name—of that
System."

"Nirer"—Sandor.

"Yes. Hmm, let's see . . . Two agents will be empow-
ered as executioners. They will land their ship to the
northwest of Landear, enter the city, and find where the
man with the strange four-legged pet settled, the one
who arrived within the past six days. Then one agent
will enter the hut and ascertain whether Corgo is within.
He will retreat immediately if Corgo is present, signal-
ing to the other who will be hidden behind those trees
or whatever. The second man will then fire a round of
fragmentation plaster through the unguarded window.
One agent will then position himself at a safe distance
beyond the northeast corner of the edifice, so as to cover
a door and a window. The other will move to the south-
west, to do the same. Each will carry a two-hundred

channel laser sub-gun with vibrating head.—Good! I'll
phase-wase it to Central now. We've got him!"

He hurried from the room.

Benedick, still holding the thing, his shirt-front soak-
ing, continued;

" 'Fear not, my lady dark. He is but a puppy, and he
howls at the moon. . . .'"

It was thirty-one hours and twenty minutes later when
the Lynx received and decoded the two terse state-
ments:

EXECUTIONERS THE WAY OF ALL FLESH.
THE WALLABY HAS JUMPED AGAIN.

He licked his lips. His comrades were waiting for the
report, and they had succeeded—they had done their
part, had performed efficiently and well. It was the Lynx
who had missed his kill.

He made the sign of the Flame and entered the li-
brary.

Benedick knew—Jig could tell. The little paranorm's
hands were on his walking stick, and that was enough-
Just that.

The Lynx bowed his head.

"We begin again," he told them.

Benedick's powers—if anything, stronger than ever-
survived continuum-impact seven more times. Then he
described a new world: Big it was, and many-peopled
—bright—dazzling, under a blue-white sun; yellow brick
brick everywhere, neo-Denebian architecture, greenglass
windows, a purple sea nearby. . , .

No trick at all for Sandor:

"Phillip's World," he named it, then told them the city;

"Delles."

36

37

"This time we bum him," said the Lynx, and he was
gone from the room.

"Christian-Zoroastrians," sighed Benedick, after he had
left. "I think this one has a Flame-complex."

Sandor spun the globe with his left hand and watched
it turn.

"I'm not preconning," said Benedick, "but I'll give you
odds, like three to one—on Corgo's escaping again.

"Why?"

"When he abandoned humanity he became some-
thing less, and more. He is not ready to die."

"What do you mean?"

"I hold his heart. He gave it up, in all ways. He is
invincible now. But he will reclaim it one day. Then he
will die."

"How do you know?"

"... A feeling. There are many types of doctors,
among them pathologists. No less than others, they, but
masters only of blackness. I know people, have known
many. I do not pretend to know all about them. But
weaknesses—yes, those I know."

Sandor turned his globe and did not say anything.

But they did bum the Wallaby, badly.

He lived, though.

He lived, cursing.

As he lay there in the gutter, the world burning, ex-
ploding, falling down around him, he cursed that world
and every other, and everything in them.

Then there was another burst.

Blackness followed.

The double-bladed Hortanian sword, spinning in the
hands of Corgo, had halved the first ICI executioner as
he stood in the doorway. Mala had detected their ap-
proach across the breezes, through the open window.

The second had fallen before the fragmentation plas-


38

ter could be launched. Corgo had a laser sub-gun him-
self, Guard issue, and he cut the man down, firing
through the wall and two trees in the direction Mala
indicated.

Then the Wallaby left Disten.

But he was troubled. How had they found him so
quickly? He had had close brushes with them before-
many of them, over the years. But he was cautious, and
he could not see where he had failed this time, could not
understand how Interstel had located him. Even his last
employer did not know his whereabouts.

He shook his head and phased for Phillip's world.

To die is to sleep and not to dream, and Corgo did not
want this. He took elaborate pains, in-phasing and out-
phasing in random directions; he gave Mala a golden
collar with a two-way radio in its clasp, wore its mate
within his death-ring; he converted much currency, left
the Wallaby in the care of a reputable smuggler in Un-
associated Territory and crossed Phillip's World to Delles-
by-the-Sea. He was fond of sailing, and he liked the pur-
ple waters of this planet. He rented a large villa near the
Delles Dives—slums to the one side, Riviera to the other.
This pleased him. He still had dreams; he was not dead
yet.

Sleeping, perhaps, he had heard a sound. Then he was
suddenly seated on the side of his bed, a handful of
death in his hand.

"Mala?"

She was gone. The sound he'd heard had been the
closing of a door.

He activated the radio.

"What is it?" he demanded.

"I have the feeling we are watched again," she re-
plied, through his ring. ". . . Only a feeling, though."

Her voice was distant, tiny.

"Why did you not tell me? Come back—now."

39

"No. I match the night and can move without sound. I
will investigate. There is something, if I have fear. . . .
Arm yourself!"

He did that, and as he moved toward the front of the
house they struck. He ran. As he passed through the
front door they struck again, and again. There was an
inferno at his back, and a steady rain of plaster, metal,
wood and glass was falling. Then there was an inferno
around him.

They were above him. This time they had been cau-
tioned not to close with him, but to strike from a dis-
tance. This time they hovered high in a shielded globe
and poured down hot rivers of destruction.

Something struck him in the head and the shoulder.
He fell, turning. He was struck in the chest, the stomach.
He covered his face and rolled, tried to rise, failed. He
was lost in a forest of flames. He got into a crouch, ran,
fell again, rose once more, ran, fell again, crawled, fell
again.

As he lay there in the gutter, the world burning, ex-
ploding, falling down around him he cursed that world
and every other, and everyone in them.

Then there was another burst.

Blackness followed.

They thought they had succeeded, and their joy was
great.

"Nothing," Benedick had said, smiling through his
tears.

So that day they celebrated, and the next.
But Corgo's body had not been recovered.
Almost half a block had been hurled down, though,
and eleven other residents could not be located either,
so it seemed safe to assume that the execution had suc-
ceeded. ICI, however, requested that the trio remain

40

together on Dombeck for another ten days, while fur-
ther investigations were carried out.

Benedick laughed.

"Nothing," he repeated. "Nothing."

But there is a funny thing about a man without a heart:

His body does not live by the same rules as those of oth-
ers: No. The egg in his chest is smarter than a mere
heart, and it is the center of a wonderful communications
system. Dead itself, it is omniscient in terms of that
which lives around it; it is not omnipotent, but it has
resources which a living heart does not command.

As the bums and laceratons were flashed upon the
screen of the body, it sat in instant criticism. It moved
itself to an emergency level of function; it became a flag
vibrating within a hurricane, the glands responded and
poured forth their juices of power; muscles were acti-
vated as if by electricity.

Corgo was only half-aware of the inhuman speed with
which he moved through the storm of heat and the hail
of building materials. It tore at him, but this pain was
canceled. His massive output jammed nonessential
neural input. He made it as far as the street and col-
lapsed in the shelter of the curb.

The egg took stock of the cost of the action, decided
the price had been excessively high, and employed im-
mediate measures to insure the investment.

Down, down did it send him. Into the depths of sub-
coma. Standard-model humans cannot decide one day
that they wish to hibernate, lie down, do it. The phy-
sicians can induce dauersch-laff—with combinations of
drugs and elaborate machineries. But Corgo did not
need these things. He had a built-in survival kit with a
mind of its own; and it decided that he must go deeper
than the mere coma-level that a heart would have per-
mitted. So it did the things a heart cannot do, while
maintaining its own functions.

41

It hurled him into the blackness of sleep without
dreams, of total unawareness. For only at the border of
death itself could his life be retained, be strengthened,
grow again. To approach this near the realm of death,
its semblance was necessary.

Therefore, Corgo lay dead in the gutter.

People, of course, flock to the scene of any disaster.

Those from the Eiviera pause to dress in their best
catastrophe clothing. Those from the slums do not, be-
cause their wardrobes are not as extensive.

One though, was dressed already and was passing
nearby. "Zim" was what he was called, for obvious rea-
sons. He had had another name once, but he had all but
forgotten it.

He was staggering home from the zimlak parlor where
he had cashed his Guard pension check for that month-
cycle.

There was an explosion, but it was seconds before he
realized it. Muttering, he stopped and turned very
slowly in the direction of the noise. Then he saw the
flames. He looked up, saw the hoverglobe. A memory
appeared within his mind and he winced and continued
to watch.

After a time he saw the man, moving at a fantastic
pace across the landscape of Hell. The man fell in the
street. There was more burning, and then the globe de-
parted.

The impressions finally registered, and his disaster-
reflex made him approach.

Indelible synapses, burnt into his brain long ago, sum-
moned up page after page of The Complete Guard
Field Manual of Immediate Medical Actions. He knelt
beside the body, red with bum, blood and firelight.

". . . Captain," he said, as he stared into the angular
face with the closed dark eyes. "Captain . .."

42

He covered his own face with his hands and they
came away wet.

"Neighbors. Here. Us. Didn't-know . . ." He listened
for a heartbeat, but there was nothing that he could de-
tect. "Fallen ... On the deck my Captain lies . . .
Fallen . . . cold . . . dead. Us. Neighbors, even . . ."
His sob was a Jagged thing, until he was seized with a
spell of hiccups. Then he steadied his hands and raised
an eyelid.

Corgo's head jerked two inches to his left, away from
the brightness of the flames.

The man laughed in relief.

"You're alive. Cap! You're still alive!"

The thing that was Corgo did not reply.

Bending, straining, he raised the body.

"'Do not move the victim'—that's what it says in the
Manual. But you're coming with me. Cap. I remember
now. ... It was after I left. But I remember . . . All.
Now I remember; I do ... Yes. They'll kill you an-
other time—if you do live. . . . They will; I know. So
I'll have to move the victim. Have to ... —Wish I
wasn't so fogged . . . I'm sorry. Cap. You were always
good, to the men, good to me. Ran a tight ship, but you
were good . . . Old Wallaby, happy . . . Yes. We'll go
now, killer. Fast as we can. Before the Morbs come.—
Yes. I remember . . . you. Good man, Cap. Yes."

So, the Wallaby had made its last jump, according to
the ICI investigation which followed. But Corgo still
dwelled on the dreamless border, and the seeds and the
egg held his life.

After the ten days had passed, the Lynx and Benedick
still remained with Sandor. Sandor was not anxious for
them to go. He had never been employed before; he
liked the feeling of having co-workers about, persons

43

who shared memories of things done. Benedick was
loathe to leave Miss Barbara, one of the few persons he
could talk to and have answer him, willingly. The Lynx
liked the food and the climate, decided his wives and
grandchildren could use a vacation.

So they stayed on.

Returning from death is a deadly slow business. Real-
ity does the dance of the veils, and it is a long while
before you know what lies beneath them all (if you ever
really do).

When Corgo had formed a rough idea, he cried out:

"Malal"

. . . The darkness.

Then he saw a face out of times gone by.

"Sergeant Emil . . . ?"

'Tes, sir. Right here, Captain."

"Where am I?"

"My hutch, sir. Yours got burnt out."

"How?"

"A hoverglobe did it, with a sear-beam."

"What of my-pet? A Drillen . . ."

"There was only you I found, sir—no one, nothing, else.
Uh, it was almost a month-cycle ago that it happened.

Corgo tried to sit up, failed, tried again, half-suc-
ceeded. He sat propped on his elbows.

"What's the matter with me?"

"You had some fractures, bums, lacerations, internal
injuries—but you're going to be all right, now."

"I wonder how they found me, so fast—again . . . ?"

"I don't know, sir. Would you like to try some broth
now?"

"Later."

"It's all warm and ready."

"Okay, Emil. Suie, bring it on."

He lay back and wondered.

44

There was her voice. He had been dozing all day wad
he was part of a dream.

"Corgo, are you there? Are you there, Corgo? Are

»
you . . .

His hand! The ring!

"Yes! Me! Corgo!" He activated it. "Malal Where
are you?"

"In a cave, by the sea. Everyday I have called to you.
Are you alive, or do you answer me from Elsewhere?"

"I am alive. There is no magic to your collar. How
have you kept yourself?"

"I go out at night. Steal food from the large dwellings
with the green windows like doors—for Dilk and myself."

"The puppy? Alive, too?"

"Yes. He was penned in the yard on that night. . . .
Where are you?"

"I do not know, precisely. . . .Near where our place
was. A few blocks away—I'm with an old friend. . . ."

"I must come."

"Wait until dark, I'll get you directions.—No. I'll send
him after you, my friend. . . . Where is your cave?"

"Up the beach, past the red house you said was ugly.
There are three rocks, pointed on top. Past them is a
narrow path—the water comes up to it, sometimes covers
it—and around a comer then, thirty-one of my steps, and
the rock hangs overhead, too. It goes far back then, and
there is a crack m the wall—small enough to squeeze
through, but it widens. We are here."

"My friend will come for you after dark."

"You are hurt?"

"I was. But I am better now. I'll see you later, talk
more then."

"Yes-"

In the days that followed, his strength returned to him.
He played chess with Emil and talked with him of their

45

days together in the Guard. He laughed, for the first
time in many years, at the tale of the Commander's
wig, at the Big Brawl on Sordido III, some thirty-odd
years before. . . .

Mala kept to herself, and to Dilk. Occasionally, Corgo
would feel her eyes upon him. But whenever he turned,
she was always looking in another direction. He realized
that she had never seen him being friendly with anyone
before. She seemed puzzled.

He drank zimlak with Emil, they ventured off-key
ballads together. . . .

Then one day it struck him.

"Emil, what are you using for money these days?"

"Guard pension. Cap."

"Flames! We've been eating you out of business! Food,
and the medical supplies and all . . ."

"I had a little put away for foul weather days, Cap."

"Good. But you shouldn't have been using it. There's
quite a bit of money zipped up in my boots.—Here. Just
a second . . . There! Take thesel"

"I can't. Cap. . . ,"

"The hell, you say! Take them, that's an order!"

"All right, sir, but you don't have to. . . ."

"Emil, there is a price on my head—you know?"

"I know."

"A pretty large reward."

-Yes."

"It's yours, by right."

"I couldn't turn you in, sir."

"Nevertheless, the reward is yours. Twice over. I'll
send you that amount—a few weeks after I leave here."

"I couldn't take it, sir."

"Nonsense; you will."

"No, sir. I won't."

"What do you mean?"

"I just mean I couldn't take that money."

46

"Why not? What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing, exactly ... I just don't want any of it. I'll
take this you gave me for the food and stuff. But no
more, that's all."

"Oh . . . All right, Emil. Any way you like it. I wasn't
trying to force . . ."

"I know. Cap."

"Another game now? I'll spot you a bishop and three
pawns this time."       _

"Very good, sir."

"We had some good time together, eh?"

"You bet, Cap. Tau Ceti—three months' leave. Re-
member the Red River Valley—and the family native
life-forms?"

"Hah! And Cygnus VII—the purple world with the
Rainbow Women?"

"Took me three weeks to get that dye off me. Thought
at first it was a new disease. Flamesi I'd love to ship out
again!"

Corgo paused in mid-move.

"Hmm . . . You know, Emil ... It might be that
you could."

"What do you mean?"

Corgo finished his move.

"Aboard the Wallaby. It's here, in Unassociated Ter-
ritory, waiting for me. I'm Captain, and crew—and ev-
erything—all by myself, right now. Mala helps some, but
—you know, I could use a First Mate. Be like old times."

Emil replaced the knight he had raised, looked up,
looked back down.

"I—I don't know what to say. Cap. I never thought
you'd offer me a berth. . . ."

"Why not? I could use a good man. Lots of action, like
the old days. Plenty cash. No cares. We want three
months' leave on Tau Ceti and we write our own bloody
orders. We take iti"

47

"I—I do want to space again. Cap—bad. But—no, I

couldn't, . . ."

"Why not, Emil? Why not? It'd be just like before."

"I don't know how to say it, Cap. . . . But when we
—burnt places, before—well, it was criminals—pirates,
Code-breakers—you know. Now . . . Well, now I hear
you bum—just people. Uh, non-Code-breakers. Like,
just plain civilians. Well—I could not."

Corgo did not answer. Emil moved his knight.
"I hate them, Emil," he said, after a time. "Every lovin'
one of them, I hate them. Do you know what they did

on Brild? To the Drillen?"

"Yessir. But it wasn't civilians, and not the miners. It
was not everybody. It wasn't every lovin' one. of them,
sir.—I just couldn't. Don't be mad."

"I'm not mad, Emil."

"I mean, sir, there are some as I wouldn't mind
bumin'. Code or no Code. But not the way you do it, sir.
And I'd do it for free to those as have it coming."

"Huhl"

Corgo moved his one bishop.
"That's why my money is no good with you?"
"No, sir. That's not it, sir. Well maybe part . . . But
only part. I just couldn't take pay for helping someone I—

respected, admired."
"You use the past tense."

"Yessir. But I still think you got a raw deal, and what
they did to the Drillen was wrong and bad and—evil-
but you can't hate everybody for that, sir, because every-
body didn't do it."

"They countenanced it, Emil—which is just as bad. I
am able to hate them all for that alone. And people are
all alike, all the same. I bum without discrimination
these days, because it doesn't really matter who. The
guilt is equally distributed. Mankind is commonly cul-
pable."

48

"No, sir, begging your pardon, sir, but in a system as
big as Interstel not everybody knows what everybody
else is up to. There are those feeling the same way you
do, and there are those as don't give a damn, and those
who just don't know a lot of what's going on, but who
would do something about it if they knew, soon enough."

"It's your move, Emil."

"Yessir."

"You know, I wish you'd accepted a commission, Eroil.
You had the chance. You'd have been a good officer."

"No, sir. I'd not have been a good officer. I'm too easy-
going. The men would've walked all over me."

"It's a pity. But it's always that way. You know? The
good ones are too weak, too easy-going. Why is that?"

"Dunno, sir."

After a couple of moves:

"You know, if I were to give it up—the burning, I mean
—and just do some ordinary, decent smuggling with the
Wallaby, it would be okay. With me. Now. I'm tired.
I'm so damned tired I'd just like to sleep—oh, four, five,
six years, I think. Supposing I stopped the burning and
just shipped stuff here and there—would you sign on
with me then?"

Td have to think about it. Cap."

"Do that, then. Please. I'd like to have you along."

"Yessir. Your move, sir."

It would not have happened that he'd have been found
by his actions, because he did stop the burning; it would
not have happened—because he was dead on ICI's
books—that anyone would have been looking for him. It
happened, though—because of a surfeit of xmili and
good will on the part of the hunters.

On the eve of the breaking of the fellowship, nostalgia
followed high spirits.

49

Benedick had never had a friend before, you must re-
member. Now he had three, and he was leaving them.

The Lynx had ingested much good food and drink,
and the good company of simple, maimed people, whose
neuroses were unvitiated with normal sophistication—
and he had enjoyed this.

Sandor's sphere of human relations had been ex-
panded by approximately a third, and he had slowly
come to consider himself at least an honorary member
of the vast flux which he had only known before as
humanity, or Others.

So, in the library, drinking, and eating and talking,
they returned to the hunt. Dead tigers are always the
best kind.

Of course, it wasn't long before Benedick picked up
the heart, and held it as a connoisseur would an art ob-
ject—gently, and with a certain mingling of awe and
affection.

As they sat there, an odd sensation crept into the
pudgy paranorm's stomach and rose slowly, like gas, un-
til his eyes burned.

"I—I'm reading," he said.

"Of course"—the Lynx.                           '

"Yes"—Sandor.

"Really!"

"Naturally"-the Lynx. "He is on Disten, fifth world of
Blake's System, in a native hut outside Landear—"

"No"-Sandor. "He is on Phillip's World, in Delles-by-
the-Sea."

They laughed, the Lynx a deep rumble, Sandor a
gasping chuckle,

"No," said Benedick. "He is in transit, aboard the Wal-
laby. He had just phased and his mind is still mainly
awake. He is running a cargo of ambergris to the Tau
Ceti system, fifth planet—Tholmen. After that he plans
on vacationing in the Red River Valley of the third

50

planet—Cardiff. Along with the Drillen and the puppy,
he has a crewman with him this time. I can't read any-
thing but that it's a retired Guardsman."

"By the holy Light of the Great and Glorious Flame!"

"We know they never did find his ship. . . ."

". . . And his body was not recovered.—Could you be
mistaken. Benedick? Beading something, someone else
. . . ?"

"No."

"What should we do. Lynx?"—Sandor.

"An unethical person might be inclined to forget it. It
is a closed case. We have been paid and dismissed."

"True."

"But think of when he strikes again. . . ."

". . . It would be because of us, our failure."

"Yes."

". . . And many would die."

". . . And much machinery destroyed, and an insur-
ance association defrauded."

"Yes."

". . . Because of us."

"Yes."

"So we should report if—Lynx.

"Yes."

"It is unfortunate. . . ."

"Yes."

". . . But it will be good to have worked together this
final time."

"Yes. It will. Very."

"Tholmen, in Tau Ceti, and he just phased?"—Lynx.

"Yes."

"I'll call, and they'll be waiting for him in T.C."

"... I told you," said the weeping paranorm. "He
wasn't ready to die."

Sandor smiled and raised his glass with his flesh-col-
ored hand.

51

There was still some work to be done.

When the Wallaby hit Tau Ceti all hell broke loose.

Three fully-manned Guardships, like onto the Wallaby
herself were waiting.

ICI had quarantined the entire system for three days.
There could be no mistaking the ebony toadstool when
it appeared on the screen. No identiBcation was so-
licited.

The tractor beams missed it the first time, however,
and the Wallaby's new First Mate fired every weapon
aboard the ship simultaneously, in all directions, as soon
as the alarm sounded. This had been one of Corgo's small
alterations in fire-control, because of the size of his oper-
ations: no safety circuits; and it was a suicide-ship, if
necessary: it was a lone wolf with no regard for any
pack: one central control—touch it, and the Wallaby
became a porcupine with laser-quills, stabbing into any-
thing in every direction.

Corgo prepared to phase again, but it took him forty-
three seconds to do so.

During that time he was struck twice by the surviving
Guardship.

Then he was gone.

Time and Chance, which govern all things, and some-
times like to pass themselves off as Destiny, then seized
upon the Wallaby, the puppy, the Drillen, First Mate
Emil, and the man without a heart.

Corgo had set no course when he had in-phased. There
had been no time.

The two blasts from the Guardship had radically al-
tered the Wallaby's course, and had burnt out twenty-
three fast-phase projectors.

The Wallaby jumped blind, and with a broken leg.

Continuum-impact racked the crew. The hull repaired
rents in its skin.

52

They continued for thirty-nine hours and twenty-three
minutes, taking turns at sedation, watching for the first
warning on the panel.

The Wallaby held together, though.

But where they had gotten to no one knew, least of
all a weeping paranorm who had monitored the battle
and all of Corgo's watches, despite the continuum-im-
pact and a hangover.

But suddenly Benedick knew fear:

"He's about to phase-out. I'm going to have to drop
him now."

"Why?"-the Lynx.

"Do you know where he is?"

"No, of course not!"

"Well, neither does he. Supposing he pops out in the
middle of a sun, or in some atmosphere—moving at that
speed?"

"Well, supposing he does? He dies."

"Exactly. Continuum-impact is bad enough. I've never
been in a man's mind when he died—and I don't think I
could take it. Sorry. I just won't do it. I think I might
die myself if it happened. I'm so tired now. ... I'll just
have to check him out later."

With that he collapsed and could not be roused.

So, Corgo's heart went back into its jar, and the jar
went back into the lower right-hand drawer of Sandor's
desk, and none of the hunters heard the words of Cor-
go's answer to his First Mate after the phasing-out:

"Where are we?—The Comp says the nearest thing is a
little ping-pong ball of a world called Dombeck, not
noted for anything. We'll have to put down there for
repairs, somewhere off the beaten track. We need pro-
jectors."

So they landed the Wallaby and banged on its hull as

53

the hunters slept, some five Jiundred forty-two miles
away.

They were grinding out the projector sockets shortly
after Sandor had been tucked into his bed.

They reinforced the hull in three places while the
Lynx ate half a ham, three biscuits, two apples and a
pear, and drank half a liter of Dombeck's best Mosel.

They rewired shorted circuits as Benedick smiled and
dreamt of Bright Bad Barby the Bouncing Baby, in the
days of her youth.

And Corgo took the light-boat and headed for a town
three hundred miles away, just as the pale sun of Dom-
beck began to rise.

"He's here!" cried Benedick,flinging wide the door to
the Lynx's room and rushing up to the bedside. "He's—"

Then he was unconscious, for the Lynx may not be ap-
proached suddenly as he sleeps.

When he awakened five minutes later, he was lying on
the bed and the entire household stood about him. There
was a cold cloth on his forehead and his throat felt
crushed.

"My brother," said the Lynx, "you should never ap-
proach a sleeping man in such a manner."

"B-but he's here," said Benedick, gagging. "Here on
Dombeck! I don't even need Sandor to tell!"

"Art sure thou hast not imbibed too much?"

"No, I tell you he's here!" He sat up, flung away the
cloth. "That little city, Coldstream—" He pointed
through the wall. "—I was there just a week ago. I know
the place!"

"You have had a dream—"

"Wet your Flame! But I've not! I held his heart in
these hands and saw it!"

The Lynx winced at the profanity, but considered the
possibility.

54

"Then come with us to the library and see if you can
sad it again."
"You better believe I can!"

At that moment Corgo was drinking a cup of coffee
and waiting for the town to wake up. He was consider-
ing his First Mate's resignation:

"I never wanted to bum anyone, Cap. Least of all, the
Guard. I'm sorry, but that's it. No more for me. Leave
me here and give me passage home to Phillip's-^-that's
all I want. I know you didn't want it the way it hap-
pened, but if I keep shipping with you it might happen
again some day. Probably will. They got your number
somehow, and I couldn't ever do that again. I'll help you
fix the Wallaby, then I'm out. Sorry."

Corgo sighed and ordered a second coffee. He
glanced at the clock on the diner wall. Soon, soon . . .

"That clock, that wall, that window! It's the diner
where I had lunch last week, in Coldstream!" said Bene-
dick, blinking moistly.

"Do you think all that continuum-impact. . . . ?"—the
Lynx.

"I don't know"—Sandor.

"How can we check?"

"Call the flamin' diner and ask them to describe their
only customer!"—Benedick.

"That is a very good idea"—the Lynx.

The Lynx moved to the phone-unit on Sander's desk.

Sudden, as everything concerning the case had been,
was the Lynx's final decision:

"Your flyer, brother Sandor. May I borrow it?"

"Why, yes. Surely . . ."

"I will now call the local ICI office and requisition a
laser-cannon. They have been ordered to cooperate with
us without question, and the ciders are still in effect. My
executioner's rating has never been suspended. It ap-
pears that if we ever want to see this job completed we

55

must do it ourselves. It won't taice long to mount the gun
on your flyer.—Benedick, stay with him every minute
now. He still has to buy the equipment, take it back,
and install it. Therefore, we should have sufficient time.
Just stay with him and advise me as to his movements,"

"Check."

"Are you sure it's the right way to go about it?"—San-
dor.

"I'm sure. . . ."

As the cannon was being delivered, Corgo made his
purchases. As it was being installed, he loaded the light-
boat and departed. As it was tested, on a tree stump
Aunt Faye had wanted removed for a long while, he
was aloft and heading toward the desert.

As he crossed the desert. Benedick watched the roll-
ing dunes, scrub-shrubs and darting rabbophers through
his eyes.

He also watched the instrument-panel.

As the Lynx began his journey, Mala and Dilk were
walking about the hull of the Wallaby. Mala wondered
if the killing was over. She was not sure she liked th'
new Corgo so much as she did the avenger. She won-
dered whether the change would be permanent. Sh*"
hoped not. . . .

The Lynx maintained radio contact with Benedick.

Sandor drank xmili and smiled.

After a time, Corgo landed.

The Lynx was racing across the sands from the oppo-
site direction.

They began unloading the light-boat.

The Lynx sped on.

"I am near it now. Five minutes," he radioed back.

"Then I'm out?"-Benedick.

"Not yet"—the reply.

56

"Sorry, but you know what I said. I won't be there
when he dies."

"All right, I can take it from here"—the Lynx.

Which is how, when the Lynx came upon the scene,
he saw a dog and a man and an ugly but intelligent
quadraped beside the Wallaby.

His first blast hit the ship. The man fell.

The quadraped ran, and he burnt it.

The dog thrashed through the port into the ship.

The Lynx brought the flyer about for another pass.

There was another man, circling around from the other
side of the ship, where he had been working.

The man raised his hand and there was a flash of light

Corgo's death-ring discharged its single laser beam.

It crossed the distance between them, penetrated the
hull of the flyer, passed through the Lynx's left arm
above the elbow, and confined on through the roof of
the vehicle.

The Lynx cried out, fought the controls, as Corgo
dashed into the Wallaby.

Then he triggered the cannon, and again, and again
and again, circling, until the Wallaby was a smoldering
ruin in the middle of a sea of fused sand.

Still did he bum that ruin, finally calling back to Bene-
dick Benedict and asking his one question.

"Nothing"—the reply.

Then he turned and headed back, setting the autopilot
and opening the first-aid kit.

". . . Then he went in to hit the Wallaby's guns, but I
hit him first"—Lynx.

"No"—Benedick.

"What meanest thou 'no? I was there."

"So was I, for awhile. I had to see how he felt."

"And?"

"He went in for the puppy, Dilk, held it in his arms,
and said to it, *I am sorry.'"

57

"Whatever, he is dead now and we have finished. It is
over"—Sandor.
"Yes."
"Yes."

"Let us then drink to a job well done, before we part
for good."

"Yes."

"Yes."

And they did.

While there wasn't much left of the Wallaby or its
Captain, ICI positively identified a synthetic heart found
still beating, erratically, amidst the hot wreckage.

Corgo was dead, and that was it.

He should have known what he was up against, and
turned himself in to the proper authorities. How can you
hope to beat a man who can pick the lock to your mind,
a man who dispatched forty-eight men and seventeen
malicious alien life-forms, and a man who knows every
damn street in the galaxy.

He should have known better than to go up against
Sandor Sandor, Benedick Benedict and Lynx Links. He
should, he should have known.

For their real names, of course, are Tisiphone, Alecto
and Maegaera. They are the ^Furies. They arise from
chaos and deliver revenge; they convey confusion and
disaster to those who abandon the law and forsake the
way, who offend against the light and violate the life,
who take the power of flame, like a lightning-rod in
their two too mortal hands.

58

THE GRAVEYARD HEART

They were dancing,

—at the party of the century, the party of the millenium,
and the Party of Parties,

—really, as well as calendar-wise,

—and he wanted to crush her, to tear her to pieces. . . .
Moore did not really see the pavilion through which
they moved, nor regard the hundred faceless shadows
that glided about them. He did not take particular note
of the swimming globes of colored light that followed
above and behind them.

He felt these things, but he did not necessarily sniff
wilderness in that ever-green relic of Christmas past
turning on its bright pedestal in the center of the room
—shedding its fireproofed needles and traditions these
six days after the fact.

All of these were abstracted and dismissed, inhaled
and filed away. . . .

In a few more moments it would be Two Thousand.
Leota (nee Lilith) rested in the bow of his arm like a
quivering arrow, until he wanted to break her or send
her flying (he knew not where), to crush her into limp-
ness, to make that samadhi, myopia, or whatever, go
away from her graygreen eyes. At about that time, each
time, she would lean against him and whisper some-

59

thing into his ear, something in French, a language he
did not yet speak. She followed his inept lead so per-
fectly though, that it was not unwarranted that he should
feel she could read his mind by pure kinesthesia.

Which made it all the worse then, whenever her
breath collared his neck with a moist warmness that
spread down under his jacket Jike an invisible infection.
Then he would mutter "C'est vrai" or "Damn" or both
and try to crush her bridal whiteness (overlaid with
black webbing), and she would become an arrow once
more. But she was dancing with him, which was a de-
cided improvement over his last year/her yesterday.

It was almost Two Thousand.

Now . . .

The music broke itself apart and grew back together
again as the globes blared daylight. Auld acquaintance,
he was reminded, was not a thing to be trifled with.

He almost chuckled then, but the lights went out a
moment later and he found himself occupied.

A voice speaking right beside him, beside everyone,
stated:

"It is now Two Thousand. Happy New Yearl"

He crushed her.

No one cared about Times Square. The crowds in the
Square had been watching a relay of the Party on a
jerry-screen the size of a football field. Even now the
onlookers were being amused by blacklight close-ups of
the couples on the dance floor. Perhaps at that very
moment, Moore decided, they themselves were the sub-
ject of a hilarious sequence being served up before that
overflowing Petri dish across the ocean. It was quite
likely, considering his partner.

He did not fare if they laughed at him, though. He
had come too far to care.

"I love you," he said silently. (He used mental dittos
to presume an answer, and this made him feel some-


60

what happier.) Then the lights fireflied once more and
auld acquaintance was remembered. A buzzard com-
pounded of a hundred smashed rainbows began falling
about the couples; slow-melting spirals of confetti drifted
through the lights, dissolving as they descended upon
the dancers; furry-edged projections of Chinese dragon
Idtes swam overhead, grinning their way through the

storm.

They resumed dancing and he asked her the same
question he had asked her the year before.

"Can't we be alone, together, somewhere, just for a
moment?"

She smothered a yawn.

"No, I'm bored. I'm going to leave in half an hour."

If voices can be throaty and rich, hers was an opulent
neckful. Her throat was golden, to a well-sunned turn.

"Then let's spend it talking—in one of the little dining
rooms."

"Thank you, but I'm not hungry. I must be seen for
the next half hour."

Primitive Moore, who had spent most of his life dozing
at the back of Civilized Moore's brain, rose to his
haunches then, with a growL Civilized Moore muzzled
him though, because he did not wish to spoil things.

"When can I see you again?" he asked grimly.

"Perhaps Bastille Day," she whispered. "There's the
Liberte, figalite, Fratemite Fete Nue . . ."

"Where?"

"In the New Versailles Dome, at nine. If you'd like an
invitation, I'll see that you receive one. ..."

"Yes, I do want one."

("She made you ask," jeered Primitive Moore.)

"Very well, you'll receive one in May."

"Won't you spare me a day or so now?"

She shook her head, her blue-blonde coif burning his
face.

61

"Time is too dear," she whispered in mock-Camille
pathos, "and the days of the Parties are without end.
You ask me to cut years off my life and hand them to
you."

"That's right."

"You ask too much," she smiled.

He wanted to curse her right then and walk away,
but he wanted even more so to stay with her. He was
twenty-seven, an age of which he did not approve in the
first place, and he had spent all of the year 1999 wanting
her. He had decided two years ago that he was going
to fall in love and marry—because he could finally afford
to do so without altering his standards of living. Lacking
a woman who combined the better qualities of Aphrodite
and a digital computer, he had spent an entire year on
safari, trekking after the spoor of his starcrossed.

The invitation to the Bledsoes' Orbiting New Year—
which had hounded the old year around the world, chas-
ing it over the International Dateline and off the Earth
entirely, to wherever old years go—had set him back a
month's pay, but had given him his first live glimpse of
Leota Mathilde Mason, belle of the Sleepers. Forgetting
about digital computers, he decided then and there to
fall in love with her. He was old-fashioned in many re-
spects.

He had spoken with her for precisely ninety-seven
seconds, the first twenty of which had been Arctic. But he
realized that she existed to be admired, so he insisted on
admiring her. Finally, she consented to be seen dancing
with him at the Millenium Party in Stockholm.

He had spent the following year anticipating her
seduction back to a reasonable and human mode of ex-
istence. Now, in the most beautiful city in the world, she
had just informed him that she was bored and was about
to retire until Bastille Day. It was then that Primitive
Moore realized what Civilized Moore must really have

62

known all along: the next time that he saw her she would
be approximately two days older and he would be going
on twenty-nine. Time stands still for the Set, but the
price of mortal existence is age. Money could buy her
the most desirable of all narcissist indulgences: the cold-
bunk.

And he had not even had the chance of a Stockholm
snowflake in the Congo to speak with her, to speak more
than a few disjointed sentences, let alone to try talking
her out of the ice-box club. (Even now, Setman laureate
Wayne Unger was moving to cut in on him, with the
expression of a golf pro about to give a lesson.)

"Hello, Leota. Sorry, Mister Uh."

Primitive Moore snarled and bashed him with his club;

Civilized Moore released one of the most inaccessible
women in the world to a god of the Set.

She was smiling. He was smiling. They were gone.

All the way around the world to San Francisco, sitting
in the bar of the stratocruiser in the year of Our Lord
Two Thousand—that is to say: two, zero, zero, zero-
Moore felt that Time was out of joint.

It was two days before he made up his mind what he
was going to do about it.

He asked himself (from the blister balcony of his suite
in the Hundred Towers of the Hilton-Frisco Complex):

Is this the girl I want to marry?

He answered himself (locking alternately at the traf-
fic capillaries below his shoetops and the Bay): Yes.

Why? he wanted to know.

Because she is beautiful, he answered, and the future
will be lovely. I want her for my beautiful wife in the
lovely future.

'So he decided to join the Set.

He realized it was no mean feat he was mapping out.
First, he required money, lots of money—green acres of

63

Presidents, to be strewn properly in the proper places.
The next requisite was distinction, recognition. Unfortu-
nately, the world was full of electrical engineers, hum-
ming through their twenty-hour weeks, dallying with pet
projects—competent, capable, even inspired—who did
not have these things. So he knew it would be difficult.

He submerged himself into research with a unique
will: forty, sixty, eighty hours a week he spent—reading,
designing, studying taped courses in subjects he had
never needed. He gave up on recreation.

By May, when he received his invitation, he stared at
the engraved (not fac-copy) parchment (not jot-sheet)
with bleary eyes. He had already had nine patents en-
tered and three more were pending. He had sold one
and was negotiating with Akwa Mining over a water
purification process which he had, he felt, fallen into.
Money he would have, he decided, if he could keep up
the .pace.

Possibly even some recognition. That part now de-
pended mainly on his puro-process and what he did
with the money. Leota (nee Lorelei) lurked beneath his
pages of formulas, was cubed Braque-like in the lines
on his sketcher; she burnt as he slept, slept as he
burned.

In June he decided he needed a rest.

"Assistant Division Chief Moore," he told the face in
the groomer (his laudatory attitude toward work had
already earned him a promotion at the Seal-Lock Di-
vision of Pressure Units, Corporate), "you need more
French and better dancing."

The groomer hands patted away at his sandy stubble
and slashed smooth the shagginess above his ears. The
weary eyes before him agreed bluely; they were tired
of studying abstractions.

The intensity of his recreation, however, was as fa-


64

tiguing in its own way as his work had been. His muscle
tone did improve as he sprang weightlessly through the
Young Men's Christian Association Satellite-3 Trampoline
Room; his dance steps seemed more graceful after he
had spun with a hundred robots and ten dozen women;

he took the accelerated Berlitz drug-course in French
(eschewing the faster electrocerebral-stimulation series,
because of a rumored transference that might slow his
reflexes later that summer); and he felt that he was be-
ginning to sound better—he had hired a gabcoach, and
he bake-ovened Restoration plays into his pillow (and
hopefully, into his head) whenever he slept (generally
every third day now)—so that, as the day of the Fete
drew near, he began feeling like a Renaissance courtier

(a tired one).

As he stared at Civilized Moore inside his groomer,
Primitive Moore wondered how long that feeling would

last.
Two days before Versailles he cultivated a uniform

tan and decided what he was going to say to Leota this

time:

—I love you? (Hell, no!)

—Will you quit the cold circuit? (Uh-uh).

—If I join the Set, will you join me? (That seemed the
best way to put it.)

Their third meeting, then, was to be on different terms.
No more stake-outs in the wastes of the prosaic. The
hunter was going to enter the brush. "Onwardi" grinned
the Moore in the groomer, "and Excelsior!"

She was dressed in a pale blue, mutie orchid corsage.
The revolving dome of the palace spun singing zodiacs
and the floors fiuoresced witch-fires. He had the un-
comfortable feeling that the damned flowers were grow-
ing there, right above her left breast, like an exotic para-

65

site; and he resented their intrusion with a parochial
possiveness that he knew was not of the Renaissance.
Nevertheless . . .

"Good evening. How do your flowers grow?"

"Barely and quite contrary," she decided, sipping
something green through a long straw, "but they cling
to life."

"With an understandable passion," he noted, talcing
her hand which she did not withdraw. "Tell me. Eve of
the Microprosopos—where are you headed?"

Interest flickered across her face and came to rest in
her eyes.

"Your French has improved, Adam—Kadmon . . . ?"
she noted. "I'm headed ahead. Where are you headed?"

"The same way."

"I doubt it—unfortunately."

"Doubt all you want, but we're parallel flows already."

"Is that a conceit drawn from some engineering lau-
reate?"

"Watch me engineer a cold-bunk," he stated.

Her eyes shot X-rays through him, warming his bones.

"I knew you had something on your mind. If you
were serious . . ."

"Us fallen spirits have to stick together here in Mal-
kuth—I'm serious." He coughed and talked eyetalk.
"Shall we stand together as though we're dancing. I see
Unger; he sees us, and I want you."

"All right."

She placed her glass on a drifting tray and followed
him out onto the floor and beneath the turning zodiac,
leaving Setman Unger to face a labyrinth of flesh. Moore
laughed at his predicament.

"It's harder to tell identities at an anti-costume party."

She smiled.

"You know, you dance differently today than last
night."

66

"I know. Listen, how do I get a private iceberg and a
key to Schlerafenland? I've decided it might be amus-
ing. I know that it's not a matter of genealogy, or even
money, for that matter, although both seem to help. I've
read all the literature, but I could use some practical
advice."

Her hand quivered ever so slightly in his own.

"You know the Doyenne./?" she said/asked.

"Mainly rumors," he replied, "to the effect that she's an
old gargoyle they've frozen to frighten away the Beast
come Armageddon."

Leota did not smile. Instead, she became an arrow
again.

"More or less," she replied coldly. "She does keep
beastly people out of the Set."

Civilized Moore bit his tongue.

"Although many do not like her," she continued, be-
coming slightly more animated as she reflected, "I've
always found her a rare little piece of chinoiserie. I'd
like to take her home, if I had a home, and set her on
my mantel, if I had a mantel."

"I've heard that she'd fit right into the Victorian Room
at the NAM Galleries," Mooie ventured.

"She was born during Vicky's reign—and she was in
her eighties when the cold-bunk was developed—but I
can safely say that the matter goes no further."

"And she decided to go gallivanting through Time at
that age?"

"Precisely," answered Leota, "inasmuch as she wishes
to be the immortal arbiter of trans-society."

They turned with the music. Leota had relaxed once
more.

"At one hundred and ten she's already on her way to
becoming an archetype," Moore noted. "Is that one of
the reasons interviews are so hard to come by?"

"One oi the reasons. . . ." she told him. "If, for ex-

67

ample, you were to petition Party Set now, you would
still have to wait until next summer for the interview-
provided you reached that stage."

"How many are there on the roster of eligibles?"

She shut her eyes.

"I don't know. Thousands, I should say. She'll only see
a few dozen, of course. The others will have been weeded
out, pruned off, investigated away, and variously dis-
qualified by the directors. Then, naturally, she will have
the final say as to who is in."

Suddenly green and limpid—as the music, the lights,
the ultrasonics, and the delicate narcotic fragrances of
the air altered subtly—the room became a dark, cool
place at the bottom of the sea, heady and nostalgic as
the mind of a mermaid staring upon the ruins of Atlantis.
The elegiac genius of the hall drew them closer together
by a kind of subtle gravitation, and she was cool and
adhesive as he continued:

"What is her power, really? I've read the tapes; I know
she's a big stockholder, but so what? Why can't the di-
rectors vote around her. If I paid out—"

"They wouldn't," she said. "Her money means nothing.
She is an institution.

"Hers is the quality of exclusiveness which keeps
the Set the Set," she went on. "Imitators will always fail
because they lack her discrimination. They'll take in any
boorish body who'll pay. That is the reason that People
Who Count," (she pronounced the capitals), "will neither
attend nor sponsor any but Set functions. All exclusive-
ness would vanish from the Earth if the Set lowered its
standards."

"Money is money," said Moore. "If others paid the
same for their parties . . ."

". . . Then the People who take their money would

68

cease to Count. The Set would boycott them. They would
lose their elan, be looked upon as hucksters."

"It sounds like a rather vicious moebius."

"It is a caste system with checks and balances. Nobody
really wants it to break down."

"Even those who wash out?"

"Silly! They'd be the last. There's nothing to stop them
from buying their own bunkers, if they can afford it,
and waiting another five years to try again. They'd be
wealthier anyhow for the wait, if they invest properly.
Some have waited decades, and are still waiting. Some
have made it after years of persisting. It makes the game
more interesting, the achievement more satisfying. In a
world of physical ease, brutal social equality, and rea-
sonable economic equality, exclusiveness in frivolity be-
comes the most sought-after of all distinctions."

" 'Commodities,'" he corrected.

"No," she stated, "it is not for sale. Try buying it if
money is all you have to offer."

That brought his mind back to more immediate con-
siderations.

"What is the cost, if all the other qualifications are
met?"

"The rule on that is sufficiently malleable to permit an
otherwise qualified person to meet his dues. He guaran-
tees his tenure, bunk-wise or Party-wise, until such a
time as his income offsets his debt. So if he only pos-
sesses a modest fortune, he may still be quite eligible.
This is necessary if we are to preserve our democratic
ideals."

She looked away, looked back.

"Usually a step-scale of percentages on the returns
from his investments is arranged. In fact, a Set counselor
will be right there when you liquidate your assets, and
he'll recommend the best conversions."

69

"Set must clean up on this."

"Certainement. It is a business, and the Parties don't
come cheaply. But then, you'd be a part of Set yourself
—being a shareholder is one of the membership require-
ments—and we're a restricted corporation, paying high
dividends. Your principal will grow. If you were to be
accepted, join, and then quit after even one objective
month, something like twenty actual years would have
passed. You'd be a month older and much wealthier
when you leave—and perhaps somewhat wiser."

"Where do I go to put my name on the list?"

He knew, but he had hopes.

"We can call it in tonight, from here. There is always
someone in the office. You will be visited in a week or
so, after the preliminary investigation."

"Investigation?"

"Nothing to worry about. Or have you a criminal rec-
ord, a history of insanity, or a bad credit rating?"

Moore shook his head.

"No, no, and no."

"Then you'll pass."

"But will I actually have a chance of getting in, against
all those others?"

It was as though a single drop of rain fell upon his
chest.

"Yes," she replied, putting her cheek into the hollow
of his neck and staring out over his shoulder so that he
could not see her expression, "you'll make it all the way
to the lair of Mary Maude Mullen with a member spon-
soring you. That final hurdle will depend on yourself."

"Then I'll make it," he told her.

". . . The interview may only last seconds. She's quick;

her decisions are almost instantaneous, and she's never
wrong."

"Then I'll make it," he repeated, exulting.

Above them, the zodiac rippled.

70

Moore found Darryl Wilson in a bannat in the Poco-
nos. The actor had gone to seed; he was not the man
Moore remembered from the award-winning frontier
threelie series. That man had been a crag-browed, bushy-
faced Viking of the prairies. In four years' time a facial
avalanche had occurred, leaving its gaps and runnels
across his expensive frown and dusting the face fur a
shade lighter. Wilson had left it that way and cau-
terized his craw with the fire water he had denied the
Bed Man weekly. Rumor had it he was well into his
second liver,

Moore sat beside him and inserted his card into the
counter slot. He punched out a Martini and waited.
When he noticed that the man was unaware of his pres-
ence, he observed, "You're Darryl Wilson and I'm Alvin
Moore. I want to ask you something."

The straight-shooting eyes did not focus.

"News media man?"

"No, an old fan of yours," he lied.

"Ask away then," said the still-familiar voice. "You are

a camera."

"Mary Maude Mullen, the bitch-goddess of the Set,"
he said. "What's she like?"

The eyes finally focused.

"You up for deification this session?"

"That's right."

"What do you think?"

Moore waited, but there were no more words, so he
finally asked, "About what?"

"Anything. You name it."

Moore took a drink. He decided to play the game if it
would make the man more tractable.

"I think I like Martinis," he stated. "Now—"

"Why?"

Moore growled. Perhaps Wilson was too far gone to
be of any help. Still, one more try ...

71

"Because they're relaxing and bracing, both at the
same time, which is something I need after coming all
this way."

"Why do you want to be relaxed and braced?"

"Because I prefer it to being tense and unbraced."

"Why?"

"What the hell is all this?"

"You lose. Go home."

Moore stood.

"Suppose I go out again and come back in and we
start over? Okay?"

"Sit down. My wheels turn slowly but they still turn,"
said Wilson. "We're talking about the same thing. You
want to know what Mary Maude is like? That's what
she's like—all interrogatives. Useless ones. Attitudes are
a disease that no one's immune to, and they vary so
easily in the same person. In two minutes she'll have you
stripped down to them, and your answers will depend on
biochemistry and the weather. So will her decision.
There's nothing I can tell you. She's pure caprice. She's
life. She's ugly."

"That's all?"

"She refuses the wrong people. That's enough. Go
away."

Moore finished his Martini and went away.

That winter Moore made a fortune. A modest one,
to be sure.

He quit his job for a position with the Akwa Mining
Research Lab, Oahu Division. It added ten minutes to
his commuting time, but the title. Processing Director,
sounded better than Assistant Division Chief, and he
was anxious for a new sound. He did not slacken the
pace of his forcefed social acceptability program, and
one of its results was a January lawsuit.

The Set, he had been advised, preferred divorce male
candidates to the perpetually single sort. For this reason,

72

he had consulted a highly-rated firm of marriage con-
tractors and entered into a three-month renewable, single
partner drop-option contract, with Diane Demetrics, an
unemployed model of Greek-Lebanese extraction.

One of the problems of modeling, he decided later,
was that there were many surgically-perfected female
eidolons in the labor force. His newly-acquired status
had been sufficient inducement to cause Diane to press a
breach of promise suit on the basis of an alleged oral
agreement that the option would be renewed.

Burgess Social Contracting Services of course sent a
properly obsequious adjuster, and they paid the court
costs as well as the medfees for Moore's broken nose.
(Diane had hit him with The Essentials of Dress Display,
a heavy, illustrated talisman of a manual, which she
carried about in a plastic case—as he slept beside their
pool—plastic case and all.)

So, by the month of March Moore felt ready and wise
and capable of facing down the last remaining citizen of
the nineteenth century.

By May, though, he was beginning to feel he had over-
trained. He was tempted to take a month's psychiatric
leave from his work, but he recalled Leota's question
about a history of insanity. He vetoed the notion and
thought of Leota. The world stood still as his mind
turned. Guiltily, he realized that he had not thought of
her for months. He had been too busy with his auto-
didactics, his new job, and Diane Demetrios to think of
the Setqueen, his love.

He chuckled.

Vanity, he decided; I want her because everyone wants
her.

No, that wasn't true either, exactly. . . . He wanted
—what?

He thought upon his motives, his desires.

He realized, then, that his goals had shifted; the act

73

had become the actor. What he really wanted, first and
foremost, impure and unsimple, was an in to the Set—
that century-spanning stratocruiser, luxury class, jetting
across tomorrow and tomorrow and all the days that
followed after—to ride high, like those gods of old who
appeared at the rites of the equinoxes, slept between
processions, and were remanifest with each new season,
the bulk of humanity living through'all those dreary days
that lay between. To be a part of Leota was to be a
part of the Set, and that was what he wanted now. So
of course it was vanity. It was love.

He laughed aloud. His autosurf initialed the blue lens
of the Pacific like a manned diamond, casting the sharp
cold chips of its surface up and into his face.

Returning from absolute zero, Lazarus-like, is neither
painful nor disconcerting, at first. There are no sensations
at all until one achieves the temperature of a reasonably
warm corpse. By that time though, an injection of nirvana
flows within the body's thawed rivers.

It is only when consciousness begins to return, thought
Mrs. Mullen, to return with sufficient strength so that
one fully realizes what has occurred—that the" wine has
survived another season in an uncertain cellar, its vintage
grown rarer still—only then does an unpronounceable
fear enter into the mundane outlines of the bedroom
furniture—for a moment.

It is more a superstitious attitude than anything, a
mental quaking at the possibility that the stuff of life,
one's own life, has in some indefinable way been tam-
pered with. A microsecond passes, and then only the dim
recollection of a bad dream remains.

She shivered, as though the cold was still locked within
her bones, and she shook off the notion of nightmares
past.

74

She turned her attention to the man in the white coat
who stood at her elbow.

"What day is it?" she asked him.

He was a handful of dust in the wines of Time. . . .

"August eighteen, two thousand-two," answered the
handful of dust. "How do you feel?"

"Excellent, thank you," she decided. "I've just touched
upon a new century—this makes three I've visited—so
why shouldn't I feel excellent? I intend to visit many
more."

"I'm sure you will, madam."

The small maps of her hands adjusted the counter-
pane. She raised her head.

"Tell me what is new in the world."

The doctor looked away from the sudden acetylene
burst behind her eyes.

"We have finally visited Neptune and Pluto," he nar-
rated. "They are quite uninhabitable. It appears that
man is alone in the solar system. The Laka Sahara pro-
ject has run into more difficulties but it seems that
work may begin next spring now that those stupid French
claims are near settlement. , . ." Her eyes fused his dust
to planes of glass.

"Another competitor, Futuretime Gay, entered into
the time-tank business three years ago," he recited, try-
ing to smile, "but we met the enemy and they are
ours—Set bought them out eight months ago. By the way,
our own bunkers are now much more sophistica—"

"I repeat," she said, "what is new in the world, doctor?"

He shook his head, avoiding the look she gave him.

"We can lengthen the remissions now," he finally told
her, "quite a time beyond what could be achieved by
the older methods."

"A better delaying action?"

"Yes."

"But not a cure?"

75

He shook his head.

"In my case," she told him, "it has already been abnor-
mally delayed. The old nostrums have already worn
thin. For how long are the new ones good?"

"We still don't know. You have an unusual variety of
M.S. and it's complicated by other things."

"Does a cure seem any nearer?"

"It could take another twenty years. We might have
one tomorrow."

"I see." The brightness subsided. "You may leave now,
young man. Turn on my advice tape as you go."

He was glad to let the machine take over.

Diane Demetrios dialed the library and requested the
Setbook. She twirled the page-dial and stopped.

She studied the screen as though it were a mirror, her
face undergoing a variety of expressions.

"I look just as good," she decided after a time. "Better,
even. Your nose could be changed, and your brow-
line . . .

"If they weren't facial fundamentalists," she told the
picture, "if they didn't discriminate against surgery, lady
—you'd be here and I'd be there.

"Bitch!"

The millionth barrel of converted seawater emerged,
fresh and icy, from the Moore Purifier. Splashing from
its chamber-tandem and flowing through the conduits, it
was clean, useful, and singularly unaware of these vir-
tues. Another transfusion of briny Pacific entered at the
other hand.

The waste products were used in pseudoceramicware.
The man who designed the doubleduty Purifier was
rich.

The temperature was 82° in Oahu.
The million-first barrel splashed forth. > . .

76

They left Alvin Moore surrounded by china dogs.

Two of the walls were shelved, floor to ceiling. The
shelves were lined with blue, green, pink, russet (not to
mention ochre, vermilion, mauve, and saffron) dogs,
mainly glazed (although some were dry-rubbed primi-
tives ), ranging from the size of a largish cockroach up to
that of a pigmy warthog. Across the room a veritable
Hades of a wood fire roared its metaphysical challenge
into the hot July of Bermuda.

Set above it was a mantelpiece bearing more dogs.

Set beside the hellplace was a desk, at which was
seated Mary Maude Mullen, wrapped in a green and
black tartan. She studied Moore's file, which lay open on
the blotter. When she spoke to him she did not look up.

Moore stood beside the chair which had not been
offered him and pretended to study the dogs and the
heaps of Georgian kindling that filled the room to over-
flowing.

While not overly fond of live dogs, Moore bore them
no malice. But when he closed his eyes for a moment he
experienced a feeling of claustrophobia.

These were not dogs. There were the unblinking aliens
staring through the bars of the last Earthman's cage.
Moore promised himself that he would say nothing com-
plimentary about the garish rainbow of a houndpack
(fit, perhaps, for stalking a jade stag the size of a Chi-
huahua); he decided it could only have sprung from
the mental crook of a monomaniac, or one possessed of a
very feeble imagination and small respect for dogs.

After verifying all the generalities listed on his peti-
tion, Mrs. Mullen raised her pale eyes to his.

"How do you like my doggies?" she asked him.

She sat there, a narrow-faced, wrinkled woman with
flaming hair, a snub nose, an innocent expression, and
the lingering twist of the question lurking her thin lips.

Moore quickly played back his last thoughts and de-

77




cided to maintain his integrity in regards china dogs by
answering objectively.

"They'le quite colorful," he noted.

This was the wrong answer, he felt, as soon as he said
it. The question had been too abrupt. He had entered
the study ready to he about anything but china dogs. So
he smiled.

"There are a dreadful lot of them about. But of course
they don't bark or bite or shed, or do other things. . . ."

She smiled back.

"My deai little, colorful little bitches and sons of
bitches," she said. "They don't do anything. They're sort
of symbolic. That's why I collect them too.

"Sit down"—she gestured—"and pretend you're comfor-
table."

"Thanks."

"It says here that you rose only recently from the
happy ranks of anonymity to achieve some sort of eso-
teric distinction in the sciences. Why do you wish to
resign it now?"

"I wanted money and prestige, both of which I was
given to understand would be helpful to a Set candi-
date."

"Aha! Then they were a means rather than an end?"

"That is correct."

"Then tell me why you want to join the Set."

He had written out the answer to that one months
ago. It had been bake-ovened into his brain, so that he
could speak it with natural inflections. The words began
forming themselves in his throat, but he let them die
there. He had planned them for what he had thought
would be maximum appeal to a fan of Tennyson's. Now
he was not so sure.

Still . . . He broke down the argument and picked a
neutral point—the part about following knowledge like
a sinking star.

78

"There will be a lot of changes over the next several
decades. I'd like to see them-with a young man's eyes."

"As a member of the Set you will exist more to be seen
than to see," she replied, making a note in his file. ". . .
And I think we'll have to dye your hair if we accept
you."

"The hell you say! —Pardon me, that slipped out."

"Good." She made another note. "We can't have them
too inhibited—nor too uninhibited, for that matter. Your
reaction was rather quaint." She looked up again.

"Why do you want so badly to see the future?"
H He felt uneasy. It seemed as though she knew he was
pying.

I- "Plain human curiosity," he answered weakly, "as well
'{•as some professional interest. Being an engineer—"
^ "We're not running a seminar," she observed. "You'd
"not be wasting much time outside of attending Parties if
you wanted to last very long with the Set. In twenty
years—no, ten—you'll be back in kindergarten so far as
engineering is concerned. It will all be hieroglyphics to
you. You don't read hieroglyphics, do you?"

He shook his head.

"Good," she continued, "I have an inept comparison.
—Yes, it will all be hieroglyphics, and if you should leave
the Set you would be an unskilled draftsman—not that
you'd have need to work. But if you were to want to
work, you would have to be self-employed—which grows
more and more difficult, almost too difficult to attempt,
as time moves on. You would doubtless lose money."

He shrugged and raised his palms. He hod been think-
ing of doing that. Fifty years, he had told himself, and
we could kick the Set, be rich, and I could take refresher
courses and try for a consultantship in marine engineer-
ing.

"I'd know enough to appreciate things, even if I
couldn't participate," he explained.

79

"You'd be satisfied just to observe?"

"I think so," he lied.

"I doubt it." Her eyes nailed him again. "Do you think
you are in love with Leota Mason? She nominated you,
but of course that is her privilege."

"I don't know," he finally said. "I thought so at first,
two years ago. . . ."

"Infatuation is fine," she told him. "It makes for good
gossip. Love, on the other hand, I will not tolerate. Purge
yourself of such notions. Nothing is so boring and ungay
at a Set affair. It does not make for gossip; it makes for
snickers.

"So is it infatuation or love?"

"Infatuation," he decided.

She glanced into the fire, glanced at her hands.

"You will have to develop a Buddhist's attitude toward
the world around you. That world will change from day
to day. Whenever you stop to look at it, it will be a
different world—unreal."

He nodded.

"Therefore, if you are to maintain your stability, the
Set must be the center of all things. Wherever your heart
lies, there also shall reside your soul."

He nodded again.

". . . And if you should happen not to like the future,
whenever you do stop to take a look at it, remember
you cannot come back. Don't just think about that, feel
it!"

He felt it.

She began jotting. Her right hand began suddenly to
tremble. She dropped the pen and too carefully drew
her hand back within the shawl.

"You are not so colorful as most candidates," she told
him, too naturally, "but then, we're short on the soulful
type at present. Contrast adds depth and texture to our
displays. Go view all the tapes of our past Parties."

80

"I already have."

". . . And you can give your soul to that, or a significant
part thereof?"

"Wherever my heart lies . . ."

"In that case, you may return to your lodgings. Mister
Moore. You will receive our decision today."

Moore stood. There were so many questions he had
not been asked, so many things he had wanted to say,
had forgotten, or had not had opportunity to say, . . .
Had she already decided to reject him? he wondered.
Was that why the interview had been so brief? Still, her
final remarks had been encouraging.

He escaped from the fragile kennel, all his pores feel-
ing like fresh nail holes.

He lolled about the hotel pool all afternoon, and in
the evening he moved into the bar. He did not eat dinner.

When he received the news that he had been accepted,
he was also informed by the messenger that a small gift
to his inquisitor was a thing of custom. Moore laughed
drunkenly, foreseeing the nature of the gift.

Mary Maude Mullen received her first Pacificware
dog from Oahu with a small, sad shrug that almost
turned to a shudder. She began to tremble then, nearly
dropping it from her fingers. Quickly, she placed it on
the bottommost shelf behind her desk and reached for
her pills; later, the flames caused it to crack.

They were dancing. The sea was an evergreengold
sky above the dome. The day was strangely young.

Tired remnants of the Party's sixteen hours, they clung
to one another, feet aching, shoulders sloped. There
were eight couples still moving on the floor, and the
weary musicians fed them the slowest music they could
make. Sprawled at the edges of the world, where the
green bowl of the sky joined with the blue tiles of the
Earth, some five hundred people, garments loosened,

81







mouths open, stared like goldfish on a tabletop at the
water behind the wall.

"Think it'll rain?" he asked her.

"Yes," she answered.

"So do I. So much for the weather. Now, about that
week on the moon—?"

"What's wrong with good old mother Earth?" she
smiled.

Someone screamed. The sound of a slap occurred al-
most simultaneously. The sci earning stopped.

"I've never been to the moon," he replied.

She seemed faintly anr-sed.

"I have. I don't like it."

"Why?"

"It's the cold, crazy lights outside the dome," she said,
"and the dark, dead roc1 s evpryw' re around the dome,"
she winced. "They make it seem like a cemetery at the
end of Time. . . ."

"Okay," he said, "forget it."

".,. . And the feeling of disembodied lightness as you
move abo'"t inside the dome—"

"All right!"

"I'm sorry." She brushed his neck with her lips. He
touched her forehead with his. "The Set has lost its shel-
lac," she smiled.

"We're not on tape anymore. It doesn't matter now."

A woman began sobbing somewhere near the giant sea-
horse that had been the refreshment table. The musi-
cians played more loudly. The sky was full of luminiscent
starfish, swimming moistly on their tractor beams. One
of the starfish dripped salty water on them as it passed
overhead.

"We'll leave tomorrow," he said.

"Yes, tomorrow," she said.

"How about Spain?" he said. "This is the season of the

82

sherries. There'll be the Juegos Florales de la Vendimia
Jerezana. It may be the last."

"Too noisy," she said, "with all those fireworks."
"But gay."

"Gay," she sighed with a crooked mouth. "Let's go to
Switzerland and pretend we're old, or dying of some-
thing romantic."

"Necrophilist," he grinned, slipping on a patch of mois-
ture and regaining his balance. "Better it be a quiet loch
in the Highlands, where you can have your fog and
miasma and I can have my milk and honeydew un-
blended."

"Nay," she said, above a quick babble of drunken
voices, "let's go to New Hampshire."

"What's wrong with Scotland?"

"I've never been to New Hampshire."

"I have, and I don't like it. It looks like your descrip-
tion of the moon."

A moth brushing against a candle flame, the tremor.

The frozen bolt of black lightning lengthened slowly in
the green heavens. A sprinkling of soft rain began.

As she kicked off her shoes he reached out for a glass
on the floating tray above his left shoulder. He drained it
and replaced it.

"Tastes like someone's watering the drinks."

"Set must be economizing," she said.

Moore saw Unger then, glass in hand, standing at the
edge of the floor watching them.

"I see Unger.

"So do I. He's swaying."

"So are we," he laughed.

The fat bard's hair was a snowy chaos and his left eye
was swollen nearly shut. He collapsed with a bubbling
murmur, spilling his drink. No one moved to help him.

"I believe he's over indulged himself again."

83

"Alas, poor Unger," she said without expression, "I
knew him well."

The rain continued to fall and the dancers moved
about the floor like the figures in some amateur puppet
show.

"They're coming!" cried a non-Setman, crimson cloak
flapping. "They're coming down!"

The water streamed into their eyes as-every conscious
head in the Party Dome was turned upward. Three
silver zeppelins grew in the cloudless green.

"They're coming for us," observed Moore.

"They're going to make it!"

The music had paused momentarily, like a pendulum
at the end of its arc. It began again.

"Good night, ladies, played die band, good night, la-
dies . . .

"We're going to live!"

"We'll go to Utah," he told her, eyes moist, "where
they don't have seaquakes and tidal waves."

Good night ladies . . .

"We're going to live!" .

She squeezed his hand.

"Merrily we roll along," the voices sang, "roll along..."

"'Roll along,'" she said.

" 'Merrily,' " he answered.

"O'er the deep blue sea!"

A Set-month after the nearest thing to a Set disaster
on record (that is to say, in the year of Our Lord and
President Cambert 2019, twelve years after the quake),
Setman Moore and Leota (ne Lachesis) stood outside
the Hall of Sleep on Bermuda Island. It was almost
morning.

"I believe I love you," he mentioned.

"Fortunately, love does not require an act of faith," she

84

noted, accepting a light for her cigar, "because I don't
believe in anything."

"Twenty years ago I saw a lovely woman at a Party
and I danced with her."

"Five weeks ago," she amended.

"I wondered then if she would ever consider quitting
the Set and going human again, and being heir to mortal
ills."

"I have often wondered that myself," she said, "in idle
moments. But she won't do it. Not until she is old and
ugly."

"That means forever," he smiled sadly.

"You are noble." She blew smoke at the stars, touched
the cold wall of the building. "Someday, when people
no longer look at her, except for purposes of comparison
with some fluffy child of the far future—or when the
world's standards of beauty have changed—then she'll
transfer from the express run to the local and let the
rest of the world go by."

"Whatever the station, she will be all alone in- a
strange town," said Moore. "Every day, it seems, they
remodel the world. I met a fraternity brother at that
dinner last night—pardon me, last year—and he treated
me as if he were my father. His every other word was
'son' or 'boy' or 'kid,' and he wasn't trying to be funny.
He was responding to what he saw. My appetite was
considerably diminished.

"Do you realize we're going?" he asked the back of
her head as she turned away to look out over the
gardens of sleeping flowers. "Away! That's where. We
can never go back! The world moves on while we sleep."

"Refreshing, isn't it?" she finally said. "And stimulat-
ing, and awe-inspiring. Not being bound, I mean. Every-
thing burning. Us remaining. Neither time nor space can
hold us, unless we consent.

"And I do not consent to being bound," she declared.

85

"To anything?"

"To anything."

"Supposing it's all a big Joke."

"What?"

"The world. —Supposing every man, woman, and child
died last year in an invasion by creatures from Alpha
Centauri, everyone but the frozen Set. Supposing it was
a totally effective virus attack. . . ."

"There are no creatures in the Centauri System. I read
that the other day."

"Okay, someplace else then. Supposing all the remains
and all the traces of chaos were cleaned up, and then
one creature gestured with a flipper at this building."
Moore slapped the wall. "The creature said: 'Hey! There
are some live ones inside, on ice. Ask one of the sociolo-
gists whether they're worth keeping, or if we should
open the refrigerator door and let them spoil.' Then
one of the sociolgists came and looked at us, all in our
coffins of ice, and he said: "They might be worth a few
laughs and a dozen pages in an obscure periodical. So
let's fool them into thinking that everything is going on
Just as it was before the invasion. All their movements,
according to these schedules, are preplanned, so it
shouldn't be too difficult. We'll fill their Parties with
human simulacra packed with recording machinery and
we'll itemize their behavior patterns. We'll vary their
circumstances and they'll attribute it to progress. We can
watch them perform in all sorts of situations that way.
Then, when we're finished, we can always break their
bunktimers and let them sleep on—or open their doors
and watch them spoil.'

"So they agreed to do it," finished Moore, "and here
we are, the last people alive on Earth, cavorting before
machines operated by inhuman creatures who are watch-
ing us for incomprehensible reasons."

86

"Then we'll give them a good show," she replied, "and
maybe they'll applaud us once before we spoil."

She snubbed out her cigar and kissed him good night.
They returned to their refrigerators.

It was twelve weeks before Moore felt the need
for a rest from the Party circuit. He was beginning to
grow fearful. Leota had spent nonfunctional decades of
her time vacationing with him, and she had recently
been showing signs of sullenness, apparently regretting
these expenditures on his behalf. So he decided to see
something real, to take a stroll in the year 2078. After
all, he was over a hundred years old.

The Queen Will Live Forever, said the faded clipping
that hung in the main corridor of the Hall of sleep. Be-
neath the bannerline was the old/recent story of the con-
quest of the final remaining problems of Multiple Sclero-
sis, and the medical ransom of one of its most notable
victims. Moore had not seen the Doyenne since the day
of his interview. He did not care whether he ever saw
her again.

He donned a suit from his casualware style locker and
strolled through the gardens and out to the airfield. There
were no people about.

He did not really know where he wanted to go until
he stood before a ticket booth and the speaker asked
him, "Destination, please."

"Uh—Oahu. Akwa Labs, if they have a landing field of
their own."

"Yes, they do. That will have to be a private charter
though, for the final fifty-six miles—"

"Give me a private charter all the way, both ways."

"Insert your card, please."

He did.

After five minutes the card popped back into his wait-
ing hand. He dropped it into his pocket.

87

"What time will I arrive?" he asked.

"Nine hundred thirty-two, if you leave on Dart Nine
six minutes from now. Have you any luggage?"

"No."

"In that case, your Dart awaits you in area A-ll."

Moore crossed the field to the VTO Dart numbered
"Nine." It flew by tape. The flight pattern, since it was a
specially chartered run, had bee'i worked out back at
the booth, within milliseconds of Moore's naming his
destination. It was then broadcast-transferred to a blank
tape inside Dart Nine; an auto-alternation brain per-
mitted the Dart to correct its course in the face of un-
foreseen contingencies and later recorrect itself, landing
precisely where it was scheduled to come down.

Moore mounted the ramp and stopped to slip his
card into the slot beside the hatchway. The hatch swung
open and he collected his card and entered. He selected
a seat beside a port and snapped its belt around his mid-
dle. At this, the hatchwday swung itself shut.

After a few minutes the belt unfastened itself and
vanished into the arms of his seat. The Dart was cruising
smoothly now.

"Do you wish to have the lights dimmed? Or would
you prefer to have them brighter?" asked a voice at his
side.

"They're fine just the way they are," he told the in-
visible entity.

"Would you care for something to eat? Or something
to drink?"

"I'll have a Martini."

There was a sliding sound, followed by a muted click.
A tiny compartment opened in the wall beside him. His
Martini rested within.

He removed it and sipped a sip.

Beyond the port and toward the rear of the Dart, a
faint blue nimbus arose from the sideplates.

88

"Would you care for anything else?" Pause. "Shall I
read you an article on the subject of your choice?" Pause.
"Or fiction?" Pause. "Or poetry?" Pause. "Would you care
to view the catalog?" Pause. "Or perhaps you would
prefer music?"

"Poetry?" repeated Moore.

"Yes, I have many of—"

"I know a poet," he remembered. "Have you anything
by Wayne Unger?"

There followed a brief mechanical meditation, then:

"Wayne Unger. Yes," answered the voice. "On call
are his Paradise Unwanted, Fungi of Steel, and Chisel
in the Sky."

"Which is his most recent work?" asked Moore.

"Chisel in the Sky."

"Read it to me."

The voice began by reading him all the publishing
data and copyright information. To Moore's protests it
answered that it was a matter of law and cited a prece-
dent case. Moore asked for another Martini and waited.

Finally, " 'Our Wintered Way Through Evening, and
Burning Bushes Along It,'" said the voice.

"Huh?"

"That is the title of the first poem."

"Oh, read on."

" '(Where only the evergreens whiten...)

Winterflaked ashes heighten
in towers of blizzard.
Silhouettes unseal an outline.
Darkness, like an absence of faces,
pours from the opened home;

it seeps through shattered pine
and fiows the fractured maple.

89

Perhaps it is the essence senescent,

dreamculled from the sleepers,

t1wt soaks upon this road

in weather-born excess.

Or perhaps the great Anti-Life

learns to paint with a vengeance,

to run an icicle down the gargoyle's eye.

For properly speaking, though
no one can confront himself in toto,
J see your falling sky, gone gods,
as in a smoke-filled dream
of ancient statues burning,
soundlessly, down to the ground.

(. . . and never the everwhite's green.)'"

There was a ten-second pause, then: "The next poem
is entitled—"

"Wait a minute," asked Moore. "That first one—? Are
you programmed to explain anything about it?"

"I am sorry, I am not. That would require a more
complicated unit."

"Repeat the copyright date of the book."

"2016, in the North American Union—"

"And it's his most recent work?"

"Yes, he is a member of the Party Set and there is gen-
erally a lapse of several decades between his books."

"Continue reading "

The machine read on. Moore knew little concerning
verse, but he was struck by the continual references to
ice and cold, to snow and sleep.

"Stop," he told the machine. "Have you anything of
his from before he joined the Set?"

"Paradise Unwanted was published in 1981, two years

90

after he became a member. According to its Forward,
however, most of it was written prior to his joining."

"Read it."

Moore listened carefully. It contained little of ice,
snow, or sleep. He shrugged at his minor discovery. His
seat immediately adjusted and readjusted to the move-
ment.

He barely knew Unger. He did not like his poetry.
He did not like most poetry, though.

The reader began another.

" 'In the Dogged House,'" it said.

" 'The heart is a graveyard of crigas,
hid Jar from the hunter's eye,
where love wears death like enamel
and dogs crawl in to die . . .'"

Moore smiled as it read the other stanzas. Recognizing
its source, he liked that one somewhat better.

"Stop reading," he told the machine.

He ordered a light meal and thought about Unger. He
had spoke with him once. When was it?

2017 . . . ? Yes, at the Free Workers' Liberation Cen-
tennial in the Lenin Palace.

It was rivers of vodka. . . .

Fountains of juices, like inhuman arteries slashed,
spurted their bright umbrellas of purple and lemon
and green and orange. Jewels to ransom an Emir flashed
near many hearts. Their host, Premier Korlov, seemed
a happy frost giant in his display.

... In a dance pavilion of polaroid crystal, with the
world outside blinking off and on, on and off—like an
advertisement, Unger had commented, both elbows rest-
ing on the bartop and his foot on the indispensable rail.

His head had swiveled as Moore approached. He was

91

a bleary-eyed albino owl. "Albion Moore, I believe," he
had said, extending a hand. "Quo vadis dammit?"

"Grape juice and wadka," said Moore to the unneces-
sary human standing beside the mix-machine. The un-
formed man pressed two buttons and passed the glass
across the two feet of frosty mahogany. Moore twitched
it toward Unger in a small salute. "A happy Free Work-
ers' Liberation Centennial to you."

"I'll drink to liberation." The poet leaned toward and
poked his own combination of buttons. The man in the
uniform sniffed audibly.

They drank a drink together.

"They accuse us"—Unger's gesture indicated the world
at large—"of neither knowing nor caring anything about
un-Set things, un-Set people."

"Well, it's true, isn't it?"

"Oh yes, but it might be expanded upon. We're the
same way with our fellows. Be honest now, how many
Setmen are you acquainted with?"

"Quite a few."

"I didn't ask how many names you knew."

"Well, I talk with them all the time. Our environment
is suited to much improvement and many words—and
we have all the time in the world. How many friends do
you have?" he asked.

"I just finished one," grunted the poet, leaning forward.
"I'm going to mix me another."

Moore didn't feel like being depressed or joked with
and he was not sure which category this fell into. He
had been living inside a soap bubble since after the ill-
starred Davy Jones Party, and he did not want anyone
poking sharp things in his direction.

"So, you're your own man. If you're not happy in the
Set, leave."

You're not being a true tovarisch," said Unger, shaking
a finger. "There was a time when a man could tell his

92

troubles to bartenders and barfriends. You wouldn't re-
member, though—those days went out when the nickle-
plated barmatics came in. Damn their exotic eyes and
scientific mixing!"

Suddenly he punched out three drinks in rapid succes-
sion. He slopped them across the dark, shiny surface.

"Taste them! Sip each of them!" he enjoined Moore.
"Can't tell them apart without a scorecard, can you?"

"They're dependable that way."

"Dependable? Hell yes! Depend on them to create
neurotics. One time a man could buy a beer and bend an
ear. All that went out when the dependable mix-ma-
chines came in. Now we join a talk-out club of manic
change and most unnatural! Oh, had the Mermaid been
such!" he complained in false notes of frenzy. "Or the
Bloody Lion of Stepney! What jaded jokes the fellows
of Marlowe had been!"

He sagged.

"Aye! Drinking's not what it used to be."

The international language of his belch caused the
mix-machine attendant to avert his face, which be-
trayed a pained expression before he did so.

"So I'll repeat my question," stated Moore, making
conversation. "Why do you stay where you're unhappy?
You could go open a real bar of your own, if that's what
you like. It would probably be a success, now that I
think of it—people serving drinks and all that."

"Go to! Go to!' I shan't say where!" He stared at noth-
ing. "Maybe that's what I'll do someday, though," he
reflected, "open a real bar. ..."

Moore turned his back to him then, to watch Leota
dancing with Korlov. He was happy.

"People join the Set for a variety of reasons," Unger
was muttering, "but the main one is exhibitionism, with
the titillating wraith of immortality lurking at the stage
door, perhaps. Attracting atention to oneself gets harder

93

and harder as time goes on. It's almost impossible in the
sciences. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries you
could still name great names—now it's gieat research
teams. The arts have been democratized out of existence
—and where have all the audiences gone? I don't mean
spectators either.

"So we have the Set," he continued. "Take our sleep-
ing beauty there, dancing with Korlov-^"

"Huh?"

"Pardon me, I didn't mean to awaken you abruptly. I
was saying that if she wanted attention Miss Mason
couldn't be a stripper today, so she had to join the Set.
It's even better than being a threelie star, and it requires
less work—"

"Stripper?"

"A folk artist who undressed to music."

"Yes, I recall hearing of them."

"That's gone too, though," sighed Unger, "and while
I cannot disapprove of the present customs of dress and
undress, it still seems to me as if something bright and
frail died in the elder world."

"She is bright, isn't she?"

"Decidedly so."

They had taken a short walk then, outside, in the cold
night of Moscow. Moore did not really want to leave,
but he had had enough to drink so that he was easy to
persuade. Besides that, he did not want the stumbling
babbler at his side to fall into an excavation or wander
off lost, to miss his flight or turn up injured. So they
shuffled up bright avenues and down dim streets until
they came to the Square. They stopped before a large,
dilapidated monument. The poet broke a small limb
from a shrub and bent it into a wreath. He tossed it
against the wall.

"Poor fellow," he muttered.

"Who?"

94

"The guy inside."

"Who's that?"

Unger cocked his head at him.

"You really don't know?"

"I admit there are gaps in my education, if that's what
you mean. I continually strive to fill them, but I always
was weak on history. I specialized at an early age."

Unger jerked his thumb at the monument.

"Noble Macbeth lies in state within," he said. "He was
an ancient king who slew his predecessor, noble Dun-
can, most heinously. Lost of other people too. When
he took the throne he promised he'd be nice to his sub-
jects, though. But the Slavic tempeiament is a strange
thing. He is best remembered for his _many fine speeches,
which were translated by a man named Pasternak. No-
body reads them anymore."

Unger sighed and seated himself on a stair. Moore
joined him. He was too cold to be insulted by the arro-
gant mocking of the drunken poet.

"Back then, people used to fight wars," said Unger.

"I know,'" responded Moore, his fingers freezing; "Na-
poleon once burnt part of this city."

Unger tipped his hat.

Moore scanned the skyline. A bewildering range of
structures hedged the Square—here, bright and func-
tional, a ladder-like office building composed its heights
and witnessed distances, as only the planned vantages of
the very new can manage; there, a day time aquarium
of an agency was now a dark mirror, a place where the
confidence-inspiring efficiencies of rehearsed officials
were displayed before the onlooker; and across the
Square, its purged youth fully restored by shadow, a
deserted onion of a cupola poked its sharp topknot after
soaring vehicles, a number of which, scuttling among the
star fires, were indicated even now—and Moore blew
upon his fingers and jammed his hands into bis pockets.

95

"Yes, nations went to war," Unger was saying. "Ar-
tilleries thundered. Blood was spilled. People died. But
we lived through it, crossing a shaky Shinvat word by
word. Then one day there it was. Peace. It had been
that way a long time before anyone noticed. We still
don't know how we did it. Perpetual postponement and
a short memory, I guess, as man's attention became oc-
cupied twenty-four hours a day with other things. Now
there is nothing left to fight over, and everyone is show-
ing off the fruits of peace—because everyone has some,
by the roomful. All they want. More. These things that
fill the rooms, though," he mused, "and the mind-
how they have proliferated! Each month's version is
better than the last, in some hypersophisticated manner.
They seem to have absorbed the minds that are ab-
sorbed with them. . . ."

"We could all go live in the woods," said Moore, wish-
ing he had taken the time to pocket a battery crystal
and a thermostat for his suit.

"We could do lots of things, and we will, eventually—I
suppose. Still, I guess we could wind up in the woods,
at that."

"In that case, let's go back to the Palace while there's
still time. I'm fiozen."

"Why not?"

They climbed to their feet, began walking back.

"Why did you Join the Set anyhow? So you could be
discontent over the centuries?"

"Nay, son," the poet clapped him on the shoulder. "I'm
an audience in search of an entertainment."

It took Moore an hour to get the chill out of his bones.

"Ahem. Ahem," said the voice. "We are about to land
at Akwa Labs, Oahu."

The belt snaked out into Moore's lap. He snapped it
tight

h                       96

A sudden feeling prompted him to ask: "Read me
that last poem from Chisel again."
" 'Future Be Not Impatient,'" stated the voice:

" 'Someday, perhaps, but not this day.
Sometime; but then, not now.
Man is a monument-making mammal.
Never ask me how.'"

He thought of Leota's description of the moon and he
hated Unger for the forty-four seconds it took him to dis-
embark. He was not certain why.

He stood beside Dart Nine and watched the approach
of a small man wearing a smile and gay tropical cloth-
ing. He shook hands automatically.

". . . Very pleased," the man named Teng was say-
ing, "and glad there's not much around for you to recog-
nize anymore. We've been deciding what to show you
ever since Bermuda called." Moore pretended to be
aware of the call. ". . . Not many people remember
their employers from as far back as you do," Teng was
saying.

Moore smiled and fell into step with him, heading to-
ward the Processing Complex.

"Yes, I was curious," he agreed, "to see what it all
looks like now. My old ofBce, my lab—"

"Gone. of course."

". . . our first chamber-tandem, with its big-nozzled in-
jectors—"

"Replaced, naturally."

"Naturally. And the big old pumps . . ."

"Shiny and new."

Moore brightened. The sun, which he had not seen for
several days/years, felt good on his back, but the air
conditioning felt even better as they entered the first
building. There was something of beauty in the pure

97

functional compactness of everything about them, some-
thing Unger might have called by a different name, he
realized, but it was beauty to Moore. He ran his hand
along the sides of the units he did not have time to
study. He tapped the conduits and peered into the kilns
which processed the by-product ceramicware; he nodded
approval and paused to relight his pipe whenever the
man at his side asked his opinion of something too tech-
nically remote for him to have any opinion,

They crossed catwalks, moved through the temple-
like innards of shut-down tanks, traversed alley-ways
where the silent, blinking panels indicated that unseen
operations were in progress. Occasionally, they met a
worker, seated before a sleeping trouble-board, watching
a broadcast entertainment or reading something over his
portable threelie. Moore shook hands and forgot names.

Processing Director Teng could not help but be partly
hypnotized—both by Moore's youthful appearance and
the knowledge that he had developed a key process at
some past date (as well as by his apparent understand-
ing of present operations)—into believing that he was
an engineer of his own breed, and up-to-date in his
education. Actually, Mary Mullen's prediction that his
profession would some day move beyond the range of
his comprehension had not yet come to pass—but he could
see that it was the direction in which he was headed.
Appropriately, he had noticed his photo gathering dust
in a small lobby, amid those of Teng's other dead and

retired predecessors.

Sensing his feeling, Moore asked, "Say, do you think

I could have my old job back?"

The man's head jerked about Moore remained ex-
pressionless.

"Well—I suppose—something—could be worked . . ."
he ended lamely as Moore broke into a grin and twisted
the question back into casual conversation. It was some-


98

how amusing to have produced that sudden, strange
look of realization on the man's bored face, as he actu-
ally saw Moore for the first time. Frightening, too.

"Yes, seeing all this progress—is inspiring." Moore pro-
nounced. "It's almost enough to make a man want to
work again. —Glad I don't have.to, of course. But there's a
bit of nostalgia involved in coming back after all these
years and seeing how this place grew out of the shoe-
string operation it seemed then—grew into more build-
ings than I could walk through in a week, and all of
them packed with new hardware and working away to
beat the band. Smooth. Efficient. I like it. I suppose you
like working here?"

"Yes," sighed Teng, "as much as a man can like work-
ing. Say, were you planning on staying overnight? There
a weekly employees' luau and you'd be very welcome."
He glanced at the wafer of a watchface clinging to his
wrist. "In fact, it's already started," he added.

"Thanks," said Moore, "but I have a date and I have
to be going. I just wanted to reaffirm my faith in prog-
ress. Thanks for the tour, and thanks for your time."

"Any time," Teng steered him toward a lush Break
Boom. "You won't be wanting to Dart back for awhile
yet, will you?" he said. "So while we're having a bite to
eat in here I wonder if I could ask you some questions
about the Set. Its entrance requirements in particu-
lar. ..."

All the way around the world to Bermuda, getting
happily drunk in the belly of Dart Nine, in the year of
Our Lord twenty seventy-eight, Moore felt that Time
had been put aright.

"So you want to have it./?" said/asked Mary Maude,
uncoiling carefully from the caverns of her shawl.
"Yes."

99

"Why?" she asked.

"Because I do not destroy that which belongs to me. I
possess so very little as it is."

The Doyenne snorted gently, perhaps in amusement.
She tapped her favorite dog, as though seeking a reply

from it.

"Though it sails upon a bottomless sea toward some
fabulous orient," she mused, "the ship will still attempt to
lower an anchor. I do not know why. Can you tell me?
Is it simply carelessness on the part of the captain? Or

the second mate?"

The dog did not answer. Neither did anything else.

"Or is it a mutineer's desire to turn around and go
back?" she inquired. "To return home?"

There was a brief stillness. Finally:

"I live in a succession of homes. They are called hours.

Each is lovely."

"But not lovely enough, and never to be revisited,
eh? Permit me to anticipate your next words: T do not
intend to marry. I do not intend to leave the Set. I shall
have my child—' By the way, what will it be, a boy or a

girl?"
"A girl."

"'—I shall have my daughter. I shall place her in a
fine home, arrange her a glorious future, and be back in
time for the Spring Festival.'" She rubbed her glazed
dog as though it were a crystal and pretended to peer
through its greenish opacity. "Am I not a veritable
gypsy?" she asked.

"Indeed."

"And you think this will work out?"

"I fail to see why it should not"

"Tell me which her proud father will do," she inquired,
"compose her a sonnet sequence, or design her me-
chanical toys?"

100

"Neither. He shall never know. He'll be asleep until
spring, and I will not. She must never know either."

"So much the worse."

"Why/pray tell?"

"Because she will become a woman in less than two
months, by the clocks of the Set—and a lovely woman, I
daresay—because she will be able to afford loveliness."

"Of course."

"And, as the daughter of a member, she will be emi-
nently eligible for Set candidacy."

"She may not want it."

"Only those who cannot achieve it allude to having
those sentiments. No, she'll want it. Everyone does. —
And, if her beauty should be surgically obtained, I be-
lieve that I shall, in this instance, alter a rule of mine. I
shall pass on her and admit her to the Set. She will then
meet many interesting people—poets, engineers, her
mother. . . ."

"No! I'd tell her, before I'd permit that to happen!"

"Ahal Tell me, is your fear of incest predicated upon
your fear of competition, or is it really the other way
around?"

"Please! Why are you saying these horrible things?"

"Because, unfortunately, you are something I can no
longer afford to keep around. You have been an excellent
symbol for a long time, but now your pleasures have
ceased to be Olympian. Yours is a lapse into the mun-
dane. You show that the gods are less sophisticated
than schoolchildren—that they can be victimized by bi-
ology, despite the oceans of medical allies at our com-
mand. Princess, in the eyes of the world you are my
daughter, for I am the Set. So take some motherly advice
and retire. Do not attempt to renew your option. Get
married first, and then to sleep for a few months—till
spring, when your option is up. Sleep intermittently in
the bunker, so that a year or so will pass. We'll play up

101

the romantic aspects of your retirement. Wait a year or
two to bear your child. The cold sleep won't do her
any harm; there have been other cases such as yours. If
you fail to agree to this, our motherly admonition is
that you face present expulsion."

"You can't!"

"Read your contract."

"But no one need ever "know!"

"You silly little dollface!" The acetylene blazed forth.
"Your glimpses of the outside have been fragmentary
and extremely selective—for at least sixty years. Every
news medium in the world watches almost every move
every Setman makes, from the time he sits up in his
bunker until he retires, exhausted, after the latest Party.
Snoopers and newshounds today have more gimmicks
and gadgets in their arsenals than your head has colorful
hairs. We cant hide your daughter all her life, so we
won't even try. We'd have trouble enough concealing
matters if you decided not to have her—but I think we
could outbribe and outdrug our own employees.

"Therefore, I call upon you for a decision."

"I am sorry."

"So am I," said the Doyenne.

The girl stood.

From somewhere, as she left, she seemed to hear the
whimpering of a china dog.

Beyond the neat hedgerows of the garden and down a
purposfully irregular slope ran the unpaved pathway
which wandered, like an impulsive river, through neck-
tickling stiaits of unkempt foisythia, past high islands of
mobbed sumac, and by the shivering branches, like
waves, of an occasional ginkgo, wagging at the overhead
gulls, while dreaming of the high-flying Archaeopteryx
about to break through its heart in a dive, and perhaps
a thousand feet of twistings are requiied to negotiate the

102

two hundred feet of planned wilderness that separates
the gardens of the Hall of Sleep from the artificial
ruins which occupy a full, hilly acre, dotted here and
there by incipient Jungles of lilac and the occasional bell
of a great willow—which momentarily conceal, and then
guide the eye on toward broken pediments, smashed
friezes, half-standing, shred-topped columns, then fallen
columns, then faceless, handless statues, and finally, seem-
ingly random heaps of rubble which lay amid these
things; here, the path over which they moved then forms
a delta and promptly loses itself where the tides of Time
chafe away the memento mori quality that the ruins
first seem to spell, acting as a temporal entasis and in
the eye of the beholding. Setman, so that he can look
upon it all and say, "I am the older than this," and his
companion can reply, "We will pass again some year
and this too, will be gone," (even though she did not
say it this time) feeling happier by feeling the less mortal
by so doing; and crossing through the rubble, as they
did, to a place where barbarously ruined Pan grins from
inside the ring of a dry fountain, a new path is to be lo-
cated, this time an unplanned and only recently formed
way, where the grass is yellowed underfoot and the
walkers must go single file because it leads them through
a place of briars, until they reach the old breakwall
over which they generally climb like commandos in order
to gain access to a quarter mile strand of coved and de-
serted beach, where the sand is not quite so clean as
the beaches of the town—which are generally sifted every-
third day—but where the shade is as intense, in its own
way, as the sunlight, and there are flat rocks offshore for
meditation.

"You're getting lazy," he commented, kicking off his
shoes and digging his toes into the cool sand. "You didn't
climb over."

"I'm getting lazy," she agreed.

103

They threw off their robes and walked to the water's
edge.

"Don't push!"

"Come on. I'll race you to the rocks."
For once he won.

Loafing in the lap of the Atlantic, they could have
been any two bathers in any place, in any time.

"1 could stay here forever."

"It gets cold nights, and if there's a bad storm you
might catch something or get washed away."

"I meant," she amended, "if it could always be like
this."   -

" 'Verweile doch, du hist so schon,'" he reminded.
"Faust lost a bet that way, remember? So would a Sleeper.
Unger's got me reading again—Hey! What's the matter?"

"Nothing!"

"There's something wrong, little girl. Even I can telL"

"So what if there is?"

"So a lot, that's what. Tell me."

Her hand bridged the narrow channel between their
rocks and found his. He rolled onto his side and stared
-at her satin-wet hair and her stuck-together eyelashes,
the dimpled deserts of her cheeks, and the bloodied
oasis of her mouth. She squeezed his hand.

"Let's stay here forever—despite the chill, and being
washed away."

"You are indicating that—?"
"We could get off at this stop."
"I suppose. But—"

"But you like it-now? You like the big charade?"
He looked away.

"I think you were right," she told him, "that night-
many years ago."

"What night?"

"The night you said it was all a Joke—that we are the
last people alive on Earth, performing before machines

104

operated by inhuman creatures who watch us for in-
comprehensible purposes. What are we but wave-pat-
terns of an oscilloscope? I'm sick of being an object of
contemplation!"                ~

He continued to stare into the sea.

"I'm rather fond of the Set now," he finally responded.
"At first I was ambivalent toward it. But a few weeks-
years—ago I visited a place where I used to work. It
was—different. Bigger. Better run. But more than that,
actually. It wasn't just that it was filled with things I
couldn't have guessed at fifty or sixty years ago. I had an
odd feeling while I was there. I was with a little chatter-
box of a Processing director named Teng, and he was
yammering away worse than Unger, and I was just
staring at all those tandem-tanks and tiers of machinery
that had grown up inside the shell of that first old build-
ing—sort of like inside a womb—and I suddenly felt
that someday something was going to be born, born out
of steel and plastic and dancing electrons, in such a
stainless, sunless place—and that something would be so
fine that I would want to be there to see it. I couldn't
dignify it by calling it a mystical experience or anything
like that. It was just sort of a feeling I had. But if that
moment could stay forever . . . Anyhow, the Set is my
ticket to a performance I'd like to see."

"Darling," she began, "it is anticipation and recollection
that fill the heart—never the sensation of the moment."

"Perhaps you are right. ..."

His grip tightened on her hand as the tunnel between
their eyes shortened. He leaned across the water and
kissed the blood from her mouth.

'"Verweile doch ..."

". . . Du bist so schon"

It was the Party to end all Parties. The surprise an-
nouncement of Alvin Moore and Leota Mathilde Mason

105

struck the Christmas Eve gathering of the Set as just the
thing for the season. After an extensive dinner and the
exchange of bright and costly trifles the lights were
dimmer. The giant Christmas tree atop the transparent
penthouse blazed like a compressed galaxy through the
droplets of melted snow on the ceilingpane.

It was nine by all the clocks of London.

"Married on Christmas, divorced on Twelfth Night,"
said someone in the darkness.

"What'U they do for an encore?" whispered someone
else.

There were giggles and several off-key carols followed
them. The backlight pickup was doubtless in action.

"Tonight we are quaint," said Moore.

"We danced in Davy Jones' Locker," answered Leota,
"while they cringed and were sick on the floor."

"It's not the same Set," he told her, "not really. How
many new faces have you counted? How many old ones
have vanished? It's hard to tell. Where do old Setmen
go?"

"The graveyard of the elephants," she suggested.
"Who knows?"

" 'The heart is a graveyard of crigas,'" recited Moore,

° 'hid far from the hunter's eye,

where love wears death like enamel

and dogs crawl in to die."

"That's Unger's, isn't it?" she asked.

"That's right, I just happened to recall it"

"I wish you hadn't. I don't like it."

"Sorry."

"Where is Unger anyway?" she asked as the darkness
retreated and the people arose.

"Probably at the punchbowl—or under the table."

"Not this early in the evening—for being under the
table, I mean."

Moore shifted.

106

"What are we doing here anyhow?" he wanted to know.
"Why did we have to attend this Party?"

"Because it is the season of charity."

"Faith and hope, too," he smirked. "You want to be
maudlin or something? All right, I'll be maudlin with
you. It is a pleasure, really."

He raised her hand to his lips.

"Stop that!"

"All right."

He kissed her on the mouth. There was laughter.

She flushed but did not rise from his side.

"If you want to make a fool of me—of us," he said,
"I'll go more than halfway. Tell me why we had to come
to this Party and announce our un-Setness before every-
one? We could have just faded away from the Parties,
slept until spring, and let our options run out."

"No. I am a woman and I could not resist another
Party—the last one of the year, the very last—and wear
your gift on my finger and know that deep down inside,
the others do envy us—our courage, if nothing else—and
probably our happiness."

"Okay," he agreed, "I'll drink to it—to you, anyway."
He raised his glass and downed it. There was no fireplace
to throw it into, so as much as he admired the gesture he
placed it back on the table.

"Shall we dance? I hear music."

"Not yet. Let's just sit here and drink."

"Fine."

When all the clocks in London said eleven, Leota
wanted to know where Unger was.

"He left,' a slim girl with purple hair told her, "right
after dinner. Maybe indigestion"—she shrugged—"or may-
be he went looking for the Globe."

She frowned and took another drink.

Then they danced. Moore did not really see the
room through which they moved, nor the other dancers.

107

They were all the featureless characters in a boot; he
had already closed. Only the dance was real—and the
woman with whom he was dancing.

Time's friction, he decided, and a raising of the sights.
I have what I wanted and still I want more. I'll get over
it.

It was a vasty hall of mirrors. There were hundreds
of dancing Alvin Moores and Leotas (nee Mason) danc-
ing. They were dancing at all their Parties of the past
seventy-some years—from a Tibetan sid lodge to Davy
Jones' Locker, from a New Years Eve in orbit to the
floating Palace of Kanayasha, from a Halloween in the
caverns of Carlsbad to a Mayday at Delphi—they had
danced everywhere, and tonight was the last Party, good
night, ladies. . . .

She leaned against him and said nothing and her
breath collared his neck.

"Good night, good night, good night," he heard himself
saying, and they left with the bells of midnight, early,
early, and it was Christmas as they entered the hopcar
and told the Set chauffeur that they were returning early.

And they passed over the stratocaruiser and settled
beside the Dart they had come in, and they crossed
through the powdery fleece that lay on the ground and
entered the smaller craft.

"Do you wish to have the lights dimmed? Or would
you prefer to have them brighter?" asked a voice at their
side.

"Dim them."

"Would you case for something to eat? Or something
to drink?"

"No."

"No."

"Shall I read you an article on the subject of your
choice?" Pause. "Or fiction?" Pause. "Or poetry?" Pause.

108

"Would you care to view the catalog?" Pause. "Or per-
haps you would prefer music?"
"Music," she said. "Soft. Not the kind you listen to."
After about ten minutes of near-sleep, Moore heard
the voice:

"Hilted of flame,

our frail phylactic blade

slits black

beneath Polestar's

pinprick comment,

foredging burrs

of mitigated hell,

spilling light without illumination.

Strands of song,

to share its stinging flight,

are shucked and scraped

to fit an idiot theme.

Here, through outlocked chaos,

climbed of migrant logic,

the forms of black notation

blackly dice a flame."

"Turn it off," said Moore. "We didn't ask you to read."
"I'm not reading," said the voice, "I'm composing."
"Who-?"

Moore came awake and turned in his seat, which
promptly adjusted to the movement.-A pair of feet pro-
jected over the arm of a double seat to the rear.
"Unger?"
"No, Santa Claus. Ho! Ho!"
"What are you doing going back this early?"
"You just answered your own question, didn't you?"
Moore snorted and settled back once more. At his

109

side, Leota was snoring delicately, her seat collapsed
into a couch.

He shut his eyes, but knowing they were not alone he
could not regain the peaceful drifting sensation he had
formerly achieved. He heard a sigh and the approach of
lurching footfalls. He kept his eyes closed, hoping Unger
would fall over and go to sleep. He didn't.

Abruptly, his voice rang out, a magnificently dreadful
baritone:

"I was down to Saint James' Infir-r-rmary," he sang. "I
saw my ba-a-aby there, stretched out on a long whi-i-ite
ta-a-able—so sweet, so cold, so fair—"

Moore swung his left hand, cross-body at the poet's
midsection. He had plenty of target, but he was too
slow. Unger blocked his fist and backed away, laughing.

Leota shook herself awake.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Composing," he answered, "myself."

"Merry Christmas," he added.

"Go to hell," answered Moore.

"I congratulate you on your recent nuptials. Mister
Moore."

"Thanks."

"Why wasn't I invited?"

"It was a simple ceremony."

He turned.

"Is that true, Leota? An odd comrade in arms like
me, not invited, just because it wasn't showy enough for
my elaborate tastes?"

She nodded, fully awake now.

He struck his forehead.

"Oh, I am wounded!"

"Why don't you go back to wherever you came from?"
asked Moore. "The drinks are on the house."

"I can't attend midnight mass in an inebriated condi-
tion."

no

Moore's fingers twitched back into fists.
"You may attend a mass for the dead without having

to kneel."

"I believe you are hinting that you wish to be alone.
I understand."

He withdrew to the rear of the Dart. After a time
he began to snore.

"I hope we never see him again," she said.

"Why? He's a harmless drunk."

"No, he isn't. He hates us—because we're happy and he

isn't."

"I think he's happiest when he's unhappy," smiled
Moore, "and whenever the temperature drops. He loves
the cold-bunk because it's like a little death to sleep in it.
He once said, 'Each Setman dies many deaths. That's
what I like about being a Setman.'

"You say more sleep won't be injurious—" he asked
abruptly.

"No, there's no risk."

Below them. Time fled backward through the cold.
Christmas was pushed out into the hallway, and over
the threshold of the front door to their world—Alvin's,
Leota's, and Unger's world—to stand shivering on the
doorsill of its own Eve, in Bermuda.

Inside the Dart, passing backward through Time,
Moore recalled that New Year's Eve Party many years
ago, recalled his desires of that day and reflected that
they sat beside him now; recalled the Parties since then
and reflected that he would miss all that were yet to
come; recalled his work in the time before Time—a few
months ago—and reflected that he could no longer do it
properly—and that Time was indeed out of joint and
that he could not set it aright; he recalled his old apart-
ment, never revisited, all his old friends, including Diane
Demetrios, now dead or senile, and reflected that, be-
yond the Set which he was leaving, he knew no one,

save possibly the girl at his side. Only Wayne Unger
was ageless, for he was an employee of the eternal.
Given a month or two Unger could open up a bar, form
his own circle of outcasts and toy with a private renais-
sance, if he should ever decide to leave.

Moore suddenly felt very stale and tired, and he
whispered to their ghostly servant for a Martini and
reached across his dozing wife to fetch it from the cubi-
cle. He sat there sipping it, wondering about the world
below.

He should have kept with life, he decided. He knew
nothing of contemporary politics, or law, or art; his stan-
dards were those grated on by the Set, and concerned
primarily with color, movement, gaiety, and clever
speech; he was reduced again to childhood when it came
to science. He knew he was wealthy, but the Set had
been managing all his finances. All he had was an all-
purpose card, good anywhere in the world for any sort
of purchase, commodity or service-wise. Periodically, he
had examined his file and seen balance sheets which
told him he need never worry about being short of money.
But he did not feel confident or competent when it came
to meeting the people who resided in the world outside.
Perhaps he would appear stodgy, old-fashioned, and
"quaint" as he had felt tonight, without the glamor of
the Set to mask his humanity.

Unger snored, Leota breathed deeply, and the world
turned. When they reached Bermuda they returned to
the Earth.

They stood beside the Dart, just outside the flight
terminal.

"Care to take a walk?" asked Moore.
"I am tired, my love," said Leota, staring in the direc-
tion of the Hall of Sleep. She looked back.
He shook his head. "I'm not quite ready."

112

She turned to him. He kissed her.

"I'll see you then in April, darling. Good night."

"April is the crudest month," observed Unger. "Come,
engineer, I'll walk with you as far as the shuttle stands."

They began walking. They moved across the roadway
in the direction opposite the terminal, and they entered
upon the broad, canopied walk that led to the ro-car
garage.

It was a crystalline night, with stars like tinsel and a
satellite beacon blazing like a gold piece deep within
the pool of the sky. As they walked, their breath fumed
into white wreathes that vanished before they were fully
formed. Moore tried in vain to light his pipe. Finally, he
stopped and hunched his shoulders against the wind
until he got it going.

"A good night for walking," said Unger.

Moore grunted. A gust of wind lashed a fiery rain of
loose tobacco upon his cheek. He smoked on, hands in
the pockets of his jacket, collar raised. The poet clapped
him on the shoulder.

"Come with me into the town," he suggested. "It's only
over the hill. We can walk it."

"No," said Moore, through his teeth.

They strode on, and as they neared the garage Unger
grew uneasy.

"I'd rather someone were with me tonight," he said
abruptly. "I feel strange, as though I'd drunk the draught
of the centuries and suddenly am wise in a time when
wisdom is unnecessary. I—I'm afraid."

Moore hesitated.

"No," he finally repeated, "it's time to say good-bye.
You're traveling on and we're getting off. Have fun."

Neither offered to shake hands, and Moore watched
him move into the shuttle stop.

Continuing behind the building, Moore cut diagonally

113

across the wide lawns and into the gardens. He strolled
aimlessly for a few minutes, then found the path that
led down to the ruins.

The going was slow and he wound his way through
the cold wilderness. After a period of near-panic when
he felt surrounded by trees and he had to backtrace, he
emerged into the starlit clearing where menaces of
shrubbery dappled the broken buildings with patterns
of darkness, moving restlessly as the winds shifted.

The grass rustled about his ankles as he seated himself
on a fallen pillar and got his pipe going once more.

He sat thinking himself into marble as his toes grew
numb, and he felt very much a part of the place; an
artificial scene, a ruin transplanted out of history onto
unfamiliar grounds. He did not want to move. He just
wanted to freeze into the landscape and become his
own monument. He sat there making pacts with imagi-
nary devils: he wanted to go back, to return with Leota
to his Frisco town, to work again. Like Unger, he sud-
denly felt wise in time when wisdom was unnecessary.
Knowledge was what he needed. Fear was what he had.

Pushed on by the wind, he picked his way across the
plain. Within the circle of his fountain. Pan was either
dead or sleeping. Perhaps it is the cold sleep of the gods,
decided Moore, and Pan will one day awaken and blow
upon his festival pipes and only the wind among high
towers will answer, and the shuffling tread of an assess-
ment robot be quickened to scan him—because the Party
people will have forgotten the festival melodies, and the
waxen ones will have isolated out the wisdom of the
blood on their colored slides and inoculated mankind
against it—and, programmed against emotions, a fri-
volity machine will perpetually generate the sensations
of gaiety into the fever-dreams of the delirious, so that
they will not recognize his tunes—and there shall be
none among the children of Phoebus to even repeat the

114

Attic cry of his first passing, heard those many Christ-
mases ago beyond the waters of the Mediterranean.

Moore wished that he had stayed a little longer with
Unger, because he now felt that he had gained a glimpse
of the man's perspective. It had taken the fear of a new
world to generate these feelings, but he was beginning
to understand the poet. Why did the man stay on in the
Set, though? he wondered. Did he take a masochistic
pleasure in seeing his ice-prophecies fulfilled, as he moved
further and further away from his own times? Maybe
that was it.

Moore stirred himself into one last pilgrimage. He
walked along their old path down to the breakwall. The
stones were cold beneath his fingers, so he used the stile
to cross over to the beach.

He stood on a rim of rust at the star-reflecting bucket-
bottom of the world. He stared out at the black humps
of the rocks where they had held their sunny colloquy
days/months ago. It was his machines he had spoken of
then, before they had spoken of themselves. He had be-
lieved, still believed, in their inevitable fusion with the
spirit of his kind, into greater and finer vessels for life.
Now he feared, like Unger, that by the time this oc-
curred something else might have been lost, and that
the fine new vessels would only be partly filled, lacking
some essential ingredient. He hoped Unger was wrong;

he felt that the ups and downs of Time might at some
future equinox restore all those drowsing verities of the
soul's undersides that he was now feeling—and that there
would be ears to hear the piped melody, and feet that
would move with its sound. He tried to believe this. He
hoped it would be true.

A star fell, and Moore looked at his watch. It was
late. He scuffed his way back to the wall and crossed
over it again.

115

Inside the pre-sleep clinic he met Jameson, who was
alieady yawning from his prep-injection. Jameson was
a tall, thin man with the hair of a cherub and the eyes
of its opposite number.

"Moore," he grinned, watching him hang his jacket on
the wall and roll up his sleeve, "you going to spend your
honeymoon on ice?"

The hypogun sighed in the medic's husky hand and
the prep-in]ection entered Moore's arm.

"That's right," he replied, leveling his gaze at the not
completely sober Jameson. "Why?"

"It just doesn't seem the thing to do," Jameson ex-
plained, still grinning. "If I were mairied to Leota you
wouldn't catch me going on ice. Unless—-"

Moore took one step toward him, the sound in his
throat like a snarl. Jameson drew back, his dark eyes
widening.

"I was joking!" he said. "I didn't . . ."

There was a pain in Moore's injected arm as the big
medic seized it and jerked him to a halt.

"Yeah," said Moore, "good night. Sleep tight, wake
sober."

As he turned toward the door the medic released his
arm. Moore rolled down his sleeve and donned his jacket
as he left.

"You're off your rocker," Jameson called after him.

Moore had about half an hour before he had to hit his
bunker. He did not feel like heading for it at the moment.
He had planned on waiting in the clinic until the injec-
tion began to work, but Jameson's presence changed

that.

He walked through the wide corridors of the Hall of
Sleep, rode a lift up to the bunkers, then strode down
the hallway until he came to his door. He hesitated,
then passed on. He would sleep there for the next three

116

and a half months; he did not feel like giving it half of
the next hour also.

He refilled his pipe. He would smoke through a sentinel
watch beside the ice goddess, his wife. He looked about
for wandering medics. One is supposed to refrain from
smoking after the prep-injection, but it had never both-
ered him yet, or anyone else he knew of.

An intermittent thumping sound reached his ears as
he moved on up the hallway. It stopped as he rounded a
corner, then began again, louder. It was coming from
up ahead.

After a moment there was another silence.

He paused outside Leota's door. Grinning around his
pipe, he found a pen and drew a line through the last
name on her plate. He printed "Moore" in above it. As
he was forming the final letter the pounding began again.

It was coming from inside her room.

He opened the door, took a step, then stopped.

The man had his back to him. His right arm was raised.
A mallet was clenched in his fist.

His panted mutterings, like an incantation, reached
Moore's ears:

"'Strew on her roses, roses, and never spray a yew
... In quiet she reposes—'"

Moore was across the chamber He seized the mallet
and managed to twist it away. Then he felt something
break inside his hand as his fist connected with a jaw.
The man collided with the opposite wall, then pitched
(forward onto the floor.

"Leota!" said Moore. "Leota . . ."

Cast of white Parian she lay, deep within the coils of
the bunker. The canopy had been raised high overhead.
Her flesh was already firm as stone—because there was
no blood on her breast where the stake had been driven
in. Only cracks and fissures, as in stone.

117

"No," said Moore.

The stake was a very hard synthowood—like cocobolo,
or quebracho, or perhaps lignum vitae—still to be un-
splintered. . . .

"No," said Moore.

Her face had the relaxed expression of a dreamer, her
hair was the color of aluminum. His ring was on her
finger. . . .

There was a murmuring in the comer of the room.

"Unger," he said flatly, "why—did—you—do it?"

The man sucked air around his words. His eyes were
focused on something nameless.

". . . Vampire," he muttered, "luring men aboard her
Flying Dutchman to drain them across the years. . . .
She is the future—a goddess on the outside and a thirsting
vacuum within," he stated without emotion. "'Strew on
her roses, roses . . . Her mirth the world required—She
bathed it in smiles of glee . . .' She was going to leave
me way up here in the middle of the air. I can't get off
the merry-go-round and I can't have the brass ring. But
no one else will lose as I have lost, not now. '. . . Her
life was turning, turning, in mazes of heat and sound—'
I thought she would come back to me, after she'd tired
of you."

He raised his hand to cover his eyes as Moore ad-
vanced upon him.

"To the technician, the future—"

Moore hit him with the hammer, once twice. After
the third blow he lost count because his mind could not
conceive of any number greater than three.

Then he was walking, running, the mallet still clutched
in his hand—past doors like blind eyes, up corridors,
down seldom-used stairwells.

As he lurched away from the Hall of Sleep he heard
someone calling after him through the night. He kept
running.

us

After a long while he began to walk again. His hand
was aching and his breath burned within his lungs. He
climbed a hill, paused at its top, then descended the
other side.

Party Town, an expensive resort—owned and spon-
sored, though seldom patronized by the Set—was de-
serted, except for the Christmas lights in the windows,
and the tinsel, and the boughs of holly. From some dim
adytum the recorded carols of a private celebration
could be heard, and some laughter. These things made
Moore feel even more alone as he walked up one street
and down another, his body seeming ever more a thing
apart from him as the prep-injection took its inevitable
effect. His feet were leaden. His eyes kept closing and
be kept forcing them back open.

There were no servics going on when he entered the
church. It was warmer inside. He was alone there, too.

The interior of the church was dim, and he was at-
tracted to an array of lights about the display at the foot
of a statute. It was a manger scene. He leaned back
against a pew and stared at the mother and the child, at
the angels and the inquisitive cattle, at the father. Then
he made a sound he had no words for and threw the
mallet into the little stable and turned away. Clawing
at the wall, he staggered off a dozen steps and collapsed,
cursing and weeping, until he slept.

They found him at the foot of the cross.

Justice had become a thing of streamlined swiftness
since the days of Moore's boyhood. The sheer force of
world population had long ago crowded every docket of
every court to impossible extremes, until measures were
taken to waive as much of the paraphernalia as could be
waived and hold court around the clock. That was why
Moore faced Judgment at ten o'clock in the evening,
two days after Christmas.

119

The trial lasted less than a quarter of an hour. Moore
waived representation; the charges were read; he en-
tered a plea of guilty, and the judge sentenced him to
death in the gas chamber without looking up from the
stack of papers on his bench.

Numbly, Moore left the courtroom and was returned to
a cell for his final meal, which he did not remember eat-
ing. He had no conception of the juridical process in
this year in which he had come to rest. The Set attorney
had simply looked bored as he told him his story, then
mentioned "symbolic penalties" and told him to waive
representation and enter a simple plea of "guilty to the
homicide as described." He signed a statement to that
effect. Then the attorney had left him and Moore had
not spoken with anyone but his warders up until the
time of the trial, and then only a few words before he
went into court. And now—to receive a death sentence
after he had admitted he was guilty of killing his wife's
murderer—he could not conceive that justice had been
done. Despite this, he felt an unnatural calm as he
chewed mechanically upon whatever he had ordered.
He was not afraid to die. He could not believe in it.

An hour later they came for him. He was led to a
small, airtight room with a single, thick window set high
in its metal door. He seated himself upon the bench
within it and his gray-uniformed guards slammed the
door behind him.

After an interminable time he heard the pellets break-
ing and he smelled the fumes. They grew stronger.

Finally, he was coughing and breathing fire and gasp-
ing and crying out, and he thought of her lying there in
her bunker, the ironic strains of Unger's song during
their Dart-flight recurring in his mind:

"1 was down to Saint James Inftr-r-rmary.
I saw my ba-a-aby there,

120

Stretched out on a long whi-i-ite ta-a-dble—
So sweet, so cold, so fair . . ."

Had Unger been consciously contemplating her murder
even then? he wondered. Or was it something lurking
below his consciousness? Something he had felt stirring,
' so that he had wanted Moore to stay with him—to keep
it from happening?

He would never know, he realized, as the fires
reached into his skull and consumed his brain.

As he awoke, feeling very weak upon white linen, the
voice within his earphones was saying to Alvin Moore:

". . . .Let that be a lesson to you."

Moore tore off the earphones with what he thought was
a strong gesture, but his muscles responded weakly. Still,
the earphones came off.

He opened his eyes and stared.

He might be in the Set's Sick Ward, located high up
in the Hall of Sleep, or in hell. Franz Andrews, the attor-
ney who had advised him to plead guilty, sat at his bed-
side.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

"Oh, great! Care to play a set of tennis?"

The man smiled faintly.

"You have successfully discharged your debt to soci-
ety," he stated, "through the symbolic penalty proce-
dure."

"Oh, that explains everything," said Moore wryly. Fi-
nally: "I don't see why there had to be any penalty, sym-
bolic or otherwise. That rhymer murdered my wife."

"He'll pay for it," said Andrews.

Moore rolled onto his side and studied the dispassion-
ate, flat-featured face at his elbow. The attorney's short
hair was. somewhere between blond and gray and his
gaze unflinchingly sober.

121

"Do you mind repeating what you Just said?"

"Not at all. I said he'd pay for it."

"He's not dead!"

"No, he's quite alive—two floors above us. His head has
to heal before he can stand trial. He's too ill to face exe-
cution."

"He's alive!" said Moore. "Alive? Then what the hell
was I executed for?"

"Well, you did Mil the man," said Andrews, somewhat
annoyed. "The fact that the doctors were later able to re-
vive him does not alter the fact that a homicide occurred.
The symbolic penalty exists for all such cases. You'll think
twice before ever doing it again."

Moore tried to rise. He failed.

"Take it easy. You're going to need several more days
of rest before you can get up. Your own revival was only
last night."

Moore chuckled weakly. Then he laughed for a long,
long time. He stopped, ending with a little sob.

"Feel better now?"

"Sure, sure," he whispered hoarsely. "Like a million
bucks, or whatever the crazy currency is these days.
What kind of execution will Unger get for murder?"

"Gas," said the attorney, "the same as you, if the al-
leged-"

"Symbolic, or for keeps?"

"Symbolic, of course."

Moore did not remember what happened next, except
that he heard someone screaming and there was sud-
denly a medic whom he had not noticed doing something
to his arm. He heard the soft hiss of an injection. Then he
slept.

When he awakened he felt stronger and he noticed an
insolent bar of sunlight streaking the wall opposite him.
Andrews appeared not to have moved from his side.

He stared at the man and said nothing.

122

"I have been advised," said the attorney, "of your lack
of knowledge concerning the present state of law in these
matters. I did not stop to consider the length of your
membership in the Set. These things so seldom occur—in
fact, this is the first such case I've ever handled—that I
simply assumed you knew what a symbolic penalty was
when I spoke with you back in your cell. I apologize."

Moore nodded.

"Also," he continued, "I assumed that you had consid-
ered the circumstances under which Mister Unger al-
legedly committed a homicide—"

"'Allegedly,' hell! I was there. He drove a stake
through her heart!" Moore's voice broke at that point.

"It was to have been a precedent-making decision,"
said Andrews, "as to whether he was to be indicated now
for attempted homicide, or be detained until after the
operation and face homicide charges if things do not go
well. The matter of his detention then would have raised
many more problems—which were fortunately resolved at
his own suggestion. After his recovery he will retire to
his bunker and remain there until the nature of the ,of-
fense had been properly determined. He has volunteered
to do this of his own free will, so no legal decision was
delivered on the matter. His trial is postponed, therefore,
until some of the surgical techniques have been refined—"

"What surgical techniques?" asked Moore, raising him-
self into a seated position and leaning against the head-
board. His mind was fully alert for the first time since
Christmas. He felt what was coming next.
He said one word.
"Explain."
Andrews shifted in his chair.

"Mister Unger," he began, "had a poet's conception as
to the exact location of the human heart. He did not
pierce it centrally, although the accidental angling of the
stake did cause it to pass through the left ventricle. —That




123

can be repaired easily enough, according to the medics.

"Unfortunately, however, the slanting of the shaft
caused it to strike against her spinal column," he said,
"smashing two vertebrae and cracking several others. It
appears that the spinal cord was severed. . . ."

Moore was numb again, numb with the realization that
had dawned as the lawyer's words were filling the air be-
tween them. Of course she wasn't dead. Neither was she
alive. She was sleeping the cold sleep. The spark of life
would remain within her until the arousal began. Then,
and only then, could she die. Unless—

". . . Complicated by her pregnancy and the period
of time necessary to raise her body temperature to an
operable one," Andrews was saying.

"When are they going to operate?" Moore broke in.

"They can't say for certain, at this time," answered
Andrews. "It will have to be a specially designed opera-
tion, as it raises problems for which there are answers in
theory but not in practice. Any one of the factors could
be treated at present, but the others couldn't be held in
abeyance while the surgery is going on. Together, they
are rather formidable—to repair the heart and fix the
back, and to save the child, all at the same time, will re-
quire some new instrumentation and some new tech-
niques."

"How long?" insisted Moore.

Andrews shrugged.

"They can't say. Months, years. She's all right as she is
now, but—"

Moore asked him to go away, rather loudly, and he did.

The following day, feeling dizzy, he got to his feet and
refused to return to bed until he could see Unger.
"He's in custody," said the medic who attended him.
"No he isn't," replied Moore. "You're not a lawyer, and

124

I've already spoken with one. He won't be taken into
legal custody until after he awakens from his next cold
sleep—whenever that is."

It took over an hour for him to get permission to visit
Unger. When he did, he was accompanied by Andrews
and two orderlies.

"Don't you trust the symbolic penalty?" he smirked at
Andrews. "You know that I'm supposed to think twice
before I do it again."

Andrews looked away and did not answer him.

"Anyhow, I'm too weak and I don't have a hammer
handy."

They knocked and entered.

Unger, his head turbaned in white, sat propped up by
pillows. A closed book lay on the counterpane. He had
been staring out of the window and into the garden. He
turned his head toward them.

"Good morning, you son of a bitch," observed Moore.
"Please," said Unger.

Moore did not know what to say next. He had already
expressed all that he felt. So he headed for the chair be-
side the bed and sat on it. He fished his pipe from the
pocket of his robe and fumbled with it to hide his dis-
comfort. Then he realized he had no tobacco with him.

Neither Andrews nor the orderlies appeared to be watch-
ing them.

He placed the dry pipe between his teeth and looked
up; ,       „

"I'm sorry," said Unger. "Can you believe that?"
"No," answered Moore.

"She's the future and she's yours," said Unger. "I drove
a stake through her heart but she isn't really dead. They
say they're working on the operating machines now. The
doctors will fix up everything that I did, as good as new."
He winced and looked down at the bedclothes.

125

"If it's any consolation to you," he continued, "I'm suf-
fering and I'll suffer more. There is no Senta to save this
Dutchman. I'm going to ride it out with the Set, or with-
out it, in a bunker—die in some foreign place among
strangers." He looked up, regarding Moore with a weak
smile. Moore stared him back down. "They'll save her!"
he insisted. "She'll sleep until they're absolutely certain
of the technique. Then you two will get off together and
I'll keep on going. You'll never see me after that. I wish
you happiness. I won't ask your forgiveness."

Moore got to his feet.

'"We've got nothing left to say. We'll talk again some
year, in a day or so."

He left the room wondering what else he could have
said.

"An ethical question has been put before the Set—that
is to say, myself," said Mary Maude. "Unfortunately, it
was posed by government attornies, so it cannot be
treated as most ethical questions are to be treated. It re-
quires an answer."

"Involving Moore and Unger?" asked Andrews.

"Not directly. Involving the entire Set, as a result of
their escapade."

She indicated the fac-sheet on her desk. Andrews nod-
ded.

" 'Unto Us a Babe is Born,'" she read, considering the
photo of the prostrate Setman in the church. "A front-
page editorial in this periodical has accused us of creating
all varieties of neurotics—from necrophilists on down the
line. Then there's that other photo—we still don't know
who took it—here, on page three—"

"I've seen it."

"They now want assurances that ex-Setmen will re-
main frivolous and not turn into eminent undesirables."

126

"This is the first time it's ever happened—like this."

"Of course," she smiled, "they're usually decent enough
to wait a few weeks before going anti-social—and wealth
generally compensates for most normal maladjustments.
But, according to the accusations, we are either selecting
the wrong people—which is ridiculous—or not mustering
them out properly when they leave—which is profoundly
ridiculous. First, because I do all the interviewing, and
second, because you can't boot a person half a century or
so into the future and expect him to land on his feet as his
normal, cheerful self, regardless of any orientation you
may give him. Our people make a good show of it,
though, because they don't generally do much of any-
thing.

"But both Moore and Unger were reasonably normal,
and they never knew each other particularly well. Both
watched a little more closely than most Setmen as their
worlds became history, and both were highly sensitive to
those changes. Their problem, though, was interpersonal."

Andrews said nothing.

"By that, I mean it was a simple case of jealousy over
a woman—an unpredictable human variable. I could not
have foreseen their conflict. The changing times have
nothing to do with it. Do they?"

Andrews did not answer.

". . . Therefore, there is no problem," she continued.
"We are not dumping Kaspar Hausers onto the street.
We are simply transplanting wealthy people of good
taste a few generations into the future—and they get on
well. Our only misstep so far was predicated upon a male
antagonism of the mutually accelerating variety, caused
by a beautiful woman. That's all. Do you agree?"

"He thought that he was really going to die . . ." said
Andrews. "I didn't stop to think that he knew nothing of
the World Legal Code."

127

"A minor matter," she dismissed it. "He's still living."

"You should have seen his face when he came to in the
Clinic."

"I'm not interested in faces. I've seen too many. Our
problem now is to manufacture a problem and then to
solve it to the government's satisfaction."

"The world changes so rapidly that I almost need to
make a daily adjustment to it myself. These poor—"

"Some things do not change," said Mary Maude, "but
I can see what you're driving at. Very clever. We'll hiie
us an independent Psych Team to do'us a study indica-
ting that what the Set needs is more adjustment, and
they'll recommend that one day be set aside every year
for therapeutic purposes. We'll hold each one in a differ-
ent part of the world—at a non-Party locale. Lots of cities
have been screaming for concessions. They'll all be days
spent doing simple, adjustive things, mingling with un-Set
people. Then, in the evening we'll have a light meal, fol-
lowed by casual, restful entertainment, and then some
dancing—dancing's good for the psyche, it relaxes ten-
sions. —I'm sure that will satisfy all parties concerned."
She smiled at the last.

"I believe you are right," said Andrews.

"Of course. After the Psych Team writes several thou-
sand pages, you'll draft a few hundred of your own to
summarize the findings and cast them into the form of a
resolution to be put before the board."

He nodded.

"I thank you for your suggestions."

"Any time. That's what I'm paid for."

After he had left, Mary Maude donned her black glove
and placed another log on the fire. Genuine logs cost
more and more every year, but she did not trust nameless
heaters.

It was three days before Moore had recovered suffi-
128

ciently to enter the sleep again. As the prep-injection
dulled his senses and his eyes closed, he wondered what
alien judgment day would confront him when he awak-
ened. He knew, though, that whatever else the new year
brought, his credit would be good.
He slept, and the world passed by.

129

TPF D°^BS OF HIS FACE,
THE LAMPS OF-HIS MOUTH

I'm a baitman. No one is born a baitman, except in a
French novel where everyone is. (In fact, I think that's
the title. We are All Bait. Pfft!) How I got that way is
barely worth the telLng and has nothing to do with neo-
exes, but the days of the beast deserve a few words, so
here they are.

The Lowlands of Venus lie between the thumb and
forefinger of the contin' nt known as Hand. When you
break into Clo"d AHey it swings its silverblack bowling
ball toward you wit''o"t a warning. You jump then, inside
that fire-tailed tenpin they ride you down in, but the
straps keep you from making a fool of yourself. You gen-
erally chuckle afterwards, but you always jump first.

Next, you sb'dy Hand to lay its illusion and the two
middle fingers become dozen-ringed archipelagoes as the
outers resolve into greengray peninsulas; the thumb is too
short, and curls like the embryo tail of Cape Horn.

You suck pure oxygen, sigh possibly, and begin the long

topple to the Lowlands.

There, you are caught like an infield fly at the Lifeline
landing area—so named because of its nearness to the
great delta in the Eastern Bay—located between the first

130

peninsula and "thumb." For a minute it seems as if you're
going to miss Lifeline and wind up as canned seafood,
but afterwards—shaking off the metaphors—you descend
to scorched concrete and present your middle-sized tele-
phone directory of authorizations to the short, fat man in
the gray cap. The papers show that you are not subject
to mysterious inner rottings and etcetera. He then smiles
you a short, fat, gray smile and motions you toward the
bus which hauls you to the Reception Area. At the B.A.
you spend three days proving that, indeed, you are not
subject to mysterious inner rottings and etcetera.

Boredom, however, is another rot. When your three
days are up, you generally hit Lifeline hard, and it re-
turns the compliment as a matter of reflex. The effects of
alcohol in variant atmospheres is a subject on which the
connoisseurs have written numerous volumes, so I will
confine my remarks to noting that a good binge is worthy
of at least a week's time and often warrants a lifetime
study.

I had been a student of exceptional promise (strictly
undergraduate) for going on two years when the Bright
Water fell through our marble ceiling and poured its
people like targets into the city.

Pause. The Worlds Almanac re Lifeline: ". . . Port city
on the eastern coast of Hand. Employees of the Agency
for Non-terrestrial Research comprise approximately 85%
of its 100,000 population (2010 Census). Its other resi-
dents are primarily personnel maintained by several in-
dustrial corporations engaged in basic research. Inde-
pendent marine biologists, wealthy fishing enthusiasts,
and waterfront entrepreneurs make up the remainder of
its inhabitants."

I turned to Mike Dabis, a fellow entrepreneur, and
commented on the lousy state of basic research,

"Not if the mumbled truth be known."

He paused behind his glass before continuing the slow

131

swallowing process calculated to obtain my interest and a
few oaths, before he continued.

"Carl," he finally observed, poker playing, "they're
shaping Tensquare."

I could have hit him. I might have refilled his glass
with sulfuric acid and looked on with glee as his lips
blackened and cracked. Instead, I grunted a noncom-
mital.

"Who's fool enough to shell out fifty grand a day?
ANR?"

He shook his head.

"Jean Luharich," he said, "the girl with the violet con-
tacts and fifty or sixty perfect teeth. I understand her
eyes are really brown."

"Isn't she selling enough face cream these days?"

He shrugged.

"Publicity makes the wheels go 'round. Luharich Enter-
prises jumped sixteen points when she picked up the Sun
Trophy. You ever play golf on Mercury?"

I had, but I overlooked it and continued to press.

"So she's coming here with a blank check and a fish-
hook?"

"Bright Water, today," he nodded. "Should be down by
now. Lots of cameras. She wants an Ikky, bad."

"Hmm," I hmmed. "How bad?"

"Sixty day contract, Tensquare. Indefinite extension
clause. Million and a half deposit," he recited.

"You seem to know a lot about it."

"I'm Personnel Recruitment. Luharich Enterprises ap-
proached me last month. It helps to drink in the right

places.

"Or own them." He smirked, after a moment.
I looked away, sipping my bitter brew. After awhile I
swallowed several things and asked Mike what he ex-
pected to be asked, leaving myself open for his monthly
temperance lecture.

132

"They told me to try getting you," he mentioned.
"When's the last time you sailed?"

"Month and a half ago. The Coming."

"Small stuff," he snorted. "When have you been under,
yourself?"

"It's been awhile."

"It's been over a year, hasn't it? That time you got cut
by the screw, under the Dolphin?"

I turned to him.

"I was in the river last week, up at Angleford where
the currents are strong. I can still get around."

"Sober," he added.

"I'd stay that way," I said, "on a job like this."

A doubting nod.

"Straight union rates. Triple time for extraordinary cir-
cumstances," he narrated. "Be at Hangar Sixteen with
your gear, Friday morning, five hundred hours. We push
off Saturday, daybreak."

"You're sailing?"

"I'm sailing."

"How come?"

"Money."

"Ikky guano."

"The bar isn't doing so well and baby needs new
minks."

"I repeat-"

". . . And I want to get away from baby, renew my
contact with basics—fresh air, exercise, make cash. . . ."

"All right, sorry I asked."

I poured him a drink, concentrating on HaS04, but it
didn't transmute. Finally I got him soused and went out
into the night to walk and think things over.

Around a dozen serious attempts to land Ichthyform
Leviosaurus Levianthus, generally known as "Ikky," had
been made over the past five years. When Ikky was first
sighted, whaling techniques were employed. These

133

proved either fruitless or disastrous, and a new procedure
was inaugurated. Tensquare was constructed by a
wealthy sportsman named Michael Jandt, who blew his
entire roll on the project.

After a year on the Eastern Ocean, he returned to file
bankruptcy. Carlton Davits, a playboy fishing enthusiast,
then purchased the huge raft and laid a wake for Ikky's
spawning grounds. On the nineteenth day out he had a
strike and lost one hundred and fifty bills' worth of un-
tested gear, along with one Ichthyform Levianthus.
Twelve days later, using tripled lines, he hooked, narco-
tized, and began to hoist the huge beast. It awakened
then, destroyed a control tower, killed six men, and
worked general hell over five square blocks of Tensquare.
Carlton was left with partial hemiplegia and a bank-
ruptcy suit of his own. He faded into waterfront atmo-
sphere and Tensquare changed hands four more times,
with less spectacular but equally expensive results.

Finally, the big raft, built only for one purpose was
purchased at auction by ANR for "marine research."
Lloyd's still won't insure it, and the only marine research
it has ever seen is an occasional rental at fifty bills a day
—to people anxious to tell Leviathan fish stories. I've been
baitman on three of the voyages, and I've been close
enough to count Ikky's fangs on two occasions. I want
one of them to show my grandchildren, for personal
reasons. .

I faced the direction of the landing area and resolved
a resolve.

"You want me for local coloring, gal. It'll look nice on
the feature page and all that. But clear this— If anyone
gets you an Ikky, it'll be me. I promise."

I stood in the empty Square. The foggy towers of Life-
line shared their mists.

Shoreline a couple eras ago, the western slope above
134

Lifeline stretches as far as forty miles inland in some
places. Its angle of rising is not a great one, but it
achieves an elevation of several thousand feet before it
meets the mountain range which separates us from the
Highlands. About four miles inland and five hundred feet
higher than Lifeline are set most of the surface airstrips
and privately owned hangars. Hangar Sixteen houses
Cal's Contract Cab, hop service, shore to ship. I do not
like Cal, but he wasn't around when I climbed from the
bus and waved to a mechanic.

Two of the hoppers tugged at the concrete, impatient
beneath flywing haloes. The one on which Steve was
working belched deep within its barrel carburetor and
shuddered spasmodically.
"Bellyache?" I inquired.
"Yeah, gas pains and heartburn."
He twisted setscrews until it settled into an even keen-
ing, and turned to me.
"You're for out?"
I nodded.

"Tensquare. Cosmetics. Monsters. Stuff like that."
He blinked into the beacons and wiped his freckles.
The temperature was about twenty, but the big overhead
spots served a double purpose.

"Luharich," he muttered. "Then you are the one.
There's some people want to see you."
"What about?"

"Cameras. Microphones. Stuff like that."
"I'd better stow my gear. Which one am I riding?"
He poked the screwdriver at the other hopper.
"That one. You're on video tape now, by the way. They
wanted to get you arriving."

He turned to the hangar, turned back.

"Say 'cheese.' They'll shoot the close close-ups later."

I said something other than "cheese." They must have

135

been using telelens and been able to read my lips, be-
. cause that part of the tape was never shown.

I threw my junk in the back, climbed into a passenger
seat, and lit a cigarette. Five minutes later, Cal himself
emerged from the office Quonset, looking cold. He came
over and pounded on the side of the hopper. He jerked
a thumb back at the hangar.

"They want you in there!"-he called through cupped
hands. "Interview!"

"The show's over!" I yelled back. "Either that, or they
can get themselves another baitman!"

His rustbrown eyes became nailheads under blond
brows and his glare a spike before he jerked about and
stalked off. I wondered how much they had paid him to
be able to squat in his hangar and suck juice from his
generator.

Enough, I guess, knowing Cal. I never liked the guy,
anyway.

Venus at night is a field of sable waters. On the coasts,
you can never tell where the sea ends and the sky be-
gins. Dawn is like dumping milk into an inkwell. First,
there are erratic curdles of white, then streamers. Shade
the bottle for a gray colloid, then watch it whiten a little
more. All of a sudden you've got day. Then start heating
the mixture.

I had to shed my jacket as we flashed out over the bay.
To our rear, the skyline could have been under water for
the way it waved and rippled in the heatfall. A hopper
can accommodate four people (five, if you want to bend
Regs and underestimate weight), or three passengers
with the sort of gear a baitman uses. I was the only fare,
though, and the pilot was like his machine. He hummed
and made no unnecessary noises. Lifeline turned a somer-
sault and evaporated in the rear mirror at about the

136

same time Tensquare broke the fore-horizon. The pilot
stopped humming and shook his head.

I leaned forward. Feelings played flopdoodle in my
guts. I knew every bloody inch of the big raft, but the
feelings you once took for granted change when their
source is out of reach. Truthfully, I'd had my doubts I'd
ever board the hulk again. But now, now I could almost
believe in predestination. There it was!

A tensquare football field of a ship. A-powered. Flat
as a pancake, except for the plastic blisters in the mid-
dle and the "Books" fore and aft, port and starboard.

The Rook towers were named for their comer positions
—and any two can work together to hoist, co-powering
the graffles between them. The graffles—half gaff, half
grapple—can raise enormous weights to near water level;

their designer had only one thing in mind, though, which
accounts for the gaff half. At water level, the Slider has
to implement elevation for six to eight feet before the
graffles are in a position to push upward, rather than pull-
ing.

The Slider, essentially, is a mobile room—a big box
capable of moving in any of Tensquare's crisscross groov-
ings and "anchoring" on the strike side by means of a
powerful electromagnetic bond. Its winches could hoist a
battleship the necessary distance, and the whole craft
would tilt, rather than the Slider come loose, if you want
any idea of the strength of that bond.

The Slider houses a section operated control indicator
which is the most sophisticated "reel" ever designed.
Drawing broadcast power from the generator beside the
center blister, it is connected by shortwave with the sonar
room, where the movements of the quarry are recorded
and repeated to the angler seated before the section con-
trol.

The fisherman might play his "lines" for hours, days

137

even, without seeing any more than metal and an outline
on the screen. Only when the beast is graffled and the
extensor shelf, located twelve feet below waterline, slides
out for support and begins to aid the winches, only then
does the fisherman see his catch rising before him like a
fallen Seraphim. Then, as Davits learned, one looks into
the Abyss itself and is required to act. He didn't, and a
hundred meters of unimaginable tonnage, undemarco-
tized and hurting, broke the cables of the winch, snapped
a graffle, and took a half-minute walk across Tensquare.

We circled till the mechanical flag took notice and
waved us on down. We touched beside the personnel
hatch and I jettisoned my gear and jumped to the deck.

"Luck," called the pilot as the door was sliding shut.
Then he danced into the air and the flag clicked blank.

I shouldered my stuff and went below.

Signing in with Malvem, the de facto captain, I learned
that most of the others wouldn't arrive for a good eight
hours. They had wanted me alone at Cal's so they could
pattern the pub footage along twentieth-century cinema
lines.

Open: landing strip, dark. One mechanic prodding a
contrary hopper. Stark-o-vision shot of slow bus pulling
in. Heavily dressed baitman descends, looks about, limps
across field. Close-up: he grins. Move in for words; "Do
you think this is the time? The time he will be landed?"
Embarrassment, taciturnity, a shrug. Dub something. —"I
see. And why do you think Miss Luharich has a better
chance than any of the others? Is it because she's better
equipped? [Grin.] Because more is known now about
the creature's habits than when you were out before? Or
is it because of her will to win, to be a champion? Is it
any one of these things, or is it all of them?" Reply: "Yeah,
all of them." "—Is that why you signed on with her? Be-
cause your instincts say, "This one will be it'?" Answer;

"She pays union rates. I couldn't rent that damned thing

138

nwself. And I want in." Erase. Dub something else. Fade-
out as he moves toward hopper, etcetera.

"Cheese," I said, or something like that, and took a
walk around Tensqure, by myself.

I mounted each Rook, checking out the controls and
the underwater video eyes. Then I raised the main lift.

Malvern had no objections to my testing things this
way. In fact, he encouraged it. We had sailed together
before and our positions had even been reversed upon a
time. So I wasn't surprised when I stepped off the lift
into the Hopkins Locker and found him waiting. For the
next ten minutes we inspected the big room in silence,
walking through its copper coil chambers soon to be Arc-
tic.

Finally, he slapped a wall.

"Well, will we fill it?"

I shook my head.

Td like to, but I doubt it. I don't give two hoots and
a damn who gets credit for the catch, so long as I have a
part in it. But it won't happen That gal's an egomaniac.
She'll want to operate the Slider, and she can't."

"You ever meet her?"

"Yeah."

"How long ago?"

"Four, five years."

"She was a kid then. How do you know what she can
do now?"

"I know. She'll have learned every switch and reading
by this time. She'll be up on all theory. But do you re-
member one time we were together in the starboard
Rook, forward, when Ikky broke water like a porpoise?"

"How could I forget?"

"Well?"

He rubbed his emery chin.

"Maybe she can do it, Carl. She's raced torch ships and
she's scubaed in bad waters back home." He glanced in

139

the direction of invisible Hand. "And she's hunted in the
Highlands. She might be wild enough to pull that horror
into her lap without flinching.

". . . For Johns Hopkins to foot the bill and shell out
seven figures for the corpus," he added. "That's money,
even to a Luharich."

I ducked through a hatchway.

"Maybe you're right, but she was a rich witch when I
knew her.

"And she wasn't blonde," I added, meanly.

He yawned,

"Let's find breakfast."

We did that.

When I was young, I thought that being born a sea
creature was the finest choice Nature could make for
anyone. I grew up on the Pacific coast and spent my
summers on the Gulf or the Mediterranean. I lived
months of my life negotiating coral, photographing
trench dwellers, and playing tag with dolphins. I fished
everywhere there are fish, resenting the fact that they can
go places I can't. When I grew older I wanted bigger
fish, and there was nothing living that I knew of, except-
ing a Sequoia, that came any bigger than Ikky. That's
part of it. ...

I jammed a couple of extra rolls into a paper bag and
filled a thermos with coffee. Excusing myself, I left the
galley and made my way to the Slider berth. It was just
the way I remembered it. I threw a few switches and
the shortwave hummed.

"That you, Carl?"

"That's right, Mike. Let me have some juice down here,
you double-crossing rat."

He thought it over, then I felt the hull vibrate as the
generators cut in. I poured my third cup of coffee and
found a cigarette.

140

"So why am I a double-crossing rat this time?" came his

voice again.

You knew about the cameramen at Hangar Sixteen?"

«-»r    s>

Yes.

"Then you're a d"u^e crossing rat. The last thing I
want is publicity. 'He w^o fo -led up so often before is
ready to try it, nobly, once more.' I can read it now."

"You're wrong. T''e -D tlipht's only big enough for one,
and she's prettier than yo'i."

My next comment was cut off as I threw the elevator
switch and the elephant ears flapped above me. I rose,
settling flush with the d°c\ Retracting the lateral rail, I
cut forward into the ""wve. Amidships, I stopped at a
juncture, dropped the lateral, and retracted the longitu-
dinal rail.

I slid starboard, midway between the Books, halted,
and threw on the cornier.

I hadn't spilled a drop of coffee.

"Show me pictures."

The screen glowed. I adjusted and got outlines of the
bottom.

"Okay."

I threw a Status Blue switch and he matched it. The
light went on.

• The winch unlocked. I aimed out over the waters, ex-
tended the arm, and fired a cast.

"Clean one," he commented.

"Status Red. Call strike." I threw a switch.

"Status Red."

The baitman would be on his way with this, to make
the barbs tempting.

It's not exactly a fishhook. The cables bear hollow
tubes; the tubes convey enough dope for any army of
hopheads; Ikky takes the bait, dandled before him by
remote control, and the fisherman rams the barbs home.

My hands moved over ti.e console, making the neces-

141

sary adjustments. I checked the narco-tank reading.
Empty. Good, they hadn't been filled yet. I thumbed the
Inject button.

"In the gullet," Mike murmured.

I released the cables. I played the beast imagined. I
let him run, swinging the winch to simulate his sweep.

I had the air conditioner on and my shirt off and it was
still uncomfortably hot, which is how I knew that mom-
ing had gone over its noon. I was dimly aware of the
arrivals and departures of the hoppers. Some of the crew
sat in the "shade" of the doors I had left open, watching
the operation. I didn't see Jean arrive or I would have
ended the session and gotten below.

She broke my concentration by slamming the door hard
enough to shake the bond.

"Mind telling me who authorized you to bring up the
Slider?" she asked.

"No one," I replied. "I'll take it below now."

"Just move aside."

I did, and she took my seat. She was wearing brown
slacks and a baggy shirt and she had her hair pulled back
in a practical manner. Her cheeks were flushed, but not
necessarily from the heat. She attacked the panel with a
nearly amusing intensity that I found disquieting.

"Status Blue," she snapped, breading a violet finger-
nail on the toggle.

I forced a yawn and buttoned my shirt slowly. She
threw a side glance my way, checked the registers, and
fired a cast.

I monitored the lead on the screen. She turned to me
for a second.

"Status Red," she said levelly.

I nodded my agreement.

She worked the winch sideways to show she knew how.
I didn't doubt she knew how and she didn't doubt that I
didn't doubt, but then—

142

"In case you're wondering." she said, "you're not going
to be anywhere near. this thing. You were hired as a bait-
man remember? Not a Slider operator! A baitman! Your
duties consist of swimming out and setting the table for
our friend the monster. It's dangerous, but you're getting
well paid for it. Any questions?"

She squashed the Inject button and I rubbed my

throat.

"Nope," I smiled, "but I am qualified to run that thing-
amajigger—and if you need me I'll be available, at union

rates."

"Mister Davits," she said, "I don't want a loser operat-
ing this panel."

"Miss Luharich, there has never been a winner at this

game."

She started reeling in the cable and broke the bond
at the same time, so that the whole Slider shook as the
big yo-yo returned. We skidded a couple of feet back-
wards. She raised the laterals and we shot back along the
groove. Slowing, she transferred rails and we jolted to a
clanging halt, then shot off at a right angle. The crew
scrambled away from the hatch as we skidded onto the
elevator.

"In the future. Mister Davits, do not enter the Slider
without being ordered," she told me.

"Don't worry. I won't even step inside if I am or-
dered," I answered. "I signed on as a baitman. Remem-
ber? If you want me in here, you'll have to ask me."

"That'll be the day," she smiled.

I agreed, as the doors closed above us. We dropped
the subject and headed in our different directions after
the Slider came to a halt in its berth. She did say "good
day," though, which I thought showed breeding as well
as determination, in reply to my chuckle.

Later that night Mike and I stoked our pipes in Mal-

143

vem's cabin. The winds were shuffling waves, and a
steady spattering of rain and hail overhead turned the
deck into a tin roof.

"Nasty," suggested Malvem.

I nodded. After two bourbons the room had become a
familiar woodcut, with its mahogany furnishings (which
I had transported from Earth long ago on a whim) and
the dark walls, the seasoned face of Malvem, and the
perpetually puzzled expression of Dabis set between the
big pools of shadow that lay behind chairs and splashed
in corners, all cast by the tiny table light and seen
through a glass, brownly.

"Glad I'm in here."

"What's it like underneath on a night like this?"

I puffed, thinking of my light cutting through the in-
sides of a black diamond, shaken slightly. The meteor-
dart of a suddenly illuminated fish, the swaying of gro-
tesque ferns, like nebulae—shadow, then green, then
gone—swam in a moment through my mind. I guess it's
like a spaceship would feel, if a spaceship could feel,
crossing between worlds—and quiet, uncannily, preter-
naturally quiet; and peaceful as sleep.

"Dark," I said, "and not real choppy below a few
fathoms."

"Another eight hours and we shove off," commented
Mike.

"Ten, twelve days, we should be there," noted Mal-
vem.

"What do you think Ikky's doing?"
"Sleeping on the bottom with Mrs. Ikky if he has any
brains."

"He hasn't. I've seen ANR's skeletal extrapolation
from the bones that have washed up—"

"Hasn't everyone?"

". . . Fully fleshed, he'd be over a hundred meters
long. That right, Carl?"

144

I agreed.

". . . Not much of a brain box, though, for his bulk."

"Smart enough to stay out of our locker."

Chuckles, because nothing exists but .this room, really.
The world outside is an empty, sleet drummed deck. We
lean back and make clouds.

"Boss lady does not approve of unauthorized fly fish-
ing."

"Boss lady can walk north till her hat floats."

"What did she say in there?"

"She told me that my place, with fish manure, is on the
bottom.".

"You don't Slide?"

"I bait."

"Well see."

"That's all I do. If she wants a Slideman she's going to
have to ask nicely."

"You think she'll have to?"

"I think she'll have to."

"And if she does, can you do it?"

"A fair question," I puffed. "I don't know the answer,
though."

I'd incorporate my soul and trade forty percent of the
stock for the answer. I'd give a couple years off my life
for the answer. But there doesn't seem to be a lineup of
supernatural takers, because no one knows. Supposing
when we get out there, luck being with us, we find our-
selves an Ikky? Supposing we succeed in baiting him and
get lines on him. What then? If we get him shipside, will
she hold on or crack up? What if she's made of sterner
stuff than Davits, who used to hunt sharks with poison-
darted air pistols? Supposing she lands him and Davits
has to stand there like a video extra.

Worse yet, supposing she asks for Davits and he still
stands there like a video extra or something else—say,
some yellowbellied embodiment named Cringe?

145

It was when I got him up above the eight-foot horizon
of steel and looked out at all that body, sloping on and
on till it dropped out of sight like a green mountain range
. . . And that head. Small for the body, but still im-
mense. Fat, craggy, with lidless roulettes that had spun
black and red since before my forefathers decided to try
the New Continent. And swaying.

Fresh nareo-tanks had been connected. It needed an-
• other shot, fast. But I was paralyzed.

It had made a noise like God playing a Hammond
organ. . . .

And looked at me!

I don't know if seeing is even the same process in eyes
like those. I doubt it. Maybe I was, Just a gray blur behind
a black rock, with the plexi-reflected sky hurting its
pupils. But it fixed on me. Perhaps the snake doesn't
really paralyze the rabbit, perhaps it's Just that rabbits
are cowards by constitution. But it began to struggle and
I still couldn't move, fascinated.

Fascinated by all that power, by those eyes, they found
me there fifteen minutes later, a little broken about the
head and shoulders, the Inject still unpushed.

And I dream about those eyes. I want to face them
once more, even if their finding takes forever. I've got to
know if there's something inside me that sets me apart
from a rabbit, from notched plates of reflexes and in-
stincts that always fall apart in exactly the same way
whenever the proper combination is spun.

Looking down, I noticed that my hand was shaking.
Glancing up, I noticed that no one else was noticing.

I finished my drink and emptied my pipe. It was late
and no songbirds were singing.

I sat whittling, my legs hanging over the aft edge, the
chips spinning down into the furrow of our wake. Three
days out. No action.

146

"You!"
"Me?"
"You."
Hair like the end of the rainbow, eyes like nothing in

nature, fine teeth.
"Hello."
"There's a safety rule against what you're doing, you

know."

"I know. I've been worrying about it all morning."

A delicate curl climbed my knife then drifted out be-
hind us. It settled into the foam and was plowed under. I
watched her reflection in my blade, taking a secret plea-
sure in its distortion.

"Are you baiting me?" she finally asked.

I heard her laugh then, and turned, knowing it had
been intentional.

"What, me?"

"I could push you off from here, very easily."'

"I'd make it back."

"Would you push me off, then—some dark night, per-
haps?"

"They're all dark. Miss Luharich. No, I'd rather make
you a gift of my carving."

She seated herself beside me then, and I couldn't help
but notice the dimples in her knees. She wore white shorts
and a halter and still had an offworld tan to her which
was awfully appealing. I almost felt a twinge of guilt at
having planned the whole scene, but my right hand still
blocked her view of the wooden animal.

"Okay, I'll bite. What have you got for me?"

"Just a second. It's almost finished."

Solemnly, I passed her the wooden jackass I had been
carving. I felt a little sorry and slightly jackass-ish myself,
but I had to follow through. I always do. The mouth was
split into a braying grin. The ears were upright.

147

She didn't smile and she didn't frown. She fust studied
it.

"It's very good," she finally said, "like most things you
do—and appropriate, perhaps."

"Give it to me." I extended a palm.

She handed it back and I tossed it out over the water.
It missed the white water and bobbed for awhile like a
pigmy seahorse.

"Why did you do that?"

"It was a poor joke. I'm sony."

"Maybe you are right, though. Perhaps this time I've
bitten off a little too much."

I snorted.

"Then why not do something safer, like another race?"

She shook her end of the rainbow.

"No. It has to be an Ikky."

"Why?"

"Why did you want one so. badly that you threw away
a fortune?"

"Man reasons," I said. "An unfrocked analyst who held
black therapy sessions in his basement once told me, 'Mis-
ter Davits, you need to reinforce the image of your mas-
culinity by catching one of every kind of fish in existence.'
Fish are a very ancient masculinity symbol, you know. So
I set out to do it. I have one more to go. —Why do you
want to reinforce your masculinity?"

"I don't," she said. "I don't want to reinforce anything
but Luharich Enterprises. My chief statistician once said,
'Miss Luharich, sell all the cold cream and face powder
in the System and you'll be a happy girl. Rich, too.' And
he was right. I am the proof. I can look the way I do and
do anything, and I sell most of the lipstick and face pow-
der in the System—but I have to be able to do anything."

"You do look cool and efficient," I observed.

"I don't feel cool," she said, rising. "Let's go for a swim."

148

"May I point out that we are making pretty good

time?"
"If you want to indicate the obvious, you may. You said

you could make it back to the ship, unassisted. Change
your mind?"

"No."
"Then get us two scuba outfits and I'll race you under

Tensquare.

"I'll win, too," she added.

I stood and looked down at her, because that usually
makes me feel superior to women.

"Daughter of Lir, eyes of Picasso," I said, "you've got
yourself a race. Meet me at the forward Rook, starboard,

in ten minutes."

"Ten minutes," she agreed.

And ten minutes it was. From the center blister to the
Rook took maybe two of them, with the load I was carry-
ing. My sandals grew very hot and I was glad to shuck
them for flippers when I reached the comparative cool of

the comer.

We slid into harnesses and adjusted our gear. She had
changed into a trim one-piece green job that made me
shade my eyes and look away, then look back again.

I fastened a rope ladder and kicked it over the side.
Then I pounded on the wall of the Rook.

"Yeah?"

"You talk to the port Rook, aft?" I called.

"They're all set up," came the answer. "There's ladders
and draglines all over that end."

"You sure you want to do this?" asked the sunburnt
little gink who was her publicity man, Anderson yclept.

He sat beside the Rook in a deckchair, sipping lemon-
ade through a straw.

"It might be dangerous," he observed, sunken-mouthed.
(His teeth were beside him, in another glass.)

149

"That's right," she smiled. "It will be dangerous. Not
overly, though."

"Then why don't you let me get some pictures?" We'd
have them back to Lifeline in an hour. They'd be in New
York by tonight. Good copy."

"No," she said, and turned away from both of us.

She raised her hands to her eyes,

"Here, keep these for me.".

She passed him a box f"ll of her unseeing, and when
she turned back to me they were the same brown that I
remembered.

"Ready?"

"No," I said, tautly. "Listen carefully, Jean. If you're
going to play this game there are a few rules. First," I
counted, "we're going to be directly beneath the hull, so
we have to start low and keep moving. If we bump the
bottom, we could rupture an air tank. . . ."

She began to protest that any moron knew that and I
cut her down.

"Second," I went on, "there won't be much light, so
we'll stay close together, and we will both carry torches."

Her wet eyes flashed.

"I dragged you out of Govino without—"

Then she stopped and turned away. She picked up a
lamp.

"Okay. Torches. Sorry."

". . . And watch out for the drive-screws," I finished.
"There'll be strong currents for at least fifty meters be-
hind them."

She wiped her eyes again and adjusted the mask.

"All right, let's go."

We went.

She led the way, at my insistence. The surface layer
was pleasantly warm. At two fathoms the water was
bracing; at five it was nice and cold. At eight we let go

150

the swinging stairway and struck out. Tensquare sped
forward and we raced in the opposite direction, tattooing
the hull yellow at ten-second intervals.

The hull stayed where it belonged, but we raced on like
two darkside satellites. Periodically, I tickled her frog
feet with my light and traced her antennae of bubbles.
About a five meter lead was fine; I'd beat her in. the home
stretch, but I couldn't let her drop behind yet.

Beneath us, black. Immense. Deep. The Mindanao of
Venus, where eternity might eventually pass the dead to
a rest in cities of unnamed fishes. I twisted my head
away and touched the hull with a feeler of light; it told
me we were about a quarter of the way along.

I increased my beat to match her stepped-up stroke,
and narrowed the distance which she had suddenly
opened by a couple meters. She sped up again and I did,
too. I spotted her with my beam.

She turned and it caught on her mask. I never loiew
whether she'd been smiling. Probably. She raised two
fingers in a V-for-Victory and then cut ahead at full speed.

I should have known. I should have felt it coming. It
was just a race to her, something else to win. Damn the

torpedoesi

So I leaned into it, hard. I don't shake in the water. Or,
if I do it doesn't matter and I don't notice it. I began to
close the gap again.

She looked back, sped on, looked back. Each time she
looked it was nearer, until I'd narrowed it down to the
original five meters.

Then she hit the jatoes.

That's what I had been fearing. We were about half-
way under and she shouldn't have done it. The powerful
jets of compressed air could easily rocket her upward
into the hull, or tear something loose if she allowed her
body to twist. Their main use is in tearing free from

151

marine plants or fighting bad currents. I had wanted
them along as a safety measure, because of the big suck-
and-pull windmills behind.

She shot ahead like a meteorite, and I could feel a sud-
den tingle of perspiration leaping to meet and mix with
the churning waters.

I swept ahead, not wanting to use my own guns, and
she tripled, quadrupled the margin.

The jets died and she was still on course. Okay, I was
an old fuddyduddy. She could have messed up and
headed toward the top.

I plowed the sea and began to gather back my yard-
age, a foot at a time. I wouldn't be able to catch her or
beat her now, but I'd be on the ropes before she hit deck.

Then the spinning magnets began their insistence and
she wavered. It was an awfully powerful drag, even at
this distance. The call of the meat grinder.

I'd been scratched rp bv one once, under the Dolphin,
a fishing boat of the middle-class. I had been drinking,
but it was also a rough day, and the thing had been
turned on prematurely. Fortunately, it was turned off in
time, also, and a tendon-stapler made everything good as
new, except in the log, where it only mentioned that I'd
been drinking. Nothing about it being off-hours when I
had a right to do as I damn well pleased.

She had slowed to half her speed, but she was still
moving crosswise, toward the port, aft comer. I began to
feel the pull myself and had to slow down. She'd made it
past the main one, but she seemed too far back. It's hard
to gauge distances under water, but each red beat of time
told me I was right. She was out of danger from the main
one, but the smaller port screw, located about eighty
meters in, was no longer a threat but a^certainty.

She had turned and was p- lling away from it now.
Twenty meters separated us. She was standing still. Fif-
teen.

152

Slowly, she began a backward drifting. I hit my jatoes,
aiming two meters behind her and about twenty back of

the blades.

Straightline! Thankgod! Catching, softbelly, leadpipe

on shoulder SWIMLIKEHELL! maskcracked, not broke

though AND UP!
We caught a line and I remember brandy.

Into the cradle endlessly rocking, I spit, pacing. Insom-
nia tonight and left shoulder sore again, so let it rain on
me—they can cure rheumatism. Stupid as hell. What I
said. In blankets and shivering. She: "Carl, I can't say it."
Me: "Then call it square for that night in Govino, Miss
Luharich. Huh?" She: nothing. Me: "Any more of that
brandy?" She; "Give me another, too." Me: sounds of
sipping. It had only lasted three months. No alimony.
Many $ on both sides. Not sure whether they were happy
or not. Wine-dark Aegean. Good fishing. Maybe he should
have spent more time on shore. Or perhaps she shouldn't
have. Good swimmer, though. Dragged him all the way
to Vido to wring out his lungs. Young. Both. Strong. Both.
Rich and spoiled as hell. Ditto. Corfu should have
brought them closer. Didn't. I think that mental cruelty
was a trout. He wanted to go to Canada. She: "Go to hell
if you want!" He: "Will you go along?" She: "No." But she
did, anyhow. Many hells. Expensive. He lost a monster or
two. She inherited a couple. Lot of lightning tonight.
Stupid as hell. Civility's the coffin of a conned soul. By
whom?—Sounds like a bloody neo-ex. . . . But I hate
you, Anderson, with yo"r glass full of teeth and her new
eyes. . . . Can't keep this pipe lit, keep sucking tobacco.
Spit againi

Seven days out and the scope showed Ikky.
Bells Jangled, feet pounded, and some optimist set the
thermostat in the Hopkins. Malvern wanted me to sit it

153

out, but I slipped into my harness and waited for what-
ever came. The bruise looked worse than it felt. I had
exercised every day and the shoulder hadn't stiffened on
me.

A thousand meters ahead and thirty fathoms deep, it
tunneled our path. Nothing showed on the surface.

"Will we chase him?" asked an excited crewman.

"Not unless she feels like using money for fuel." I
shrugged.

Soon the scope was clear, and it stayed that way. We
remained on alert and held our course.

I hadn't said over a dozen words to my boss since the
last time we went drowning together, so I decided to
raise the score.

"Good afternoon," I approached. "What's new?"

"He's going north-northeast. We'll have to let this one
go. A few more days and we can afford some chasing
Not yet."

Sleek head . . .

I nodded. "No telling where this one's headed."

"How's your shoulder?"

"All right. How about you?"

Daughter of Lir . . .

"Fine. By the way, you're down for a nice bonus."

Eyes of perdition!

"Don't mention it," I told her back.

Later that afternoon, and appropriately, a storm shat-
tered. (I prefer "shattered" to "broke." It gives a more
accurate idea of the behavior of tropical storms on Venus
and saves lots of words.) Remember that inkwell I men-
tioned earlier? Now take it between thumb and forefin-
ger and hit its side with a hammer. Watch yourself 1 Don't
get splashed or cut-
Dry, then drenched. The sky one million bright frac-
tures as the hammer falls. And sounds of breaking.

154

r

"Everyone below?" suggested loudspeakers to the al-
ready scurrying crew.

Where was I? Who do you think was doing the loud-
speaking?

Everything loose went overboard when the water got
to walking, but by then no people were loose. The Shder
was the first thing below decks. Then the big lifts lowered
their shacks.

I had hit it for the nearest Rook with a yell the mo-
ment I recognized the pre-brightening of the holocaust.
From there I cut in the speakers and spent half a minute
coaching the track team

Minor in]uries had occurred, Mike told me over the
radio, but nothing serious. I, however, was marooned for
the duration. The Rooks do not lead anywhere, they're
set too far out over the hull to provide entry downwards,
what with the extensor shelves below.

So I undressed myself of the tanks which I had worn
for the past several hours, crossed my flippers on the
table, and leaned back to watch the hurricane. The top
was black as the bottom and we were in between, and
somewhat illuminated because of all that flat, shiny space.
The wateis above didn't ram down—they just sort of got
together and dropped.

The Rooks were secure enough—they'd weathered any
number of these onslaughts—it's just that their posihons
gave them a greater arc of rise and descent when Ten-
square makes like the rocker of a very nervous grandma.
I had used the belts from my rig to strap myself into the
bolted-down chair, and I removed several years in pur-
gatory from the soul of whoever left a pack of cigarettes
in the table drawer.

I watched the water make teepees and mountains and
hands and trees until I started seeing faces and people.
So I called Mike.

155

"What are you doing down there?"

"Wondering what you're doing up there," he replied,
"What's it like?"

"You're from the Midwest, aren't you?"

"Yeah."

"Get bad storms out there?"

"Sometimes."

"Try to think of the worst one you were ever in. Got a
slide rule handy?"

"Right here."

"Then put a one under it, imagine a zero or two follow-
ing after, and multiply the thing out."

"I can't imagine the zeros."

"Then retain the multiplicand—that's all you can do."

"So what are you doing up there?"

"I've strapped myself in the chair. I'm watching things
roll around the floor right now."

I looked up and out again. I saw one darker shadow
in the forest.

"Are you praying or swearing?"

"Damned if I know. But if this were the Slider—if only
this were the Slider!"

"He's out there?"

I nodded, forgetting that he couldn't see me.

Big, as I remembered him. He'd only broken surface
for a few moments, to look around. There is no power on
Earth that can be compared with him who was made to
fear no one. I dropped my cigarette. It was the same as
before. Paralysis and an unborn scream.

"You all right, Carl?"

He had looked at me again. Or seemed to. Perhaps
that mindless brute had been waiting half a millennium
to ruin the life of a member of the most highly developed
species in business. . . .

"You okay?"

... Or perhaps it had been ruined already, long be-


156

fore their encounter, and theirs was just a meeting of
beasts, the stronger bumping the weaker aside, body to
psyche. . . .

"Carl, dammit! Say something!"

He broke again, this time nearer. Did you ever see the
trunk of a tornado? It seems like something alive, moving
around in all that dark. Nothing has a right to be so big,
so strong, and moving. It's a sickening sensation.

"Please answer me."

He was gone and did not come back that day. I finally
made a couple of wisecracks at Mike, but I held my next
cigarette in my right hand.

The next seventy or eighty thousand waves broke by
with a monotonous similarity. The five days that held
them were also without distinction. The morning of the
thirteenth day out, though, our luck began to rise. The
bells broke our coffee-drenched lethargy into small
pieces, and we dashed from the galley without hearing
what might have been Mike's finest punchline.

"Aft!" cried someone. "Five hundred meters!"

I stripped to my trunks and started buckling. My stuff
is always within grabbing distance.

I flipflopped across the deck, girding myself with a de-
flated squiggler.

"Five hundred meters, twenty fathoms!" boomed the
speakers.

The big traps banged upward and the Slider grew to
its full height, m'lady at the console. It rattled past me
and took root ahead. Its one arm rose and lengthened.

I breasted the Slider as the speakers called, "Four-
eighty, twenty!"

"Status Red!"

A belch like an emerging champagne cork and the line
arced high over the waters.

157

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, thanks. Shouldn't I be?"

"That was a long swim. I—I guess I overshot my cast."

"I'm happy," I said. "More triple-time for me. I really
clean up on that hazardous duty clause."

"I'll be more careful next time," she apologized. "I
guess I was too eager. Sorry—" Something happened to
the sentence, so she ended it there,- leaving me with half
a bagful of replies I'd been saving.

I lifted the cigarette from behind Mike's ear and got a
light from the one in the ashtray.

"Carl, she was being nice," he said, after turning to
study the panels.

"I know," I told him. "I wasn't."

"I mean, she's an awfully pretty kid, pleasant. Head-
strong and all that. But what's she done to you?"

"Lately?" I asked.

He looked at me, then dropped his eyes to his cup.

"I know it's none of my bus—" he began.

"Cream and sugar?"

Ikky didn't return that day, or that night. We picked up
some Dixieland out of Lifeline and let the muskrat ram-
ble while Jean had her supper sent to the Slider. Later
she had a bunk assembled inside. I piped in "Deep
Water Blues" when it came over the air and waited for
her to call up and cuss us out. She didn't, though, so I
decided she was sleeping.

Then I got Mike interested in a game of chess that
went on until daylight. It limited conversation to several
"checks," one "checkmate," and a "damn!" Since he's a
poor loser it also effectively sabotaged subsequent talk,
which was fine with me. I had a steak and fried potatoes
for breakfast and went to bed.

Ten hours later someone shook me awake and I

160

propped myself on one elbow, refusing to open my eyes.

"Whassamadder?"

"I'm sorry to get you up," said one of the younger crew-
men, "but Miss Luharich wants you to disconnect the
squiggler so we can move on."

I knuckled open one eye, still deciding whether I

should be amused.

"Have it hauled to the side. Anyone can disconnect it."

"It's at the side now, sir. But she said it's in your con-
tract and we'd better do things right."

"That's very considerate of her. I'm sure my Local ap-
preciates her remembering."

"Uh, she also said to tell you to change your trunks and
comb your hair, and shave, too. Mister Andersen's going

to film it."

"Okay. Run along; tell her I'm on my way—and ask if
she has some toenail polish I can borrow."

I'll save on details. It took three minutes in all, and I
played it properly, even pardoning myself when I slipped
and bumped into Anderson's white tropicals with the
wet squiggler. He smiled, brushed it off; she smiled, even
though Luharich Complectacolor couldn't completely
mask the dark circles under her eyes; and I smiled, wav-
ing to all our fans out there in videoland. —Remember,
Mrs. Universe, you, too, can look like a monster-catcher.
Just use Luharich face cream.

I went below and made myself a tuna sandwich, with

mayonnaise.

Two days like icebergs— bleak, blank, half-melting, all
frigid, mainly out of sight, and definitely a threat to
peace of mind—drifted by and were good to put behind.
I experienced some old guilt feelings and had a few is-

"Going shopping?" asked Mike, who had put the call
through for me.

161

"Going home," I answered.

"Huh?"

"I'm out of the baiting business after this one, Mike.
The Devil with Ikky! The Devil with Venus and Luha-
rich Enterprises! And the Devil with youl"

Up eyebrows.

"What brought that on?"

"I waited over a year for this job. Now that I'm here,
I've decided the whole thing stinks."

"You knew what "it was when you signed on. No matter
what else you're doing, you're selling face cream when
you work for face cream sellers."

"Oh, that's not what's biting me. I admit the commer-
cial angle irritates me, but Tensquare has always been a
publicity spot, ever since the Erst time it sailed."

"What, then?"

"Five or six things, all added up. The main one being
that I don't care any more. Once it meant more to me
than anything else to hook that critter, and now it doesn't.
I went broke on what started out as a lark and I wanted
blood for what it cost me. Now I realize that maybe I had
it coming. I'm beginning to feel sorry for Ikky."

"And you don't want him now?"

"I'll take him if he comes peacefully, but I don't feel
like sticking out my neck to make him crawl into the
Hopkins."

"I'm inclined to think it's one of the four or five other
things you said you added."

"Such as?"

He scrutinized the ceiling.

I growled.

"Okay, but I won't say it, not just to make you happy
you guessed right."

He, smirking: "That look she wears isn't just for Ikky."

"No good, no good." I shook my head. "We're both fis-
sion chambers by nature. You can't have jets on both ends

162

of the rocket and expect to go anywhere—what's in the
middle just gets smashed."

"That's how it was. None of my business, of course—"

"Say that again and you'll say it without teeth."

"Any day, big man"—he looked up—"any place . . ."

"So go ahead. Get it said!"

"She doesn't care about that bloody reptile, she came
here to drag you back where you belong. You're not the
baitman this trip."

"Five years is too long."

"There must be something under that cruddy hide of
yours that people like," he muttered, "or I wouldn't be
talking like this. Maybe you remind us humans of some
really ugly dog we felt sorry for when we were kids. Any-
how, someone wants to take you home and raise you—
also, something about beggars not getting menus."

"Buddy," I chuckled, "do you know what I'm going to
do when I hit Lifeline?"

"I can guess."

"You're wrong. I'm torching it to Mars, and then I'll
cruise back home, first class. Venus bankruptcy provisions
do not apply to Martian trust funds, and I've still got a
wad tucked away where moth and corruption enter not.
I'm going to pick up a big old mansion on the Gulf and
if you're ever looking for a job you can stop around and
open bottles for me."

"You are a yellowbellied fink," he commented.

"Okay," I admitted, "but it's her I'm thinking of, too."

"I've heard the stories about you both," he said. "So
you're a heel and a goofoff and she's a bitch. That's called
compatibility these days. I dare you, baitman, try keep-
ing something you catch."

I turned.

"If you ever want that job, look me up."

I closed the door quietly behind me and left him sit-
ting there waiting for it to slam.

163

The day of the beast dawned like any other. Two days
after my gutless flight from empty waters I went down to
rebait Nothing on the scope. I was just making things
ready for the routine attempt.

I hollered a "good morning" from outside the Slider
and received an answer from inside before I pushed off.
I had reappraised Mike's words, sans sound, sans fury,
and while I did not approve of their sentiment or signifi-
cance, I had opted for civility anyhow.

So down, under, and away. I followed a decent cast
about two hundred-ninety meters out. The snaking cables
burned black to my left and I paced their undulations
from the yellowgreen down into the darkness. Soundless
lay the wet night, and I bent my way through it like a
cock-eyed comet, bright tail before.

I caught the line, slick and smooth, and began baiting.
An icy world swept by me then, ankles to head. It was a
draft, as if someone had opened a big door beneath me.
I wasn't drifting downwards that fast either.

Which meant that something might be moving up,
Something big enough to displace a lot of water. I still
didn't think it was Ikky. A freak current of some sort, but
not Ikky. Ha!

I had finished attaching the leads and pulled the first
plug when a big, rugged, black island grew beneath
me. . . .

I flicked the beam downward. His mouth was opened.

I was rabbit.

Waves of the death-fear passed downward. My stom-
ach imploded. I grew dizzy.

Only one thing, and one thing only. Left to do. I man-
aged it, finally. I pulled the rest of the plugs.

I could count the scaly articulations ridging his eyes by
then.

The squiggler grew, pinked into phosphorescence . . .
squiggledl

164

Then my lamp. I had to kill it, leaving just the bait be-
fore him.

One glance back as I jammed the jatoes to life.

He was so near that the squiggler reflected on his teeth,
in his eyes. Four meters, and I kissed his lambent jowls
with two jets of backwash as I soared. Then I didn't know
whether he was following or had halted. I began to black
out as I waited to be eaten.

The jatoes died and I kicked weakly.

Too fast, I felt a cramp coming on. One flick of the
beam, cried rabbit. One second, to know . . .

Or end things up, I answered. No, rabbit, we don't dart
before hunters. Stay dark.

Green waters finally, to yellowgreen, then top.

Doubling, I 'beat off toward Tensquare. The waves
from the explosion behind pushed me on ahead. The
world closed in, and a screamed, "He's alivel" in the
distance.

A giant shadow and a shock wave. The line was alive,
too. Happy Fishing Grounds. Maybe I did something
wrong. . . .

Somewhere Hand was clenched. What's bait?

A few million years. I remember starting out as a one-
celled organism and painfully becoming an amphibian,
then an air-breather. From somewhere high in the tree-
tops I heard a voice.

"He's coming around."

I evolved back into homosapience, then a step further
into a hangover.

"Don't try to get up yet."

"Have we got him?" I slurred.

"Still fighting, but he's hooked. We thought he took you
for an appetizer."

"So did I."

"Breathe some of this and shut up."

165

A funnel over my face. Good. Lift your cups and
drink. . . .

"He was awfully deep. Below scope range. We didn't
catch him till he started up. Too late, then."

I began to yawn.

"We'll get you inside now."

I managed to uncase my ankle knife.

"Try it and you'll be minus a thumb."

"You need rest."

"Then bring me a couple more blankets. I'm staying."

I fell back and closed my eyes.

Someone was shaking me. Gloom and cold. Spotlights
bled yellow on the deck. I was in a jury-rigged bunk,
bulked against the center blister. Swaddled in wool, I
still shivered.

"It's been eleven hours. You're not going to see any-
thing now."

I tasted blood.

"Drink this."

Water. I had a remark but I couldn't mouth it.

"Don't ask how I feel," I croaked. "I know that comes
next, but don't ask me. Okay?"

"Okay. Want to go below now?"

"No. Just get me my jacket."

"Right here."

"What's he doing?"

"Nothing. He's deep, he's doped but he's staying
down."

"How long since last time he showed?"

"Two hours, about."

"Jean?"

"She won't let anyone in the Slider. Listen, Mike says
come on in. He's light behind you in the blister."

I sat up and turned. Mike was watching. He gestured,
I gestured back.

166

I swung my feet over the edge and took a couple of
deep breaths. Pains in my stomach. I got to my fefet and
made it into the blister.

"Howza gut?" queried Mike.

I checked the scope. No Ikky. Too deep.

"You buying?"

"Yeah, coffee."

"You're ill. Also, coffee is all that's allowed in here."

"Coffee is a brownish liquid that bums your stomach.
You have some in the bottom drawer."

"No cups. You'll have to use a glass."

"Tough."

He poured.

"You do that well. Been practicing for that job?"

"What job?"

"The one I offered you—"

A blot on the scope!

"Rising, ma'am! Rising!" he yelled into the box.

"Thanks, Mike. I've got it in here," she crackled.

"Jean!"

"Shut up! She's busy!"

"Was that Carl?"

"Yeah," I called. "Talk later," and I cut it.

Why did I do that?

"Why did you do that?"

I didn't know.

"I don't know."

Damned echoes! I got up and walked outside.

Nothing. Nothing.

Something?

Tensquare actually rocked! He must have turned when
he saw the hull and started downward again. White water
to my left, and boiling. An endless spaghetti of cable
roared hotly into the belly of the deep.

I stood awhile, then turned and went back inside.

Two hours sick. Four, and better.

167

"The dope's getting to him."

"Yeah."

"What about Miss Luharich?"

"What about her?"

"She must be half dead."

"Probably."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"She signed the contract for this. She knew what might
happen. It did."

"I think you could land him."

"So do I."

"So does she."

"Then let her ask me."

Ikky was drafting lethargically, at thirty fathoms.

I took another walk and happened to pass behind the
Slider. She wasn't looking my way.

"Carl, come in here!"

Eyes of Picasso, that's what, and a conspiracy to make
me Slide . . .

"Is that an order?"

"Yes-No! Please."

I dashed inside and monitored. He was rising.

"Push or pull?"

I slammed the "wind" and he came like a kitten.

"Make up your own mind now."

He balked at ten fathoms.

"Play him?"

"No!"

She wound him upwards—five fathoms, four . . .

She hit the extensors at two, and they caught him. Then
the graffles.

Cries without and a heat lightning of flashbulbs.

The crew saw Ikky.

He began to struggle. She kept the cables tight, raised
the graffles . . .

Up.

168

Another two feet and the graffles began pushing.

Screams and fast footfalls.

Giant beanstalk in the wind, his neck, waving. The
green hills of his shoulders grew.

"He's big, Carll" she cried.

And he grew, and grew, and grew uneasy . . .

"NowF

fie looked down.

He looked down, as the god of our most ancient an-
cestors might have looked down. Fear, shame, and mock-
ing laughter rang in my head. Her head, too?

"Nowl"

She looked up at the nascent earthquake.

"I can't!"

It was going to be so damnably simple this time, now
the rabbit had died. I reached out

I stopped,

"Push it yourself."

"I can't. Tou do it. Land him, Carll"

"No. If I do, you'll wonder for the rest of your life
whether you could have. You'll throw away your soul
finding out. I know you will, because we're alike, and I
did it that way. Find out nowl"

She stared.

I gripped her shoulders.

"Could be that's me out there," I offered. "I am a green
sea serpent, a hateful, monstrous beast, and out to destroy
you. I am answerable to no one. Push the Inject."

Her hand moved to the button, jerked back.

"Now!"

She pushed it.

I lowered her still form to the floor and finished things
up with Ikky.

It was a good seven hours before I awakened to the
steady, sea-chewing grind of Tensquare's blades.

"You're sick," commented Mike.

169

"How's Jean?"

"The same."

"Where's the beast?"

"Here."

"Good." I rolled over. ". . . Didn't get away this time."

So that's the way it was. No one is born a baitman, I
don't think, but the rings of Saturn sing epithalamium the
sea-beast's dower.

170

A ROSE FOR ECCLESIASTES

I was busy translating one of my Madrigals Macabre into
Martian on the morning I was found acceptable. The in-
tercom had buzzed briefly, and I dropped my pencil and
flipped on the toggle in a single motion.

"Mister G," piped Moi ton's youthful contralto, "the old
man says I should 'get hold of that damned conceited
rhymer' right away, and send him to his cabin. Since -
there's only one damned conceited rhymer . . ."

"Let not ambition mock thy useful toil." I cut him off.

So, the Martians had finally made up their minds! I
knocked an inch and a half of ash from a smoldering butt,
and took my first drag since I had lit it. The entire month's
anticipation tried hard to crowd itself into the moment,
but could not quite make it. I was frightened to walk
those forty feet and hear Emory say the words I already
knew he would say, and that feeling elbowed the other
one into the background.                    ^

So I finished the stanza I was translating before I got
up.

It took only a moment to reach Emory's door. I
knocked twice and opened it, just as he growled, "Come
in."




171

"You wanted to see me?" I sat down quickly to save
him the trouble of offering me a seat.

"That was fast. What did you do, run?"

I regarded his paternal discontent:

Little fatty flecks beneath pale eyes, thinning hair, and
an Irish nose; a voice a decibel louder than anyone

else's. . . .

Hamlet to Claudius: "1 was working."

"Hah!" he snorted. "Come off it. No one's ever seen
you do any of that stuff."

I shrugged my shoulders and started to rise.

"If that's what you called me down here—"

"Sit downl"

He stood up. He walked around his desk. He hovered
above me and glared down. (A hard trick, even when .I'm

in a low chair.)

"You are undoubtedly the most antagonistic bastard
I've ever had to work with!" he bellowed, like a belly-
stung buffalo. "Why the hell don't you act like a human
being sometime and surprise everybody? I'm willing to
admit you're smart, maybe even a genius, but—oh, hell!"
He made a heaving gesture with both hands and walked

back to his chair.

"Betty has finally talked them into letting you go in."
His voice was normal again. "They'll receive you this
afternoon. Draw one of the jeepsters after lunch, and get
down there."

"Okay," I said.

"That's all, then."

I nodded, got to my feet. My hand was on the door-
knob when he said:

"I don't have to tell you how important this is. Don't

treat them the way you treat us."
I closed the door behind me.

I don't remember what I had for lunch. I was nervous,

172

but I knew instinctively that I wouldn't muff it. My Bos-
ton publishers expected a Martian Idyll, or at least a
Saint-Exupery job on space flight. The National Science
Association wanted a complete report on the Rise and
Fall of the Martian Empire.

They would both be pleased. I knew.

That's the reason everyone is jealous—why they hate
me. I always come through, and I can come through
better than anyone else.

I shoveled in a final anthill of slop, and made my way
to our car barn. I drew one jeepster and headed it toward
Tirellian.

Flames of sand, lousy with iron oxide, set fire to the
buggy. They swarmed over the open top and bit through
my scarf; they set to work pitting my goggles.

The jeepster, swaying and panting like a little donkey
I once rode through the Himalayas, kept kicking me in
the seat of the pants. The Moimtains of Tirellian shuf-
fled their feet and moved toward me at a cockeyed angle.

Suddenly I was heading uphill, and I shifted gears to
accommodate the engine's braying. Not like Gobi, not
like the Great Southwestern Desert, I mused. Just red,
just dead . . . without even a cactus.

I reached the crest of the hill, but I had raised too
much dust to see what was ahead. It didn't matter,
though; I have a head full of maps. I bore to the left and
downhill, adjusting the throttle. A cross-wind and solid
ground beat down the fires. I felt like Ulysses in Mele-
bolge—with a terza-rima speech in one hand and an eye
out for Dante.

I rounded a rock pagoda and arrived.

Betty waved as I crunched to a halt, then jumped
down.

Hi," I choked, unwinding my scarf and shaking out a
pound and a half of grit. "Like, where do I go and who
do I see?"

173

She permitted herself a brief Germanic giggle—more
at my starting a sentence with "like" than at my discom-
fort—then she started talking. (She is a top linguist, so a
word from the Village Idiom still tickles her!)

I appreciate her precise, furry talk; informational, and
all that. I had enough in the way of social pleasantries
before me to last at least the rest of my life. I looked at
her chocolate-bar eyes and perfect teeth;- at her sun-
bleached hair, close-cropped to the head (I hate
blondes!), and decided that she was in love with me.

"Mr. Gallinger, the Matriarch is waiting inside to be
introduced. She has consented to open the Temple rec-
ords for your study." She paused here to pat her hair and
squirm a little. Did my gaze make her nervous?

"They are religious documents, as well as their only
history," she continued, "sort of like the Mahabharata,
She expects you to observe certain rituals in handling
them, like repeating the sacred words when you turn
pages—she will teach you the system."

I nodded quickly, several times.

"Fine, let's go in."

"Uh—" She paused. "Do not forget their Eleven Forms
of Politeness and Degree. They take matters of form
quite seriously—and do not get into any discussions over
the equality of the sexes—"

"I know all about their taboos," I broke in. "Don't
worry. I've lived in the Orient, remember?"

She dropped her eyes and seized my hand. I almost
jerked it away.

"It will look better if I enter leading you."

I swallowed my comments, and followed her, like
Samson in Gaza.

Inside, my last thought met with a strange correspond-
ence. The Matriarch's quarters were a rather abstract
version of what I imagine the tents of the tribes of Israel

174

to have been like. Abstract, I say, because it was all
frescoed brick, peaked like a huge tent, with animal-
sidn representations like gray-blue scars, that looked as if
they bad been laid on the walls with a palette knife.

The Matriarch, M'Cwyie, was short, white-haired, fifty-
ish, and dressed like a Gypsy queen. With her rainbow of
voluminous skirts she looked like an inverted punch bowl
set atop a cushion.

Accepting my obeisances, she regarded me as an owl
might a rabbit. The lids of those black, black eyes jumped
upwards as she discovered my perfect accent. —The tape
recorder Betty had carried on her interviews had done
its part, and I knew the language reports from the first
two expeditions, verbatim. I'm all hell when it comes to
picking up accents.

"You are the poet?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Recite one of your poems, please."

"I'm sorry, but nothing short of a thorough translating
job would do justice to your language and my poetry,
and I don't know enough of your language yet."

"Oh?"

"But I've been making such translations for my own
amusement, as an exercise in grammar," I continued. 'Td
be honored to bring a few of them along one of the times
that I come here."

"Yes. Do so."

Score one for me!

She turned to Betty.

"You may go now."

Betty muttered the parting formalities, gave me a
strange sidewise look, and was gone. She apparently had
expected to stay and "assist" me. She wanted a piece of
the glory, like everyone else. But I was the Schliemann
at this Troy, and there would be only one name on the
Association reporti

175

M'Cwyie rose, and I noticed that she gained very little
height by standing. But then I'm six-six and look like a
poplar in October: thin, bright red on top, and towering
above everyone else.

"Our records are very, very old," she began. "Betty
says that your word for their age is 'millennia.'"

I nodded appreciatively.

"I'm very eager to see them."

"They are not here. We will have to go into the Temple
—they may not be removed."

I was suddenly wary.

"You have no objections to my copying them, do you?"

"No. I see that you respect them, or your desire would
not be so great."

"Excellent?'

She seemed amused. I asked her what was funny.

"The High Tongue may not be so easy for a foreigner
to leam."

It came through fast.

No one on the first expedition had gotten this close. I
had had no way of knowing that this was a double-lan-
guage deal—a classical as well as a vulgar. I knew some
of their Prakrit, now I had to leam all their Sanskrit.

"Ouch! and damni"

"Pardon, please?"

"It's non-translatable, M'Cwyie. But imagine yourself
having to learn the High Tongue in a hurry, and you can
guess at the sentiment."

She seemed amused again, and told me to remove my

shoes.

She guided me through an alcove . . .
. . . and into a burst of Byzantine brilliance!

No Earthman had ever been in this room before, or I
would have heard about it. Carter, the first expedition's
linguist, with the help of one Mary Alien, M.D., had

V6

learned all the grammar and vocabulary that I knew
while sitting cross-legged in the antechamber.

We had had no idea this existed. Greedily, I cast my
eyes about. A highly sophisticated system of esthetics lay
behind the decor. We would have to revise our entire
estimation of Martian culture.

For one thing, the ceiling was vaulted and corbeled;

for another, there were side-columns with reverse flutings;

for another—oh hell! The place was big. Posh. You could
never have guessed it from the shaggy outsides.

I bent forward to study the gilt filigree on a ceremonial
table. M'Cwyie seemed a bit smug at my intentness, but
I'd still have hated to play poker with her,

The table was loaded with books.

With my toe, I traced a mosaic on the floor.

"Is your entire city within this one building?"

"Yes, it goes far back into the mountain."

"I see," I said, seeing nothing.

I couldn't ask her for a conducted tour, yet.

She moved to a small stool by the table.
' "Shall we begin your friendship with the High
Tongue?"

I was trying to photograph the hall with my eyes,
knowing I would have to get a camera in here, somehow,
sooner or later. I tore my gaze from a statuette and nod-
ded, hard.

"Yes, introduce me."

I sat down.

For the next three weeks alphabet-bugs chased each
other behind my eyelids whenever I tried to sleep. The
sky was an unclouded pool of turquoise that rippled cal-
ligraphies whenever I swept my eyes across it. I drank
quarts of coffee while I worked and mixed cocktails of
Benzedrine and champagne for my coffee breaks.

M'Cwyie tutored me two hours every morning, and oc-
casionally for another two in the evening. I spent an addi-

177

tional fourteen hours a day on my own, once I had gotten *
up sufficient momentum to go ahead alone.

And at night the elevator of time dropped me to its
bottom floors. . . .

I was six again, learning my Hebrew, Greek, Latin,
and Aramaic. I was ten, sneaking peeks at the lliad.
When Daddy wasn't spreading heUfire brimstone, and
brotherly love, he was teaching me to dig the Word, like
in the original.

Lord! There are so many originals and so many words!
When I was twelve I started pointing out the little differ-
ences between what he was preaching and what I was
reading.

The fundamentalist vigor of his reply brooked no de-
bate. It was worse than any beating. I kept my mouth
shut after that and learned to appreciate Old Testament

poetry.

—Lord, I am sorry! Daddy—Sir—I am sorry! —It
couldn't be! It couldn't be. . .

On the day the boy graduated from high school, with
French, German, Spanish, and Latin awards Dad Gal-
linger had told his fourteen-year-old, six-toot scarecrow
of a son that he wanted him to enter the ministry. I re-
member how his son was evasive:

"Sir," he had said, "I'd sort of like to study on my own
for a year or so, and then take pre-theology courses at
some liberal arts university. I feel I'm still sort of young
to try a seminary, straight off."

The Voice of God: "But you have the gift of tongues,
my son. You can preach the Gospel in all the lands of
Babel. You were born to be a missionary. You say you are
young, but time is rushing by you like a whirlwind. Start
early, and you will enjoy added years of service."

The added years of service were so many added tails
to the cat repeatedly laid on my back. I can't see his

178

face now; I never can. Maybe it is because I was always
afraid to look at it then.

And years later, when he was dead, and laid out, in
black, amidst bouquets, amidst weeping congregational-
ists amidst prayers, red faces, handkerchiefs, hands pat-
tins your shoulders, solemn faced comforters ... I
looked at him and did not recognize him.

We had met nine months before my birth, this stranger
and I. He had never been cruel—stern, demanding, with
contempt for everyone's shortcomings—but never cruel.
He was also all that I had had of a mother. And brothers.
And sisters. He had tolerated my three years at St.
John's, possibly because of its name, never knowing how
liberal and delightful a place it really was.

• But I never knew him, and the man atop the catafalque
demanded nothing now; I was free not to preach the
Word. But now I wanted to, in a different way. I
wanted to preach a word that I could never have voiced
while he lived.

I did not return for my senior year in the fall. I had a
small inheritance coming, and a bit of trouble getting
control of it, since I was still under eighteen. But I man-
aged.

It was Greenwich Village I finally settled upon.
Not telling any well-meaning parishoners my new ad-
dress, I entered into a daily routine of writing poetry
and teaching myself Japanese and Hindustani. I grew a
fiery beard, drank espresso, and learned to play chess.
I wanted to try a couple of the other paths to salvation.

After that, it was two years in India with the Old
Peace Corps—which broke me of my Buddhism, and gave
me my Pipes of Krishna lyrics and the Pulitzer they de-
served.

Then back to the States for my degree, grad work in
linguistics, and more prizes.             /
Then one day a ship went to Mars. The vessel settling

179

in its New Mexico nest of fires contained a new lan-
guage. —It was fantastic, exotic, and esthetically over
powering. After I had learned all there was to know
about it, and written my book, I was famous in new cir
cles:

"Go, Gallinger. Dip your bucket in the well, and bring
us a drink of Mars. Go, leam another world—but remain
aloof, rail at it gently like Auden—and hand us its soul
in iambics."

And I came to the land where the sun is a tarnished
penny, where the wind is a whip, where two moons play
at hot rod games, and a hell of sand gives you the in-
cendiary itches whenever you look at it.

I rose from my twistings on the bunk and crossed the
darkened cabin to a port. The desert was a carpet of
endless orange, bulging from the sweepings of centuries
beneath it.

"I a stranger, unafraid —This is the land —I've got it
madel"

I laughed.

I had the High Tongue by the tail already—or the
roots, if you want your puns anatomical, as well as cor-
rect

The High and Low Tongues were not so dissimilar as
they had first seemed. I had enough of the one to get me
through the murkier parts of the other. I had the gram-
mar and all the commoner irregular verbs down cold,
the dictionary I was constructing grew by the day, like a
tulip, and would bloom shortly. Every time I played the
tapes the stem lengthened.

Now was the time to tax my ingenuity, to really drive
the lessons home. I had purposely refrained from plung-
ing into the major texts until I could do justice to them
I had been reading minor commentaries, bits of verse,

180

fragments of history. And one thing had impressed me
strongly in all that I read.

They wrote about concrete things: rock, sand, water,
winds; and the tenor couched within these elemental
symbols was fiercely pessimistic. It reminded me of some
Buddhist texts, but even more so, I realized from my re-
cent recherches, it was like parts of the Old Testament.
Specifically, it reminded me of the Book of Ecclesiastes.

That, then, would be it. The sentiment, as well as the
vocabulary, was so similar that it would be a perfect
exercise. Like putting Poe into French. I would never
be a convert to the Way of Malann, but I would show
them that an Earthman had once thought the same
thoughts, felt similarly.

I switched on my desk lamp and sought King James
amidst my books.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vani-
ties; all is vanity. What profit hath a man . . .

My progress seemed to startle M'Cwyie. She peered
at me, like Sartre's Other, across the tabletop. I ran
through a chapter in the Book of Locar. I didn't look up,
but I could feel the tight net her eyes were working
about my head, shoulders, and rapid hands. I turned the
page.

Was she weighing the net, judging the size of the
catch? And what for? The books said nothing of fishers
on Mars. Especially of men. They said that some god
named Malann had spat, or had done something disgust-
ing (depending on the version you read), and that life
had gotten underway as a disease in inorganic matter.
They said that movement was its first law, its first law,
and that the dance was the only legitimate reply to the
inorganic . . . the dance's quality its justification,— fica-
tion . . . and love is a disease in organic matter—Inor-
ganic matter?

181

I shook my head. I had almost been asleep.

"M'narra."

I stood and stretched. Her eyes outlined me greedily
now. So I met them, and they dropped.

"I grow tired. I want to rest awhile. I didn't sleep
much last night."

She nodded, Earth's shorthand for "yes," as she had
learned from me.

"You wish to relax, and see the explicitness of the doc-
trine of Locar in its fullness?"

"Pardon me?"

"You wish to see a Dance of Locar?"

"Oh." Their damned circuits of form and periphrasis
here ran worse than the Korean! "Yes. Surely. Any time
it's going to be done I'd be happy to watch."

I continued, "In the meantime, I've been meaning to
ask you whether I might take some pictures—"

"Now is the time. Sit down. Rest. I will call the mus-
cians."

She bustled out through a door I had never been past.

Well now, the dance was the highest art, according to
Locar, not to mention Havelock Ellis, and I was about to
see how their centuries-dead philosopher felt it should
be conducted. I rubbed my eyes and snapped over,
touching my toes a few times.

The blood began pounding in my head, and I sucked
in a couple deep breaths. I bent again and there was a
flurry of motion at the door.

To the trio who entered with M'Cwyie I must have
looked as if I were searching for the marbles I had just
lost, bent over like that.

I grinned weakly and straightened up, my face red
from more than exertion. I hadn't expected them that
quickly.

Suddenly I thought of Havelock Ellis again in his area
of greatest populauty.

182

The little redheaded doll, wearing, sari-like, a diapha-
nous piece of the Martian sky, looked up in wonder—as
a child at some colorful flag on a high pole.

"Hello," I said, or its equivalent.

She bowed before replying. Evidently I had been pro-
moted in status.

"I shall dance," said the red wound in that pale, pale
cameo, her face. Eyes, the color of dream and her dress,
pulled away from mine.

She drifted to the center of the room.

Standing there, like a figure in an Etruscan frieze, she
was either meditating or regarding the design on the

floor.

Was the mosaic symbolic of something? I studied it.
If it was, it eluded me; it would make an attractive
bathroom floor or patio, but I couldn't see much in it
beyond that.

The other two were paint-spattered sparrows like
M'Cwyie, in their middle years. One settled to the floor
like a triple-stringed instrument faintly resembling a
samisen. The other held a simple woodblock and two
drumsticks.

M'Cwyie disdained her stool and was seated upon the
floor before I realized it. I followed suit.

The samisen player was still tuning it up, so I leaned
toward M'Cwyie.

"What is the dancer's name?"

"Braxa," she replied, without looking at me, and raised
her left hand, slowly, which meant yes, and go ahead,
and let it begin.

The stringed-thing throbbed like a toothache, and a
ticktocking, like ghosts of all the clocks they had never
invented, sprang from the block.

Braxa was a statue, both hands raised to her face, el-
bows high and outspread.

The music became a metaphor for fire.

183

Crackle, purr, snap . . .

She did not move.

The hissing altered to splashes. The cadence slowed.
It was water now, the most precious thing in the world,
gurgling clear than green over mossy rocks.

Still she did not move.

Glissandos. A pause.

Then, so faint I could hardly be sure at first, the trem-
ble of the winds began. Softly, gently, sighing and halt-
ing, uncertain. A pause, a sob, then a repetition of the
first statement, only louder.

Were my eyes complexly bugged from my reading,
or was Braxa actually trembling all over, head to foot.

She was.

She began a microscopic swaying. A fraction of an
inch right, then left. Hei fingers opened like the petals
of a flower, and I co^'ld see that her eyes were closed.

Her eyes opened. They were distant, glassy, looking
through me and the walls. Her swaying became more
pronounced, merged with the beat.

The wind was sweeving in from the desert now, jail-
ing against Tirellian like waves on a dike. Her fingers
moved, they were the gusts. Her arms, slow pendulums,
descended, began a counter-movement.

The gale was coming now. She began an axial move-
ment and her hands caught up with the rest of her body,
only now her shoulders commenced to writhe out a figure-
eight.

The wind! The wind, I say. 0 wild, enigmatic! 0 muse
of St. John Perse!

The cyclone was twisting around those eyes, its still
center. Her head was thrown back, but I knew there was
no ceiling between her gaze, passive as Buddha's, and
the unchanging skies. Only the two moons, perhaps, in-
terrupted their slumber in that elemental Nirvana of un-
inhabited turquoise.

184

Years ago, I had seen the Devadais in India, the street-
dancers, spinning their colorful webs, drawing in the
male insect. But Braxa was more than this: she was a
Ramadjany, like those votaries of Rama, incarnation of
Vishnu who had given the dance to man: the sacred

dancers.

The clicking was monotonously steady now; the whine
of the strings made me think of the stinging rays of the
sun their heat stolen by the wind's inhalations; the blue
was Sarasvati and Mary, and a girl named Laura. I heard
a sitar from somewhere, watched this statute come to
life, and inhaled a divine afflatus.

I was again Rimbaud with his hashish, Baudelaire with
his laudanum, Poe, De Quincy, Wilde, Mallarme and
Aleister Crowley. I was, for a fleeting second, my father
in his dark pulpit and darker suit, the hymns and the or-
gan's wheeze transmuted to bright wind.

She was a spun weather vane, a feathered crucifix
hovering in the air, a clothes-line holding one bright gar-
ment lashed parallel to the ground. Her shoulder was
bare now, and her right breast moved up and down like
a moon in the sky, its red nipple appearing momently
above a fold and vanishing again. The music was as for-
mal as Job's argument with God. Her dance was God's
reply.

The music slowed, settled; it had been met, matched,
answered. Her garment, as if alive, crept back into the
more sedate folds it originally held.

She dropped low, lower, to the floor. Her head fell
upon her raised knees. She did not move.

There was silence.

I realized, from the ache across my shoulders, how
tensely I had been sitting. My armpits were wet. Rivulets
had been running down my sides. What did one do now?
Applaud?

185

I sought M'Cwyie from the comer of my eye. She
raised her right hand.

As if by telepathy the girl shuddered all over and
stood. The musicians also rose. So did M'Cwyie.

I got to my feet, with a Charley Horse in my left leg,
and said, "It was beautiful," inane as that sounds.

I received three different High Forms of "thank you."

There was a flurry of color: and I was alone again
with M'Cwyie.

"That is the one hundred-seventeenth of the two thou-
sand, two hundred-twenty-four dances of Locar."

I looked down at her.

"Are the dances of your world like this?"

"Some of them are similar. I was reminded of them as I
watched Braxa—but I've never seen anything exactly like
hers."

"She is good," M'Cwyie said. "She knows all the
dances."

A hint of her earlier expression which had troubled
me ...                                '

It was gone in an instant.

"I must tend my duties now." She moved to the table
and closed the books. "M'narra."

"Good-bye." I slipped into my boots.

"Good-bye, Gallinger."

I walked out the door, mounted the feepster, and
roared across the evening into night, my wings of risen
desert flapping slowly behind me.

II

I had just closed the door behind Betty, after a brief
grammar session, when I heard the voices in the hall. My
vent was opened a fraction, so I stood there and eaves-
dropped:

186

Morton's fruity treble: "Guess what? He said "hello' to

me awhile ago."
"Hmmph!" Emory's elephant lungs exploded. "Either

he's slipping. or Y011 were standing in his way and he
wanted you to move."

"Probably didn't recognize me. I don't think he sleeps
any more, now he has that language to play with. I had
night watch last week, and every night I passed his door
at 0300—1 always heard that recorder going. At 0500
when I got off, he was still at it."

"The guy is working hard," Emory admitted, grudg-
ingly. "In fact, I think he's taking some kind of dope to
keep awake. He looks sort of glassy-eyed these days.
Maybe that's natural for a poet, though."

Betty had been standing there, because she broke in

then:

"Regardless of what you think of him, it's going to take
me at least a year to learn what he's picked up in three
weeks. And I'm just a linguist, not a poet."

Morton must have been nursing a crush on her bovine
charms. It's the only reason I can think of for his dropping
his guns to say what he did.

"I took a course in modem poetry when I was back at
the university," he began. "We read six authors—Yeats,
Pound, Eliot, Crane, Stevens, and Gallinger—and on the
last day of the semester, when the prof was feeling a
little rhetorical, he said, 'These six names are written
on the century, and all the gates of criticism and hell
shall not prevail against them.'

"Myself," he continued, "I thought his Pipes of Krishna
and his Madrigals were great. I was honored to be
chosen for an expedition he was going on.

"I think he's spoken two dozen words to me since I
met him," he finished.

The Defense: "Did it ever occur to you," Betty said,
that he might be tremendously self-conscious about his

187

appearance? He was also a precocious child, and prob-
ably never even had school friends. He's sensitive and
very introverted."

"Sensitive? Self-conscious?" Emory choked and gagged.
"The man is as proud as Lucifer, and he's a walking in-
sult machine. You press a button like 'Hello' or 'Nice
day' and he thumbs his nose at you. He's got it down to a
reflex."

They muttered a few other pleasantries and drifted
away.

Well bless you, Morton boy. You little pimple-faced,
Ivy-bred connoisseur! I've never taken a course in my
poetry, but I'm glad someone said that. The Gates of
Hell. Well now! Maybe Daddy's prayers got heard some-
where, and I am a missionary, after all!

Only . . .

. . . Only a missionary needs something to convert
people to. I have my private system of esthetics, and I
suppose it oozes an ethical by-product somewhere. But
if I ever had anything to preach, really, even in my
poems, I wouldn't care to preach it to such lowlifes
you. If you think I'm a slob, I'm also a slob, and there's
no room for you in my Heaven—it's a private place,
where Swift, Shaw, and Petronius Arbiter came to din-
ner.

And oh, the feasts we have! The Trimalchio's, the
Emory's we dissect!
We finish you with the soup, Morton!

I turned and settled at my desk, I wanted to write
something. Ecclestiastes could take a night off. I wanted
to write a poem, a poem about the one hundred-seven-
teenth dance of Locar; about a rose following the light,
traced by the wind, sick, like Blake's rose, dying. . . .

I found a pencil and began.

When I had finished I was pleased. It wasn't great—at

188

least, it was no greater than it needed to be—High Mar-
tian not being my strongest tongue. I groped and put it
into English, with partial rhymes. Maybe I'd stick it in
my next book. I called it Braxa;

In a land of wind and red, where the icy evening of
Time freezes milk in the breasts of Life, as two moons
overhead—cat and dog in alleyways of dream—scratch
and scramble agelessly my flight . . .

This final flower turns a burning head.

I put it away and found some phenobartibal. I was
suddenly tired.

When I showed my poems to M'Cwyie the next day,
she read it through several times, very slowly.

"It is lovely," she said. "But you used three words
from your own language. 'Cat' and 'dog,' I assume, are
two small animals with a hereditary hatred for one an-
other. But what is 'flower?'"

"Oh," I said. "I've never come across your word for
'flower,' but I was actually thinking of an Earth flower,
the rose."

"What is it like?"

"Well, its petals are generally bright red. That's what
I meant, on one level, by 'burning heads.' I also wanted
it to imply fever, though, and red hair, and the fire of
life. The rose, itself, has a thorny stem, green leaves and
a distinct, pleasing aroma,"

"I wish I could see one."

"I suppose it could be arranged. I'll check."

"Do it, please. You are a—" She used the word for
"prophet," or religious poet, like Isaish or Locar. "—and
your poem is inspired. I shall tell Braxa of it."

I declined the nomination, but felt flattered.

189

This, then, I decided, was the strategic day, the day-
on which to ask whether I might bring in the microfilm
machine and the camera. I wanted to copy all their
texts, I explained, and I couldn't write fast enough to do
it.

She surprised me by agreeing immediately. But she
bowled me over with her invitation.

"Would you like to come and stay here while you do
this thing? Then you can work night and day, any time
you want—except when the Temple is being used, of
course."

I bowed.

"I should be honored."

"Good. Bring your machines when you want, and I
will show you a room."

"Will this afternoon be all right?"

"Certainly."

"Then I will go now and get-things ready. Until this
afternoon . .."
"Good-bye."

I anticipated a little trouble from Emory, but not
much. Everyone back at the ship was anxious to see the
Martians, poke needles in the Martians, ask them about
Martian climate, diseases, soil chemistry, politics, and
mushrooms (our botanist was a fungus nut, but a rea-
sonably good guy)—and only four or five had actually
gotten to see them. The crew had been spending most of
its time excavating dead cities and their acropolises. We
played the game by strict rules, and the natives were as
fiercely insular as the nineteenth-century Japanese. I fig-
ured I would meet with little resistance, and I figured
right.

In fact, I got the distinct impression that everyone was
happy to see me move out.

190

I stopped in the hydroponics room to speak with our
mushroom master.

"Hi, Kane. Grow any toadstools in the sand yet?"
He sniffed. He always sniffs. Maybe he's allergic to

plants.

"Hello, Gallinger. No, I haven't had any success with
toadstools, but look behind the car barn next time you're
out there. I've got a few cacti going."

"Great," I observed. Doc Kane was about my only
friend aboard, not counting Betty.

"Say, I came down to ask you a favor."

"Name it."

"I want a rose."

"A what?"

"A rose. You know, a nice red American Beauty job—
thorns, pretty smelling—"

"I don't think it will take in this soil. Sniff, sniff."

"No, you don't understand. I don't want to plant it, I
just want the flowers."

"I'd have to use the tanks." He scratched his hairless
dome. "It would take at least three months to get you
flowers, even under forced growth."

"Will you do it?"

"Sure, if you don't mind the wait."

"Not at all. In fact, three months will just make it be-
fore we leave." I looked about at the pools of crawling
slime, at the trays of shoots. "—I'm moving up to Tirellian
today, but I'll be in and out all the time. I'll be here
when it blooms."

"Moving up there, eh? Moore said they're an in-group."

"I guess I'm 'in' then."

"Looks that way—1 still don't see how you learned
their language, though. Of course, I had trouble with
French and German for my Ph.D, but last week I heard
Betty demonstrate it at lunch. It just sounds like a lot of

191

weird noises. She says speaking it is like working a
Times crossword and trying to imitate birdcalls at the
same time."

I laughed, and took the cigarette he offered me.

"It's complicated," I acknowledged. "But, well, it's as
if you suddenly came across a whole new class of myce-
tae here—you'd dream about it at night."

His eyes were gleaming.

"Wouldn't that be something! I might, yet, you know."

"Maybe you will."

He chuckled as we walked to the door.

"I'll start your roses tonight. Take it easy down there/'

"You bet. Thanks."

Like I said, a fungus nut, but a fairly good guy.

My quarters in the Citadel of Tirellian were directly
adjacent to the Temple, on the inward side and slightly
to the left. They were a considerable improvement over
my cramped cabin, and I was pleased that Martian cul-
ture had progressed sufficiently to discover the desirabil-
ity of the mattress over the pallet. Also, the bed was
long enough to accommodate me, which was surprising.

So I unpacked and took sixteen 35 mm. shots of the
Temple, before starting on the books.

I took 'stats until I was sick of turning pages without
knowing what they said. So I started translating a work
of history.

"Lo. In the thirty-seventh year of the Process of Cillen
the rains came, which gave rise to rejoicing, for it was a
rare and untoward occurrence, and commonly construed
a blessing.

"But it was not the life-giving semen of Malann which
fell from the heavens. It was the blood of the universe,
spurting from an artery. And the last days were upon
us. The final dance was to begin.

192

"The rains brought the plague that does not kill, and
the last passes of Locar began with their drumming. . . ."

I asked myself what the hell Tamur meant, for he was
an historian and supposedly committed to fact. This
was not their Apocalypse.

Unless they could be one and the same . . . ?

Why not? I mused. Tirellian's handful of people were
the remnant of what had obviously once been a highly
developed culture. They had had wars, but no holo-
causts; science, but little technology. A plague, a plague
that did not kill . . . ? Could that have done it? How, if
it wasn't fatal?

I read on, but the nature of the plague was not dis-
cussed. I turned pages, skipped ahead, and drew a blank.

M'Cwyie! M'Cwyie! When I want to question you
most, you are not around!

Would it be a faux pas to go looking for her? Yes, I
decided. I was restricted to the rooms I had been shown,
that had been an implicit understanding. I would have
to wait to find out.

So I cursed long and loud, in many languages, doubt-
less burning Malann's sacred ears, there in his Temple.

He did not see fit to strike me dead, so I decided to
call it a day and hit the sack.

I must have been asleep for several hours when Braxa
entered my room with a tiny lamp. She dragged me
awake by tugging at my pajama sleeve.

I said hello. Thinking back, there is not much else I
could have said.

"Hello."

"I have come," she said, "to hear the poem."

"What poem?"

"Yours."

"Oh."

I yawned, sat up, and did things people usually do
when awakened in the middle of the night to read poetry.

"That is very kind of you, but isn't the hour a trifle
awkward?"

"I don't mind," she said.

Someday I am going to write an article for the Journal
of Semantics, called "Tone of Voice: An Insufficient Ve-
hicle for Irony."

However, I was awake, so I grabbed my robe.

"What sort of animal is that?" she asked, pointing at
the silk dragon on my lapel.

"Mythical," I replied. "Now look, it's late. I am tired. I
have much to do in the morning. And M'Cwyie just
might get the wrong idea if she learns you were here."

"Wrong idea?"

"You know damned well what I mean!" It was the first
time I had had an opportunity to use Martian profanity,
and it failed.

"No," she said, "I do not know."

She seemed frightened, like a puppy being scolded
without knowing what it has done wrong.

I softened. Her red cloak matched her hair and lips so
perfectly, and those lips were trembling.

"Here now, I didn't mean to upset you. On my word
there are certain, uh, mores, concerning people of differ-
ent sex alone together in bedrooms, and not allied by
marriage.. . . Urn, I mean, you see what I mean?"

"No."

They were jade, her eyes.

"Well, it's sort of . . . Well, it's sex, that's what it is."

A light switched on in those jade lamps.

"Oh, you mean having childreni"

"Yes. That's it! Exactly."

She laughed. It was the first time I had heard laughter
in Tirellian. It sounded like a violinist striking his high
strings with the bow, in short little chops. It was not an

194

altogether pleasant thing to hear, especially because she

laughed too long.

When she had finished she moved closer.
"I remember, now," she said. "We used to have such

rules. Half a Process ago, when I was a child, we had

such rules. But"—she looked as if she were ready to laugh

again—"there is no need for them now."

My mind moved like a tape recorder played a triple

speed.

Half a Process! HalfaProcessa-ProcessaProcess! No!
Yes! Half a Process was two hundred-forty-three years,
roughly speaking!

—Time enough to leam the 2224 dances of Locar.

—Time enough to grow old, if you were human.

—Earth-style human, I mean.

I looked at her again, pale as the white queen in an
ivory chess set.

She was human, I'd stake my soul—alive, normal,
healthy. I'd stake my life—woman, my body . . .

But she was two and a half centuries old, which made
M'Cwyie Methusala's grandma. It flattered me to think
of their repeated complimenting of my skills, as linguist,
as poet. These superior beings

But what did she mean "there is no such need for
them now"? Why the near-hysteria? Why all those
funny looks I'd been getting from M'Cwyie?

I suddenly knew I was close to something important,
besides a beautiful girl.

"Tell me," I said, in my Casual Voice, "did it have
anything to do with 'the plague that does not kill,' of
which Tamur wrote?"

"Yes," she replied, "the children born after the Rains
could have no children of their own, and—"

"And what?" I was leaning forward, memory set at
"record."

"—and the men had no desire to get any."

195

I sagged backward against the bedpost. Racial sterility,
masculine impotence, following phenomenal weather.
Had some vagabond cloud of radioactive junk from
God knows where penetrated their weak atmosphere one
day? One day long before Shiaparelli saw the canals,
mythical as my dragon, before those "canals" had given
rise to some correct guesses for all the wrong reasons,
had Braxa been alive, dancing, here—damned in the
womb since blind Milton had written of another para-
dise, equally lost?

I found a cigarette. Good thing I had thought to bring
ashtrays. Mars had never had a tobacco industry either.
Or booze. The ascetics I had met in India had been
Dionysiac compared to this.

'What is that tube of fire?"

"A cigarette. Want one?"

"Yes, please."

She sat beside me, and I lighted it for her.

"It irritates the nose."

"Yes. Draw some into your lungs, hold it there, and
exhale."

A moment paused.

"Ooh," she said.

A pause, then, "Is it sacred?"

"No, it's nicotine," I answered, "a very ersatz form of
divinity."

Another pause.

"Please don't ask me to translate 'ersatz.'"

"I won't. I get this feeling sometimes when I dance."

"It will pass in a moment."

"Tell me your poem now."

An idea hit me.

"Wait a minute," I said; "I may have something better."

I got up and rummaged through my notebooks, then
I returned and sat beside her.

"These are the first three chapters of the Book of Ec-

196

clesiastes," I explained. "It is very similar to your own
sacred books."

I started reading.

I got through eleven verses before she cried out,
"Please don't read that! Tell me one of yours!"

I stopped and tossed the notebook onto a nearby
table. She was shaking, not as she had quivered that day
she danced as the wind, but with the jitter of unshed
tears. She held her cigarette awkwardly, like a pencil.
Clumsily, I put my arm about her shoulders.

"He is so sad," she said, "like all the others."

So I twisted my mind like a bright ribbon, folded it,
and tied the crazy Christmas knots I love so well. From
German to Martian, with love, I did an impromptu
paraphrasal of a poem about a Spanish dancer. I thought
it would please her. I was right.

"Ooh," she said again. "Did you write that?"

"No, it's by a better man than I."

"I don't believe you. You wrote it."

"No, a man named Rilke did."

"But you brought it across to my language. Light an-
other match, so I can see how she danced."

I did.

"The fires of forever," she mused, "and she stamped
them out, 'with small, firm feet.' I wish I could dance
like that."

"You're better than any Gypsy," I laughed, blowing it
out.

"No, I'm not. I couldn't do that."

"Do you want me to dance for you?"

Her cigarette was burning down, so I removed it from
her fingers and put it out, along with my own.

"No," I said. "Go to bed."

She smiled, and before I realized it, had unclasped
the fold of red at her shoulder.

And everything fell away.

197

And I swallowed, with some difficulty.
"All right," she said.

So I kissed her, as the breath of fallen cloth extin-
guished the lamp.

Ill

The days were like Shelley's leaves: yellow, red, brown,
whipped in bright gusts by the west wind. They swirled
past me with the rattle of microfilm. Almost all the
books were recorded now. It would take scholars yeais
to get through them, to properly assess their value. Mars
was locked in my desk.

Ecclesiastes, abandoned and returned to a dozen
times, was almost i eady to speak in the High Temple.

I whistled when I wasn't in the Temple. I wrote reams
of poetry I would have been ashamed of before. Eve-
nings I would walk with Braxa, across the dunes or up
into the mountains. Sometimes she would dance for me,
and I would read something long, and in dactylic hexa-
meter. She still thought I was Rilke, and I almost kidded
myself into believing it. Here I was, staying at the Castle
Duino, writing his Elegies.

. . . It is strange to inhabit the Earth no more,
to use no longer customs scarce acquired, .
nor interpret roses . . .'

No! Never interpret roses! Don't. Smell them (sniff,
Kane!), pick them, enjoy them. Live in the moment.
Hold to it tightly. But charge not the gods to explain. So
fast the leaves go by, are blown . . .

And no one ever noticed us. Or card.

Laura. Laura and Braxa. They rhyme, you Icnow, with
a bit of a clash. Tall, cool, and blonde was she (I hate

198

blondes!), and Daddy had turned me inside out, like a
pocket, and I thought she could fill me again. But the big,
beat world-slinger, with Judas-beard and dog-trust in his
eyes, on, he had been a fine decoration at her parties.
And that was all.

How the machine cursed me in the Temple! It blas-
phemed Malann and Gallinger. And the wild west wind
went by and something was not far behind.

The last days were upon us.

A day went by and I did not see Braxa, and a night.
And a second. A third.

I was half-mad. I hadn't realized how close we had
become, how important she had been. With the dumb
assurance of presence, I had fought against questioning
roses.

I had to ask. I didn't want to, but I had no choice.
"Where is she, M'Cwyie? Where is Braxa?"
"She is gone," she said,
"Where?"
"I do not know."

I looked at those devil-bird eyes. Anathema maranatha
rose to my lips.
"I must know."
She looked through me.

"She has left us. She is gone. Up into the hills, I sup-
pose. Or the desert. It does not matter. What does any-
thing matter? The dance draws to a close. The Temple
will soon be empty."

"Why? Why did she leave?"
"I do not know."

"I must see her again. We lift off in a matter of days."
"I am sorry, Gallinger."

"So am I," I said, and slammed shut a book without
saying "m'narra."
I stood up.

199

"I will find her."

I left the Temple. M'Cwyie was a seated statue. My
boots were still where I had left them.

All day I roared up and down the dunes, going no-
where To the crew of the Aspic I must have looked
like a sandstorm, all by myself. Finally, I had to return
for more fuel.

Emory came stalking out.

"Okay, made it good. You look like the abominable
dust man. Why the rodeo?"

"Why, I, uh, lost something."

"In the middle of the desert? Was it one of your son-
nets? They're the only thing I can think of that you'd
make such a fuss over."

"No, dammit! It was something personal."

George had finished filling the tank. I started to mount
the Jeepster again.

"Hold on there!" he grabbed my arm.

"You're not going back until you tell me what this is
all about."

I could have broken his grip, but then he could order
me dragged back by the heels, and quite a few people
would enjoy doing the dragging. So I forced myself to
speak slowly, softly:

"It's simply that I lost my watch. My mother gave it
to me and it's a family heirloom. I want to find it before
we leave."

"You sure it's not in your cabin, or down in Tirellian?"

"I've already checked."

"Maybe somebody hid it to irritate you. You know
you're not the most popular guy around."

I shook my head.

"I thought of that. But I always carry it in my right
pocket I think it might have bounced out going over
the dunes."

200

He narrowed his eyes.

"I remember reading on a book jacket that your
mother died when you were born."

"That's right," I said, biting my tongue. "The watch be-
longed to her father and she wanted me to have it. My
father kept it for me."

"Hmph!" he snorted. "That's a pretty strange way to
look for a watch, riding up and down in a jeepster."

"I could see the light shining off it that way," I offered,
lamely.

"Well, it's starting to get dark," he observed. "No sense
looking any more today.                  >

"Throw a dust sheet over the jeepster," he directed a
mechanic.

He patted my arm.

"Come on in and get a shower, and something to eat.
You look as if you could use both."

Little fatty flecks beneath pale eyes, thinning hair, and
an Irish nose; a voice a decibel louder than anyone
else's. . . .

His only qualification for leadership!

I stood there, hating him. Claudius! If only this were
the fifth act!

But suddenly the idea of a shower, and food, came
through to me. I could use both badly. If I insisted on
hurrying back immediately I might arouse more suspi-
cion.

So I brushed some sand from my sleeve.

"You're right. That sounds like a good idea."

"Come on, we'll eat in my cabin."

The shower was a blessing, clean khakis were the grace
of God, and the food smelled like Heaven.

"Smells pretty good," I said.

We hacked up our steaks in silence. When we got to
the dessert and coffee he suggested:

201

"Why don't you take the night off? Stay here and get
some sleep."

I shook my head.

"I'm pretty busy. Finishing up. There's not much time
left."

"A couple of days ago you said you were almost fin-
ished."

"Almost, but not quite."

"You also said they'll be holding a service in the Temple
tonight."

"That's right. I'm going to work in my room."

He shrugged his shoulders.

Finally, he said, "Gallinger," and I looked up because
my name means trouble.

"It shouldn't be any of my business," he said, "but it is.
Betty says you have a girl down there."

There was no question mark. It was a statement hang-
ing in the air. Waiting.

Betty, you're a bitch. You're a cow and a bitch. And a
jealous one, at that. Why didn't you keep your nose
where it belonged, shut your eyes? four mouth?

"So?" I said, a statement with a question mark.

"So," he answered it, "it is my duty, as head of this
expedition, to see that relations with the natives are
carried on in a friendly, and diplomatic, manner."

"You speak of them," I said, "as though they are aborigi-
nes. Nothing could be further from the truth."

I rose.

"When my papers are published everyone on Earth
will know that true. I'll tell them things Dr. Mooie
never even guessed at. I'll tell the tragedy of a doomed
race, waiting for death, resigned and disinterested. I'll
tell why, and it will break hard, scholarly hearts. I'll
write about it, and they will give me more prizes, and
this time I won't want them.

"My God!" I exclaimed. "They had a culture when

202

our ancestors were clubbing the saber-tooth and finding
out how fire works!"

"Do you have a girl down there?"

"Yes!" I said. Yes, Claudius! Yes, Daddy! Yes, Enwry!
"I do. But I'm not going to let you in on a scholarly
scoop now. They're already dead. They're sterile. In one
more generation there won't be any Martians."

I paused, then added, "Except in my papers, except
on a few pieces of microfilm and tape. And in some
poems, about a girl who did give a damn and could only
bitch about the unfaiiness of it all by dancing."

"Oh," he said.

After awhile:

"You have been behaving differently these past couple
months. You've even been downright civil on occasion,
you know. I couldn't help wondering what was happen-
ing. I didn't know anything mattered that strongly to
you."

I bowed my head.

"Is she the reason you were racing around the desert?"

I nodded.

"Why?"

I looked up.

"Because she's out there, somewhere. I don't know
where, or why. And I've got to find her before we go."

"Oh," he said again.

Then he leaned back, opened a drawer, and took out
something wrapped in a towel. He unwound it. A framed
photo of a woman lay on the table.

"My wife," he said.

It was an attractive face, with big, almond eyes.

"I'm a Navy man, you know," he began. "Young officer
once. Met her in Japan."

"Where I come from it wasn't considered right to
marry into another race, so we never did. But she was my
wife. When she died I was on the other side of the world.

203

They took my children, and I've never seen them since
I couldn't learn what orphanage, what home, they were
put into. That was long ago. Very few people know
about it."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Don't be. Forget it. But"—he shifted in his chair and
looked at me—"if you do want to take her back with
you—do it. It'll mean my neck, but I'm too old to ever
head another expedition like this one. So go ahead."

He gulped his cold coffee.

"Get your jeepster."

He swiveled the chair around.

I tried to say "thank you" twice, but I couldn't. So I
got up and walked out.

"Sayonara, and all that," he muttered behind me.

"Here it is, Gallinger!" I heard a shout.

I turned on my heel and looked back up the ramp.

"Kane!"

He was limned in the port, shadow against light, but
I had heard him sniff.

I returned the few steps.

"Here what is?"

"Your rose."

He produced a plastic container, divided internally.
The lower half was filled with liquid. The stem ran
down into it The othel half, a glass of claiet in this hor-
rible night, was a large, newly opened rose.

"Thank you," I said, tucking it into my jacket

"Going back to Tirellian, eh?"

"Yes."

"I saw you come aboard, so I got it ready. Just missed
you at the Captain's cabin. He was busy. Hollered out
that I could catch you at the barns."

"Thanks again."

204

"It's chemically treated. It will stay in bloom for

weeks."
I nodded. I was gone.

Up into the mountains now. Far. Far. The sky was a
bucket of ice in which no moons floated. The going
became steeper, and the little donkey protested. I
whipped him with the throttle and went on. Up. Up. I
spotted a green, unwinking star, and felt a lump in my
throat. The encased rose beat against my chest like an
extra heart. The donkey brayed, long and loudly, then
began to cough. I lashed him some more and he died.

I threw the emergency brake on and got out. I began
to walk.

So cold, so cold it grows. Up here. At night? Why?
Why did she do it? Why flee the campfire when night
comes on.

And I was up, down, around, and through every chasm,
gorge, and pass, with my long-legged strides and an ease
of movement never known on Earth.

Barely two days remain, my love, and thou hast for-
saken me. Why?

I crawled under overhangs. I leaped over ridges. I
scraped my knees, an elbow. I heard my jacket tear.

No answer, Malann? Do you really hate your people
this much? Then I'll try someone else. Vishnu, you're the
Preserver. Preserve her, please! Let me find her.

Jehovah?

Adonis? Osiris? Thammuz? Manitou? Legba? Where
is she?

I ranged far and high, and I slipped.

Stones ground underfoot and I dangled over an edge.
My fingers so cold. It was hard to grip the rock.

I looked down.

Twelve feet or so. I let go and dropped, landed rolling.

205

Then I heard her scream.

I lay there, not moving, looking up. Against the night,
above, she called.

"GallingerI"

I lay still.

"Gallinger!"

And she was gone.

I heard stones rattle and knew she was coming down
some path to the right of me.

I jumped up and ducked into the shadow of a boulder.

She rounded a cut-off, and picked her way, uncer-
tainly, through the stones.

"Gallinger?"

I stepped out and seized her shoulders.

"Braxa."

She screamed again, then began to cry, crowding
against me. It was the first time I had ever heard her
cry.

"Why?" I asked. "Why?"

But she only clung to me and sobbed.

Finally, "I thought you had killed yourself."

"Maybe I would have," I said. "Why did you leave
Tirellian? And me?"

"Didn't M'Cwyie tell you? Didn't you guess?"

"I didn't guess, and M'Cwyie said she didn't know."

"Then she lied. She knows."

"What? What is it she knows?"

She shook all over, then was silent for a long time. I
realized suddenly that she was wearing only her flimsy
dancer's costume. I pushed her from me, took off my
jacket, and put it about her shoulders.

"Great Malann!" I cried. "You'll freeze to deathi"

"No," she said, "I won't."

I was transferring the rose-case to my pocket.

"What is that?" she asked.

206

"A rose," I answered. "You can't make it out much in
the dark. I once compared you to one. Remember?"

"Ye-Yes. May I carry it?"

"Sure." I stuck it in the jacket pocket.

"Well? I'm still waiting for an explanation."

"You really do not know?" she asked.

"No!"

"When the Rains came," she said, "apparently only our
men were affected, which was enough. . . . Because I—
wasn't—affected—apparently—"

"Oh," I said. "Oh."

We stood there, and I thought.

"Well, why did you run? What's wrong with being
pregnant on Mars? Tamur was mistaken. Your people
can live again."

She laughed, again that wild violin played by a Pagin-
ini gone mad. I stopped her before it went too far.

"How?" she finally asked, rubbing her cheek.

'Tour people live longer than ours. If our child is nor-
mal it will mean our races can intermarry. There must
still be other fertile women of your race. Why not?"

"You have read the Book of Locar," she said, "and
yet you ask me that? Death was decided, voted upon,
and passed, shortly after it appeared in this form. But
long before, the followers of Locar knew. They decided
it long ago. "We have done all things,' they said, 'we
have seen all things, we have heard and felt all things.
The dance was good. Now let it end.'"

"You can't believe that."

"What I believe does not matter," she replied. "M'Cw-
yie and the Mothers have decided we must die. Their
very title is now a mockery, but their decisions will be
upheld. There is only one prophecy left, and it is mis-
taken. We will die."

"No," I said.

"What, then?"

207

"Come back with me, to Earth."

"No."

"All right, then. Come with me now."

"Where?"

"Back to Tirellian. I'm going to talk to the Mothers."

"You can't! There is a Ceremony tonightl"

I laughed.

"A ceremony for a god who knocks you down, and
then kicks you in the teeth?"

"He is still Malann," she answered. "We are still his
people."

"You and my father would have gotten along fine," I
snarled. "But I am going, and you are coming with me,
even if I have to carry you—and I'm bigger than you
are."

"But you- are not bigger than Ontro."

"Who the hell is Ontro?"

"He will stop you, Gallinger. He is the Fist of Mal-
ann."

IV

I scudded the jeepster to a halt in front of the only en-
trance I knew, M'Cwyie's. Braxa, who had seen the rose
in a headlamp, now cradled it in her lap, like our child,
and said nothing. There was a passive, lovely look on
her face.

"Are they in the Temple now?" I wanted to know.

The Madonna-expression did not change. I repeated
the question. She stirred.

"Yes," she said, from a distance, "but you cannot go in."

"We 11 see."

I circled and helped her down.

I led her by the hand, and she moved as if in a trance,

208

In the light of the new-risen moon, her eyes looked as
they had the day I met her, when she had danced. I
snapped my fingers. Nothing happened.

So I pushed the door open and led her in. The room
was half-lighted.

And she screamed for the third time that evening:

"Do not harm him, Ontro! It is Gallinger!"

I had never seen a Martian man before, only women.
So I had no way of knowing whether he was a freak,
though I suspected it strongly.

I looked up at him.

His half-naked body was covered with moles and swell-
ings. Gland trouble, I guessed.

I had thought I was the tallest man on the planet, but
he was seven feet tall and overweight. Now I knew
where my giant bed had come from!

"Go back," he said. "She'may enter. You may not."

"I must get my books and things."

He raised a huge left arm. I followed it. All my be-
longings lay neatly stacked in the comer.

"I must go in. I must talk with M'Cwyie and the
Mothers."

"You may not."

"The lives of your people depend on it."

"Go back," he boomed. "Go home to your people,
Gallinger. Leave us!"

My name sounded so different on his lips, like some-
one else's. How old was he? I wondered. Three hun-
dred? Four? Had he been a Temple guardian all his
life? Why? Who was there to guard against? I didn't
like the way he moved. I had seen men who moved like
that before.

"Go back," he repeated.

If they had refined their martial arts as far as they had
their dances, or, worse yet, if their fighting arts were a
part of the dance, I was in for trouble.

209

"Go on in," I said to Braxa. "Give the rose to M'Cwyie.
Tell her that I sent it. Tell her I'll be there shortly."

"I will do as you ask. Remember me on Earth, Gal-
linger. Good-bye."

I did not answer her, and she walked past Ontro and
into the next room, bearing her rose.

"Now will you leave" he asked. "If you like, I will
tell her that we fought and you almost beat me, but I
knocked you unconscious and carried you back to your
ship."

"No," I said, "either I go around you or go over you,
but I am going thiough."

He dropped into a crouch, arms extended.

"It is a sin to lay hands on a holy man," he rumbled,
"but I will stop you, Gallinger."

My memory was a fogged window, suddenly exposed
to fresh air. Things cleared. I looked back six years.

I was a student of Oriental Languages at the University
of Tokyo. It was my twice-weekly night of recreation. I
stood in a thirty-foot circle in the Kodokan, the judogi
lashed about my high hips by a brown belt. I was Ik-kyu,
one notch below the lowest degree of expert. A brown
diamond above my right breast said "Jiu-Jitsu" in Japa-
nese, and it meant atemiwaza, really, because of the
one striking-technique I had worked out, found unbe-
lievably suitable to my size, and won matches with.

But I had never used it on a man, and it was five yeais
since I had practiced. I was out of shape, I knew, but I
tried hard to force my mind tsuki no kokoro, like the
moon, reflecting the all of Ontro.

Somewhere, out of trfe past, a voice said, "Hajime, let
it begin."

I snapped into my neko-ashi-dachi cat-stance, and his
eyes burned strangely. He hurried to correct his own
position—and I threw it at himi

My one trick!

210

My long left leg lashed up like a broken spring. Seven
feet off the ground my foot connected with his jaw as he
tried to leap backward.

His head snapped back and he fell. A soft moan
escaped his lips. That's all there is to it, I thought. Sorry,
old fellow.

And as I stepped over him, somehow groggily, he
tripped me, and I fell across his body. I couldn't believe
he had strength enough to remain conscious after that
blow, let alone move. I hated to punish him any more.

But he found my throat and slipped a forearm across
it before I realized there was a purpose to his action.

No/ Don't let it end like this!

It was a bar of steel across my windpipe, my cartoids.
Then I realized that he was still unconscious, and that
this was a reflex instilled by countless years of training. I
had seen it happen once, in shiai. The man had died
because he had been choked unconscious and still fought
on, and his opponent thought he had not been applying
the choke properly. He tried harder.

But it was rare, so very rare!

I jammed my elbows into his ribs and threw my head
back in his face. The grip eased, but not enough. I
hated to do it, but I reached up and broke his little finger.

The arm went loose and I twisted free.

He lay there panting, face contorted. My heart went
out to the fallen giant, defending his people, his religion,
following his orders. I cursed myself as I had never
cursed before, for walking over him, instead of around.

I staggered across the room to my little heap of pos-
sessions. I sat on the projector case and lit a cigarette.

I couldn't go into the Temple until I got my breath
back, until I thought of something to say?

How do you talk a race out of killing itself?

Suddenly—

—Could it happan? Would it work that way? If I read

211

them the Book of Ecclesiastes—if I read them a greater
piece of literature than any Locar ever wrote—and as
somber—and as pessimistic—and showed them that our
race had gone on despite one man's condemning all of
life in the highest poetry—showed them that the vanity
he had mocked had borne us to the Heavens—would
they believe it—would they change their minds?

I ground out my cigarette or. the beautiful floor, and
found my notebook. A strange fury rose within me as I
stood.

And I walked into the Temple to preach the Black
Gospel according to Gallinger, from the Book of Life.

There was silence all about me.

M'Cwyie had been reading Locar, the rose set at her
right hand, target of all eyes.

Until I entered.

Hundreds of people were seated on the floor, barefoot.
The few men were as small as the women, I noted.

I had my boots on.

Go all the way, I figured. You either lose or you win—
everything!

A dozen crones sat in a semicricle behind M'Cwyie.
The Mothers.

The barren earth, the dry wombs, the fire-touched.

I moved to the table.

"Dying yourselves, you would condemn your people,"
I addressed them, "that they may not know the life you
have known—the joys, the sorrows, the fullness. —But
it is not true that you all must die." I addressed the
multitude now. "Those who say this lie. Braxa knows,
for she will bear a child—"

They sat there, like rows of Buddhas. M'Cwyie drew
back into the semicircle.

"—my child!" I continued, wondering what my father
would have thought of this sermon.

212

". . . And all the women young enough may bear chil-
dren. It is only your men who are sterile. —And if you
permit the doctors of the next expedition to examine
you, perhaps even the men may be helped. But if they
cannot, you can mate with the men of Earth.

"And ours is not an insignificant people, an insignifi-
cant place," I went on. "Thousands of years ago, the
Locar of our world wrote a book saying that it was. He
spoke as Locar did, but we did not lie down, despite
plagues, wars, and famines. We did not die. One by one
we "beat down the diseases, we fed the hungry, we
fought the wars, and, recently, have gone a long time
without them. We may finally have conquered them. I
do not know.

"But we have crossed millions of miles of nothingness.
We have visited another world. And our Locar said,
Why bother? What is the worth of it? It is all vanity,
anyhow.'

"And the secret is," I lowered my voice, as at a poetry
reading, "he was right! It is vanity; it is pride! It is the
hybris of rationalism to always attack the prophet, the
mystic, the god. It is our blasphemy which has made us
great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly
admire in us. —And the tiuly sacred names of God
are blasphemous things to speak!"

I was working up a sweat. I paused dizzily.

"Here is the Book of Ecclesiastes," I announced, and
began:

" 'Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vani-
ties, all is vanity. What profit hath a man . . .'"

I spotted Braxa in the back, mute, rapt.

I wondered what she was thinking.

And I wound the hours of night about me, like black
thread on a spool.

Oh it was late! I had spoken till day came, and still

213

I spoke. I finished Ecclesiastes and continued Gallinger.

And when I finished there was still only a silence.

The Buddhas, all in a row, had not stirred through
the night. And after a long while M'Cwyie raised her
right hand. One by one the Mothers did the same.

And I knew what that meant.

It meant no, do not, cease, and stop.

It meant that I had failed.

I walked slowly from the room and slumped beside my
baggage.

Ontro was gone. Good that I had not killed him. . . .

After a thousand years M'Cwyie entered.

She said, "Your job is finished."

"I did not move.

"The prophecy is fulfilled," she said. "My people are
rejoicing. You have won, holy man. Now leave us
quickly."

My mind was a deflated balloon. I pumped a little
air back into it.

"I'm not a holy man," I said, "just a second-rate poet
with a bad case of hybris."

I lit my last cigarette.

Finally, "All right, what prophecy?"

"The Promise of Locar," she replied, as though the
explaining were unnecessary, "that a holy man would
come from the Heavens to save us in our last hours, if
all the dances of Locar were completed. He would defeat
the Fist of Malann and bring us to life.

"How?"

"As with Braxa, and as the example in the Temple."

"Example?"

"You read us his words, as great as Locar.'s You read
to us how there is 'nothing new under the sun.' And you
mocked his words as you read them—showing us a new
thing.

214

"There has never been a flower on Mars," she said,
"but we will learn to grow them.

"You are the Sacred Scoffer," she finished. "He-Who-
Must-Mock-in-the-Temple—you go shod on holy ground."

"But you voted 'no,'" I said.

"I voted not to carry out our original plan, and to let
Braxa's child live instead."

"Oh." The cigarette fell from my fingers. How close
it had been! How little I had known!

"And Braxa?"

"She was chosen half a Process ago to do the dances
—to wait for you."

"But she said that Ontro would stop me."

M'Cwyie stood there for a long time.

"She had never believed the prophecy herself. Things
are not well with her now. She ran away, fearing it was
true. When you completed it and we voted, she knew."

"Then she does not love me? Never did?"

"I am sorry, Gallinger. It was the one part of her duty
she never managed."

"Duty," I said flatly. . . . Dutydutyduty! Tra-la!

"She has said good-bye; she does not wish to see you
again.

". . .and

". . . and we will never forget your teachings," she
added.

"Don't," I said, automatically, suddenly knowing the
great paradox which lies at the heart of all miracles. I
did not believe a world of my own gospel, never had.
I stood, like a drunken man, and muttered "M'narra."
I went outside, into my last day on Mars.
I have conquered thee, Malann—and the victory is
thine! Rest easy on thy starry bed. God damned!

I left the jeepster there and walked back to the Aspic,
leaving the burden of life so many footsteps behind me.

215

I went to my cabin, locked the door, and took forty-four;

sleeping pills.                                            :

But when I awakened I was in the dispensary, and
alive.

I felt the throb of engines as I slowly stood up and
somehow made it to the port.

Blurred Mars hung like a swollen belly above me, until
it dissolved, brimmed over, and steamed down my face.

216