assault on a city, by Jack Vance

 

a sea of faces, by Robert Silverberg

 

and read the flesh between the lines, by R. A. Lafferty

 

my sweet lady jo, by Howard Waldrop

 

stungun slim, by Ron Goulart

 

desert places, by Pamela Sargent

 

if the stars are gods, by Gordon Eklund and Gregory Benford

 

when the vertical world becomes horizontal, by Alexei Panshin

 

* * * *

 

ASSAULT ON A CITY

 

by Jack Vance

 

 

Jack Vance, winner of two Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award, is one of the most admired writers of modern science fiction; his stories fairly dance with a colorful inventiveness unmatched in this most imaginative of all types of fiction. Here is a long and delightful story of adventures in Earth’s distant future, in which Vance brings to life a wonder-filled city and its hard-pressed inhabitants— and includes a few observations on urbanity, subjectivity and gunk.

 

* * * *

 

1

 

A CERTAIN Angus Barr, officer’s steward aboard the spaceship Danaan Warrior, had taken his pay and gone forth into that district of the city Hant known as Jillyville in search of entertainment. There, according to information received by the police, he fell into the company of one Bodred Histledine, a well-known bravo of the North River district. The two had entertained themselves briefly at the Epidrome, where Angus Barr won two hundred dollars at a gambling machine. They then sauntered along the Parade to the Black Opal Cafe, where they drank lime beer and tried to pick up a pair of women tourists without success. Continuing north along the Parade, they crossed the River Louthe by the Boncastle Bridge and rode the clanking old escalator up Semaphore Hill to Kongo’s Blue Lamp Tavern, and Angus Barr was seen no more.

 

The disappearance of Angus Barr was reported to the police by the chief steward of the Danaan Warrior. Acting on a tip, Detectives Clachey and Delmar located Bo Histledine, whom they knew well, and took him to Central Authority for examination.

 

Mind-search produced no clear evidence. According to Bo’s memory, he had spent an innocent evening in front of his term.* Unluckily for Bo, his memory also included fragmentary recollections of the Epidrome, the Parade and the Black Opal Cafe. The female tourists not only described the missing Angus Barr, but also positively identified Bo.

 

 

 

* From the acronym TERM: Total Experience Reproduction Mechanism.

 

 

 

Delmar nodded with grim satisfaction and turned to Bo. “What do you say to that?”

 

Bo hunched down in the chair, his face a mask of belligerent obstinacy. “I told you already. I know nothing about this case. Those backwads** got me mixed with somebody else. Do you think I’d work on a pair like that? Look at her!” Bo jerked his head toward the closer of the angry women. “Face like a plateful of boiled pig’s feet. She’s not wearing a sweater; that’s the hair on her arms. And her cross-eyed mother—”

 

 

 

** Backwad: Slang of the period: an ill-favored or otherwise repulsive woman. Etymology uncertain.

 

 

 

“I’m not her mother! We’re not related!”

 

“—she’s no better; she walks with her legs bent, as if she’s sneaking up on somebody.”

 

Delmar chuckled; Clachey nodded gravely. “I see. And how do you know the way she walks? They were sitting down when we brought you in. Your bad mouth has brought you trouble.”

 

Delmar said, “That’s all, ladies. Thank you for your help.”

 

“It’s been a pleasure. I hope he gets sent out to Windy River.” She referred to a penal colony on the far planet Resurge.

 

“It might well be,” said Delmar.

 

The tourists departed. Clachey said to Bo, “Well, then, what about it? What did you do to Barr?”

 

“Never heard of him.”

 

“You had your memory blanked,” said Delmar. “It won’t do you any good. Windy River, get ready.”

 

“You haven’t got a thing on me,” said Bo. “Maybe I was drunk and don’t remember too well, but that doesn’t mean I scragged Barr.”

 

Clachey and Delmar, who recognized the limitations of their case as well as Bo, vainly sought more direct evidence. In the end Bo was arraigned on the charge of memory-blanking without a permit: not a trivial offense when committed by a person with an active criminal record. The magistrate fined Bo a thousand dollars and placed him upon stringent probation. Bo resented both provisions to the depths of his passionate soul, and he detested the probation officer, Inspector Guy Dalby, on sight.

 

For his part, Inspector Dalby, an ex-spacefarer, liked nothing about Bo: neither his dense blond-bronze curls, his sullenly handsome features—marred perhaps by a chin a trifle too heavy and a mouth a trifle too rich and full—nor his exquisitely modish garments, nor the devious style of Bo’s life. Dalby suspected that for every offense upon Bo’s record, a dozen existed which had never come to official attention. As a spaceman he took an objective attitude toward wrongdoing, and held Bo to the letter of his probationary requirements. He subjected Bo’s weekly budget to the most skeptical scrutiny. “What is this figure—one hundred dollars—repayment of an old debt?”

 

“Exactly that,” said Bo, sitting rigid on the edge of the chair.

 

“Who paid you this money?”

 

“A man named Henry Smith: a gambling debt.”

 

“Bring him in here. I’ll want to check this.”

 

Bo ran a hand through his cap of golden curls. “I don’t know where he is. I happened to meet him on the street. He paid me my money and went his way.”

 

“That’s your total income of the week?”

 

“That’s it.”

 

Guy Dalby smiled grimly and flicked a sheet of paper with his fingertips. “This is a statement from a certain Polinasia Glianthe, occupation: prostitute. ‘Last week I paid Big Bo Histledine one hundred and seventy-five dollars, otherwise he said he would cut my ears.’”

 

Bo made a contemptuous sound. “Who are you going to believe? Me or some swayback old she-dog who never made a hundred and seventy-five the best week of her life?”

 

Dalby forbore a direct response. “Get yourself a job. You are required to support yourself in an acceptable manner. If you can’t find work, I’ll find it for you. There’s plenty out on Jugurtha.” He referred to that world abhorred by social delinquents for its rehabilitation farms.

 

Bo was impressed by Dalby’s chilly succinctness. His last probation officer had been an urbanite whose instinctive tactic was empathy. Bo found it a simple matter to explain his lapses. The probation officer in turn was cheered by Bo’s ability to distinguish between right and wrong, at least verbally. Inspector Dalby, however, obviously cared not a twitch for the pain or travail which afflicted Bo’s psyche. Cursing and seething, Bo took himself to the City Employment Office and was dispatched to the Orion Spaceyards as an apprentice metalworker, at a wage he considered a bad joke. One way or another he’d outwit Dalby! In the meantime he found himself under the authority of a foreman equally unsympathetic: another ex-spaceman named Edmund Sarkane. Sarkane explained to Bo that to gam an hour’s pay he must expend an hour’s exertion, which Bo found a novel concept. Sarkane could not be serious! He attempted to circumvent Sarkane’s precept by a variety of methods, but Sarkane had dealt with a thousand apprentices and Bo had known only a single Sarkane. Whenever Bo thought to relax in the shadows, or ignore a troublesome detail, Sarkane’s voice rasped upon his ears, and Bo began to wonder if after all he must accept the unacceptable. The work, after all, was not in itself irksome; and Sarkane’s contempt was almost a challenge to Bo to prove himself superior in every aspect, even the craft of metal-working, to Sarkane himself. At times to his own surprise and displeasure he found himself working diligently.

 

The spaceyards themselves he found remarkable. His eye, like that of most urbanites, was sensitive; he noted the somber concord of color: black structures, ocher soil, gray concrete, reds, blues and olive-greens of signs and symbols, all animated by electric glitters, fires and steams, the constant motion of stern-faced workmen. The hulls loomed upon the sky, for these Bo felt a curious emotion: half awe, half antipathy; they symbolized the far worlds which Bo, as an urbanite, had not the slightest intention of visiting, not even as a tourist. Why probe these far regions? He knew the look, odor and feel of these worlds through the agency of his term; he had seen nothing which wasn’t done better here in Hant.

 

If one had money. Money! A word resonant with magic. From where he worked with his buffing machine he could see south to Cloudhaven, floating serene and golden in the light of afternoon. Here was where he would live, so he promised himself, and muttered slow oaths of longing as he looked. Money was what he needed.

 

The rasp of Sarkane’s voice intruded upon his daydreams. “Put a Number Five head on your machine and bring it over to the aerie bays. Look sharp; there’s a hurry-up job we’ve got to get out today.” He made what Bo considered an unnecessarily brusque gesture.

 

Bo slung the machine over his shoulder and followed Sarkane, walking perforce with the bent loose-kneed stride of a workman carrying a load. He knew the look of his gait; introversion and constant self-evaluation are integral adjuncts to the urbanites’ mental machinery; he felt humiliation and fury: he, Bo Histledine, Big Bo the Boodlesnatch, hunching along like a common workman! He longed to shout at Sarkane, something like: “Hey! Slow down, you old gutreek; do you think I’m a camel? Here, carry the damn machine yourself, or put it in your ear!” Bo only muttered the remarks, and loped to catch up with Sarkane: through the clangor of the cold-belling shop, across the pulsion-pod storage yard with the great hulls massive overhead; over the gantry ways to a cluster of three platforms at the southern edge of the yard. On one of the platforms rested a glass-domed construction which Bo recognized for an aerie: the honorary residence of a commander in the Order of the Terrestrial Empire, and reserved for the use of such folk alone.

 

Sarkane motioned to Bo, and indicated the underside of the peripheral flange. “Polish that metal clean, get all that scurf and oxide off, so the crystallizer can lay on a clean coat. They’ll be arriving at any time and we want it right for them.”

 

“Who is ‘them’?”

 

“A party from Rampold: an O.T.E. and his family. Get cracking now, we don’t have much time.”

 

Sarkane moved away. Bo considered the aerie. Rampold? Bo thought he had heard the place mentioned: a far half-savage world where men strove against an elemental environment and hostile indigenes to create new zones of habitability. Why didn’t they stay out there if they liked it so much? But they always came swanking back to Earth with their titles and prerogatives, and here he was, Bo Histledine, polishing metal for them.

 

Bo jumped up to the deck and went to peer into the interior. He saw a pleasant but hardly lavish living room with white walls, a scarlet and blue rug, an open fireplace. In the center of the room a number of cases had been stacked. Bo read the name stenciled on the sides: Commander M. R. Tynnott, S.E.S.—the S.E.S. for Space Exploration Service.

 

Sarkane’s voice vibrated against his back. “Hey! Histledine! Get down from there! What do you think you’re up to?”

 

“Just looking,” said Bo. “Keep your shirt on.” He jumped to the ground. “Nothing much to see, anyway. They don’t even have a TV, let alone a term. Still, I’d take one if they gave it to me.”

 

“There’s no obstacle in your way.” Sarkane’s tone was edged with caustic humor. “Just go work out back of beyond for twenty or thirty years; they’ll give you an aerie.”

 

“Bo Histledine isn’t about to start out there.”

 

“I expect not. Buff down that flange now, and make a clean job of it.”

 

While Bo applied his machine, Sarkane wandered here and there, inspecting the repairs which had been made on the aerie’s under-body, waiting for the crystallizer crew, and keeping an eye on Bo.

 

The work was tiresome; Bo was forced to stand in a cramped position, holding the machine above him. His zeal, never too keen, began to flag. Whenever Sarkane was out of sight, Bo straightened up and relaxed. Commander Tynnott and his family could wait another hour or two, or two or three days, so far as Bo was concerned. Star-landers were much too haughty and self-satisfied for Bo’s taste. They acted as if the simple process of flying space made them somehow superior to the folk who chose to stay home in the cities.

 

During one of his rest periods he watched a cab glide down to a halt nearby. A girl alighted and walked toward the aerie. Bo stared in fascination. This was a girl of a sort he had never seen before: a girl considerably younger than himself, perfectly formed, slender, but lithe and supple, a creature precious beyond value. She approached with an easy jaunty stride, as if already in her short life she had walked far and wide, across hill and dale, forest trails and mountain ridges: wherever she chose to go. Her polished copper hair hung loose, just past her jaw line; she was either ignorant or heedless of the intricate coiffures currently fashionable in Hant. Her clothes were equally simple: a blue-gray frock, white sandals, no ornaments whatever. She halted beside the aerie, and Bo was able to study her face. Her eyes were dark-blue and deep as lakes; her cheeks were flat; her mouth was wide and through some charming mannerism seemed a trifle wry and crooked. Her skin was a clear pale tan; her features could not have been more exquisitely formed. She spoke to Bo without actually looking at him. “I wonder where I get aboard.”

 

Instantly gallant, Bo stepped forward. “Here; let me give you a leg up.” To touch her, to caress (even for an instant) one of those supple young legs would be a fine pleasure indeed. The girl seemed not to hear him; she jumped easily up to the rail and swung herself over.

 

Sarkane came forward. He made a brusque gesture toward Bo, then turned to the girl. “I expect you’re one of the owners. Tynnott, I think, is the name?”

 

“My father is Commander Tynnott. I thought he’d already be here with my mother. I suppose they’ll be along soon.” The girl’s voice was as easy and light-hearted as her appearance, and she addressed gray old Ed Sarkane as if they had been friends for years. “You’re no urbanite; where did you get your cast?” She referred to the indefinable aspect by which starlanders and spacemen were able to identify their own kind.

 

“Here, there and everywhere,” said Sarkane. “Most of my time I worked for Slade out in the Zumberwalts.”

 

The girl looked at him with admiration. “Then you must have known Vode Skerry and Ribolt Troil, and all the others.”

 

“Yes, miss, well indeed.”

 

“And now you’re living in Hant!” The girl spoke in a marveling voice. Bo’s lips twitched. What, he wondered, was so wrong about living in Hant?

 

“Not for long,” said Sarkane. “Next year I’m going out to Tinctala. My son farms a station out there.”

 

The girl nodded in comprehension. She turned to inspect the aerie. “This is all so exciting; I’ve never lived in such splendor before.”

 

Sarkane smiled indulgently. “It’s not all that splendid, miss, or I should say, not compared to the way the rich folk live up there.” He gestured toward Cloudhaven. “Still, they’d trade for aeries anytime, or so I’m told.”

 

“There’s not all that many aeries, then?”

 

“Two thousand is all there’ll ever be; that’s the law. Otherwise they’d be hanging in the sky thick as jellyfish. Every cheap-jack and politician and plutocrat around the world would want his aerie. No, miss, they’re reserved for the O.T.E. and that’s how it should be. Are you to be here long?”

 

“Not too long; my father has business with the Agency, and I’ll undertake a bit of research while I’m here.”

 

“Ah, you’ll be a student at the Academy? It’s an interesting place, the last word on everything, or so they say.”

 

“I’m sure it is. I plan to visit the Hall of History tomorrow, as a matter of fact.” She pointed toward a descending cab. “Here they are at last.”

 

Bo, who had worked to within casual earshot, wielded his machine until Sarkane went off to confer with the Tynnotts. He buffed along the flange to where the girl stood leaning on the rail; raising his eyes he glimpsed a pair of smooth slender brown legs, a glint of thigh. She was only peripherally aware of his existence. Bo straightened up and put on that expression of mesmeric masculinity which had served him so well in the past. But the girl, rather than heeding him, went down the deck a few steps. “I’m already here,” she called, “but I don’t know how to get in.”

 

Bo quivered with wrath. So the girl wouldn’t look at him! So she thought him a stupid laborer! Couldn’t she tell he was Bo Histledine, the notorious Big Boo, known up and down the North Shore, from Dipshaw Heights to Swarling Park?

 

He moved along the rail. Halting beside the girl he contrived to drop his adjustment wrench on her foot. She yelped in pain and surprise. “Sorry,” said Bo. He could not restrain a grin. “Did it hurt?”

 

“Not very much.” She looked down at the black smear of grease on her white sandal, then she turned and joined her parents, who were entering the aerie. She said in a puzzled voice, “Do you know, I believe that workman purposely dropped his tool on my foot.”

 

Tynnott said after a moment, “He probably wanted to attract your attention.”

 

“I wish he’d thought of some other way ... It still hurts.”

 

 

 

Two hours later, with the sun low in the west, Tynnott took the aerie aloft. The spaceyards dwindled below; the black buildings, the skeletal spaceships, the ramps, docks and gantries, became miniatures. The Louthe lay across the panorama in lank mustard-silver sweeps, with a hundred bridges straddling. Dipshaw Heights rose to the west with white structures stepping up and down the slope; beyond and away to the north spread residential suburbs among a scatter of parks and greenways. In the east stood the decaying towers of the Old City; in the south, golden among a tumble of cumulus clouds, Cloudhaven floated like a wonderful fairy castle.

 

The aerie drifted full in the light of sunset. The Tynnotts, Merwyn, Jade and Alice, leaned on the railing looking down upon the city.

 

“Now you’ve seen old Hant,” said Merwyn Tynnott, “or at least the scope of it. What do you think?”

 

“It’s a wild confusion,” said Alice. “At least it seems that way. So many incongruous elements: Cloudhaven, the Old City, the working-class slums . . .”

 

“Not to mention Jillyville, which is just below us,” said Jade, “and College Station, and the Alien Quarter.”

 

“And Dipshaw Heights, and Goshen, and River Meadow, and Elmhurst, and Juba Valley.”

 

“Exactly,” said Alice. “I wouldn’t even try to generalize.”

 

“Wise girl!” said Merwyn Tynnott. “In any event, generalization is a job for the subconscious, which has a very capable integrating apparatus.”

 

Alice found the idea interesting. “How do you distinguish between generalization and emotion?”

 

“I never bother.”

 

Alice laughed at her father’s whimsy. “I use my subconscious whenever I can, but I don’t trust it. For instance, my subconscious insists that a workman carefully dropped his wrench on my foot. My common sense doesn’t believe it.”

 

“Your common sense isn’t common enough,” said Merwyn Tynnott. “It’s perfectly simple. He fell in love and wanted to let you know.”

 

Alice, half amused, half embarrassed, shook her head. “Ridiculous! I’d only just jumped aboard the boat!”

 

“Some people make up their minds in a hurry. As a matter of fact, you were unusually cordial with Waldo Walberg last night.”

 

“Not really,” said Alice airily. “Waldo of course is a pleasant person, but certainly neither of us has the slightest romantic inclination. In the first place, I couldn’t spare the time, and secondly, I doubt if we have anything in common.”

 

“You’re right, of course,” said Jade. “We’re only teasing you because you’re so pretty and turn so many heads and then pretend not to notice.”

 

“I suppose I could make myself horrid,” mused Alice. “There’s always the trick Shikabay taught me.”

 

“Which trick? He’s taught you so many.”

 

“His new trick is rather disgusting, but he insists that it works every time.”

 

“I wonder how he knows,” said Jade with a sniff. “Wretched old charlatan! And lewd to boot.”

 

“In this connection,” said Merwyn Tynnott, “I want to warn you: be careful around this old city. The people here are urbanites. The city festers with subjectivity.”

 

“I’ll be careful, although I’m sure I can take care of myself. If I couldn’t, Shikabay would feel very humiliated ... I’ll get it.” She went in to answer the telephone. Waldo’s face looked forth from the screen: a handsome face, the eyes stern, the nose straight, the droop of the mouth indicating sensitivity, or charm, or self-indulgence, or impatience, or all, or none, depending upon who made the appraisal and under what circumstances. In accordance with the current mode, Waldo’s hair had been shorn to a stubble, then enameled glossy black, and carefully carved into a set of rakish curves, cusps and angles. His teeth were enameled black; he wore silver lip-enamel and his ears were small flat tabs, with a golden bauble dangling from his right ear. To a person schooled in urban subtleties, Waldo’s costume indicated upper-class lineage and his mannerisms were those of Cloudhaven alone. “Hello, Waldo,” said Alice. “I’ll call Father.”

 

“No, no, wait! It’s you I want.”

 

“Oh? For what?”

 

Waldo licked his lips and peered into the screen. “I was right.”

 

“How so?”

 

“You’re the most exciting, entrancing, exhilarating person in, on, above or below the city Hant.”

 

“How ridiculous,” said Alice. “I’m just me.”

 

“You’re fresh as a flower, an orange marigold dancing in the wind.”

 

“Please be serious, Waldo. I assume you called about that book Cities of the Past.”

 

“No. I’m calling about cities of the present, namely Hant. Since you’ll be here so short a time, why don’t we look the old place over?”

 

“That’s just what we’re doing,” said Alice. “We can see all the way south to Elmhurst, north to Birdville, east to the Old City, west to the sunset.”

 

Waldo peered into the screen. Flippancy? Ponderous humor? Sheer stupidity? Utter naivete? Waldo could not decide. He said politely, “I meant that we should look in on one of the current presentations, something that you might not see out on Rampold. For instance, a concert? an exhibition? a percept? . . . What’s that you’re doing?”

 

“I’m noting down an idea before I forget it.”

 

Waldo raised his expressive eyebrows. “Then afterwards we could take a bite of supper somewhere and get acquainted. I know an especially picturesque place, the Old Lair, which I think you might enjoy.”

 

“Waldo, I really don’t want to leave the aerie; it’s so peaceful up here, and we’re having such a nice talk.”

 

“You and your parents?” Waldo was amazed.

 

“There’s no one else here.”

 

“But you’ll be in Hant such a very short time!”

 

“I know . . . Well, perhaps I should make the most of my time. I can enjoy myself later.”

 

Waldo’s voice became thick. “But I want you to enjoy yourself tonight!”

 

“Oh, very well. But let’s not stay out late. I’m visiting the Academy tomorrow morning.”

 

“We’ll let circumstances decide. I’ll be across in about an hour. Will that give you time to do your primping?”

 

“Come sooner, if you like. I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

 

 

 

2

 

Waldo arrived half an hour later to find Alice waiting for him. She wore a simple gown of dull dark-green stuff; a fillet of flat jade pebbles bound with gold wire confined her hair. She inspected Waldo with curiosity, and for a fact Waldo’s habiliments were remarkable both for elegance and intricacy. His trousers, of a light material patterned in black, brown and maroon, bagged artfully at the hips, gripped the calves, and hung carelessly awry over the slippers of black- and red-enameled metal. Waldo’s blouse was a confection of orange, gray and black; above this he wore a tight-waisted black jacket, pinched at the elbow, flaring at the sleeve, and a splendid cravat of silk, which shimmered with the colors of an oil-film on water. “What an interesting costume!” Alice exclaimed. “I suppose each detail has its own symbological value.”

 

“If so, I’m not aware of it,” said Waldo. “Good evening, Commander.”

 

“Good evening, Waldo. And where are you bound tonight?”

 

“It depends upon Alice. There’s a concert at the Contemporanea: the music of Vaakstras, highly interesting.”

 

“Vaakstras?” Alice reflected. “I’ve never heard of him. Of course that means nothing.”

 

Waldo laughed indulgently. “A cult of dissident musicians emigrated to the coast of Greenland. They raised their children without music of any sort, without so much as knowledge of the word ‘music.’ At adolescence they gave the children a set of instruments and required that they express themselves, and in effect create a musical fabric based upon their innate emotive patterns. The music which resulted is indeed challenging. Listen.” From his pocket he brought a small black case. A window glowed to reveal an index; Waldo set dials. “Here’s a sample of Vaakstras; it’s not obvious music.”

 

Alice listened to the sounds from the music-player. “I’ve heard better cat fights.”

 

Waldo laughed. “It’s demanding music, and certainly requires empathy from the participant. He must search his own file of patterns, rummaging and discarding until he finds the set at the very bottom of the pile, and these should synthesize within his mind the wild emotions of the Vaakstras children.”

 

“Let’s not bother tonight,” said Alice. “I’d never be sure that I’d uncovered the proper patterns and I might feel all the wrong emotions, and anyway I’m not all that interested in feeling someone else’s emotions; I’ve got enough of my own.”

 

“We’ll find something you’ll like, no fear of that.” Waldo bowed politely to Merwyn and Jade, and conducted Alice into the cab. They slanted down toward the city.

 

Waldo looked sidewise at Alice. He declared, “Tonight you’re an enchanted princess from a fairy tale. How do you do it?”

 

“I don’t know,” said Alice. “I didn’t try anything special. Where are we going?”

 

“Well, there’s an exhibition of Latushenko’s spirit crystals, which he grows in new graves; or we could go to the Arnaud Intrinsicalia, where there’s a very clever performance, which I’ve already seen three times; I know you’d enjoy it. Operators are prosthetically coupled to puppets, who perform the most adventurous and outrageous acts. There’s a performance of Salammbo on tonight, with The Secret Powder-puff, which is rather naughty, if you like such things.”

 

Alice smiled and shook her head. “I happened upon the mammoth atrachids of Didion Swamp in a state of oestrus, and since then I’ve lost all interest in voyeurism.”

 

Waldo was taken aback. He blinked and adjusted his cravat. “Well—there’s always the Perceptory—but you’re not wired and you’d miss a great deal. There’s an exhibit at the Hypersense: John Shibe’s Posturings. Or we might luck into a couple seats at the Conservatory; tonight they’re doing Oxtot’s Generation of Fundamental Pain, with five music machines.”

 

“I’m not really all that interested in music,” said Alice. “I just don’t care to sit still that long, wondering why someone saw fit to perform this or that particular set of notes.”

 

“My word,” said Waldo in astonishment. “Isn’t there any music on Rampold?”

 

“There’s music enough, I suppose. People sing or whistle when the mood strikes them. Out on the stations there’s always someone with a banjo.”

 

“That’s not quite what I mean,” said Waldo. “Music, and in fact, art in general, is the process of consciously communicating an emotional judgment or point of view in terms of abstract symbology. I don’t believe whistling a jig fits this definition.”

 

“I’m sure you’re right,” said Alice. “I know it’s never occurred to me when I’m whistling. When I was very little we had a school-teacher from Earth—an elderly lady who was dreadfully afraid of everything. She tried to teach us subjectivity; she played us plaque after plaque of music without effect; all of us enjoyed our own emotions more than someone else’s.”

 

“What a little barbarian you are, for a fact!”

 

Alice only laughed. “Poor old Miss Burch! She was so upset with us! The only name I remember is Bargle, or Bangle, or something like that, who always ended his pieces with a great deal of pounding and fanfares.”

 

“ ‘Bargle’? ‘Bangle’? Was it possibly Baraungelo?”

 

“Why, yes, I’m sure that’s the name! How clever of you!”

 

Waldo laughed ruefully. “One of the greatest composers of the last century. Well—you don’t want to go to concerts or exhibitions, or to the Perceptory,” said Waldo plaintively. “What are you doing? Making more notes?”

 

“I have a bad memory,” said Alice. “When an idea arrives, I’ve got to record it.”

 

“Oh,” said Waldo flatly. “Well—what do you suggest we do?”

 

Alice tried to soothe Waldo’s feelings. “I’m a very impatient person. I just don’t care for subjectivizing, or vicarious experience . . . Oh, my, I’ve done it again, and made it even worse. I’m sorry.”

 

Waldo was dazed by the whirl of ideas. “Sorry for what?”

 

“Perhaps you didn’t notice, which is just as well.”

 

“Oh, come now. It couldn’t have been all that bad. Tell me!”

 

“It’s not important,” said Alice. “Where do spacemen go for amusement?”

 

Waldo responded in a measured voice. “They drink in saloons, or escort fancy ladies to the High Style Restaurant, or prowl Jillyville, or gamble in the Epidrome.”

 

“What is Jillyville?”

 

“It’s the old market plaza, and I suppose it’s sometimes amusing. The Alien Quarter is just down Light-year Road; the jeeks and wam-poons and tinkos all have shops along the Parade. There are little bistros and drunken spacemen, mystics, charlatans and inverts, gunkers and gunk peddlers and all sorts of furtive desperate people. It’s more than a trifle vulgar.”

 

“Jillyville might be interesting,” said Alice. “At least it’s alive. Let’s go there.”

 

What an odd girl! thought Waldo. Beautiful to melt a man’s mind, a daughter of Commander Merwyn Tynnott, O.T.E., a member of the galactic nobility with a status far superior to his own; yet how provincial, how incredibly self-assured for her age, which could hardly be more than seventeen or eighteen! She seemed at times almost patronizing, as if he were the culturally impoverished star-lander and she the clever sophisticate! Well, then, thought Waldo, let’s divert matters into a more amusing channel. He leaned close, put his hand to her cheek and sought to kiss her, which would reestablish his initiative. Alice ducked back and Waldo was thwarted. She asked in astonishment, “Why did you do that?”

 

“The usual reasons,” said Waldo in a muffled voice. “They’re quite well known. Haven’t you ever been kissed before?”

 

“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, Waldo. But let’s just be casual friends.”

 

Waldo said largely, “Why should we limit ourselves in any way? There’s scope for whatever relationship we want! Let’s start over. Pretend now that we’ve just met, but already we’ve become interested in one another!”

 

“The last person I want to deceive is myself,” said Alice. She hesitated. “I hardly know how to advise you.”

 

Waldo looked at Alice with a slack jaw. “As to what?”

 

“Subjectivity.”

 

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you.”

 

Alice nodded. “It’s like talking to a fish about being wet. . . Let’s speak of something else. The lights of the city are really magnificent. Old Earth is certainly picturesque! Is that the Epidrome down there?”

 

Looking askance at the charming features, Waldo responded in a somewhat metallic voice. “That’s Meridian Circle, at the end of the Parade, where the cults and debating societies meet. See that bar of white luciflux? That marks the Parade. The luminous green circle is the Epidrome. See those colored lights across the Parade? That’s the Alien Quarter. The jeeks like blue lights, the tinkos insist on yellow, the wampoons won’t have any lights at all, which accounts for that rather strange effect.”

 

The cab landed; Waldo gallantly assisted Alice from the craft. “We’re at the head of the Parade; that’s all Jillyville ahead of us . . . What’s that you’re carrying?”

 

“My camera. I want to record some of those beautiful costumes, and yours too.”

 

“Costume?” Waldo looked down at his garments. “Barbarians wear costumes. These are just clothes.”

 

“Well, they’re very interesting in any event. . . What a remarkable assortment of people!”

 

“Yes,” said Waldo glumly. “You’ll see everybody and everything along the Parade. Don’t walk too closely behind the jeeks. They have a rather noxious defensive mechanism right above their tail horn. If you see a man with a red hat, he’s a bonze of the External Magma. Don’t look at him or he’ll want an ‘enlightenment fee’ for divining his thoughts. Those three men yonder are spacemen—drunk, of course. Down at the end of the Parade is Spaceman’s Rest: a jail reserved for overexuberant spacemen. Out yonder is the Baund, the most garish section of Jillyville: saloons, bordellos, shampoo parlors, cult studios, curio shops, mind-readers, evangelists and prophets, gunk-peddlers—all in the Baund.”

 

“What a picturesque place!”

 

“Yes, indeed. Here’s the Black Opal Cafe, and there’s a table; let’s sit and watch for a bit.”

 

For a period they sat and sipped drinks: Waldo, a clear cold Hyperion Elixir, Alice, a goblet of the popular Tanglefoot Punch. They watched the passers-by: tourists from the backlands, spacemen, the young folk of Hant. Ladies of the night sauntered past with an eye for the spacemen, their wrist-chains jingling with socket adapters. They dressed in the most modish extremes, hair piled high and sprinkled with sparkling lights. Some varnished their skins, others wore cheek-plates plumed with jaunty feathers. Their ears were uniformly clipped into elf-horns; their shoulder finials rose in grotesque spikes. Waldo suggested that Alice take their picture, and she did so. “But I’m really more interested in representative pictures of representative folk, such as yourself and that fine young couple yonder. Aren’t they picturesque? My word, what are those creatures?”

 

“Those are jeeks,” said Waldo. “From Caph Three. There’s quite a colony here. Notice the organ above the dorsal horn? It ejects body-tar, which smells like nothing on Earth . . . Look yonder, those tall whitish creatures. They’re wampoons from Argo Navis. About five hundred live in an old brick warehouse. They don’t walk out too often. I don’t see any tinkos, and the spangs won’t appear until just before dawn.”

 

A tall man stumbled against the railing and thrust a hairy face over their table. “Can you spare a dollar or two, your lordships? We’re poor backlanders looking for work, and hungry so that we can hardly walk.”

 

“Why not try gunk,” suggested Waldo, “and take your mind off your troubles.”

 

“Gunk is not free either, but if you’ll oblige with some coins, I’ll make myself merry and gay.”

 

“Try that white building across the Parade. They’ll fix you up.”

 

The gunker roared an obscenity. He looked at Alice. “Somewhere, my lovely darling, we’ve met. Out there somewhere, in some lovely land of glory; I’ll never forget your face. For old times’ sake, a dollar or two!”

 

Alice found a five-dollar bill. The gunker, chuckling in mad glee, seized it and shambled away.

 

“Money wasted,” said Waldo. “He’ll buy gunk, some cheap new episode.”

 

“I suppose so ... Why isn’t wiring illegal?”

 

Waldo shook his head. “The perceptories would go out of business. And never discount the power of love.”

 

“Love?”

 

“Lovers wire themselves with special sockets, so that they can plug into one another. You don’t do this on Rampold?”

 

“Oh, no indeed.”

 

“Aha. You’re shocked.”

 

“Not really. I’m not even surprised. Just think, you could even make love by telephone or television, or even by a recording; all you need is the right kind of wiring.”

 

“It’s been done. In fact, the gunk producers have gone far beyond: brain-wiring plus a percept equals gunk.”

 

“Oh. That’s what gunk is. I thought it was a hallucinatory drug.”

 

“It’s controlled hallucination. The more you turn up the voltage, the more vivid it becomes. To the gunker life is gray; the colors come back when he dials up the gunk. Real life is a dismal interlude between the sumptuous experiences of gunk . . . Oh, it’s seductive!”

 

“Have you tried it?”

 

Waldo shrugged. “It’s illegal—but most everybody tries it. Are you interested?”

 

Alice shook her head. “In the first place, I’m not wired. In the second place—but no matter.” She became busy with her notes.

 

Waldo asked, “What are you writing about now? Gunk?”

 

“Just an idea or two.”

 

“Such as?”

 

“You probably wouldn’t be interested.”

 

“Oh, but I would! I’d be interested in all your notes.”

 

“You might not understand them.”

 

“Try me.”

 

Alice shrugged and read, “ ‘Urbanites as explorers of inner space: i.e.—subjectivity. The captains: psychologists. The pioneers: abstractionists. The creed: perceptiveness, control of ideas. The fuglemen: critics. The paragons: the “well-read man,” the “educated listener,” the “perceptive spectator.”

 

“‘Precursive to gunk: theater-attendance, percepts, music, books: all urbanite cult-objects.

 

“‘Abstraction: the work of urbanity. Vicarious experience: the life-flow of urbanity. Subjectivity: the urban mind-flow.’”

 

She looked at Waldo. “These are only a few rough notes. Do you want to hear any more?”

 

Waldo sat with a grim expression. “Do you really believe all that?”

 

“‘Belief is not quite the right word.” Alice reflected a moment. “I’ve simply arranged a set of facts into a pattern. For an urbanite the implications go very far—in fact, very far indeed. But let’s talk of something else. Have you ever visited Nicobar?”

 

“No,” said Waldo, looking off across the Baund.

 

“I’ve heard that the Sunken Temple is very interesting. I’d like to try to decipher the glyphs.”

 

“Indeed?” Waldo lifted his eyebrows. “Are you acquainted with Ancient Gondwanese?”

 

“Of course not! But glyphs usually have a symbolic derivation. Don’t stare at those lights, Waldo; they’ll put you to sleep.”

 

“What?” Waldo sat up in his chair. “Nothing of the sort. They’re just the lights of a carousel.”

 

“I know, but passing behind those pillars they fluctuate at about ten cycles a second, or so I’d estimate.”

 

“And what of that?”

 

“The lights send impulses to your brain which create electrical waves. At that particular frequency, if the waves are strong enough or continue long enough, you’ll very likely become dazed. Most people do.”

 

Waldo gave a skeptical grunt. “Where did you learn that?”

 

“It’s common knowledge—at least among neurologists.”

 

“I’m no neurologist. Are you?”

 

“No. But our odd-jobs man on Rampold is, or at least claims to be. He’s also a magician, bear wrestler, cryptologist, boat-builder, herbalist, and half a dozen other wonderful things. Mother considers him bizarre, but I admire him tremendously, because he is competent. He’s taught me all kinds of useful skills.” Alice picked a pink flower from a potted plant beside the table. She placed it on the table, and put her hands down flat, covering the flower. “Which hand is it under?”

 

Waldo somewhat condescendingly pointed to her left hand. Alice lifted her right hand to reveal a red flower.

 

“Aha,” said Waldo. “You picked two flowers! Lift your other hand.”

 

Alice lifted her left hand. On the table glittered the gold ornament which had hung at Waldo’s ear. Waldo blinked, felt his ear, then stared at Alice. “How did you get hold of that?”

 

“I took it while you were watching the lights. But where is the pink flower?” She looked up, grinning like an imp. “Do you see it?”

 

“No.”

 

“Touch your nose.”

 

Waldo blinked once more and touched his nose. “There’s no flower there.”

 

Alice laughed in great merriment. “Of course not. What did you expect?” She sipped from her goblet of punch, and Waldo, somewhat annoyed, leaned back with his own glass of punch, to find within the pink flower. “Very clever.” He rose stiffly to his feet. “Shall we continue?”

 

“As soon as I photograph the picturesque couple at the table yonder. They seem to know you. At least they’ve been watching us.”

 

“I’ve never seen them before in my life,” said Waldo. “Are you ready? Let’s go on.”

 

They continued along the Parade.

 

“There’s a really big jeek,” said Alice. “What’s that it’s carrying?”

 

“Probably garbage for its soup. Don’t stand too close behind it . . . Well, we’re behind it anyway. Just don’t jostle it, or—”

 

An arm reached in from the side and dealt the jeek’s tail horn a vigorous blow. Alice ducked aside; the spurt of body tar missed her and struck Waldo on the neck and chest.

 

 

 

3

 

After his day’s work Bo Histledine rode a slideway to the transit tube, and was whisked northwest to Fulchock, where he inhabited a small apartment in an ancient concrete warren. Waiting for him was Hernanda Degasto Confurias, whom he had only recently wooed and won. Bo stood in the doorway looking at her. She was perfectly turned out, he thought; no one was more sensitive to the latest subtleties of fashion; no one surpassed her at adapting them to herself, so that she and the style were indistinguishable; with every change of clothes she assumed a corresponding temperament. A toque or cylinder of transparent film clasped the top of her head and contained a froth of black curls, artfully mingled with bubbles of pale-green glass. Her ears were concave shells three inches high, rounded on top, with emerald plugs. Her skin was marmoreal; her lips were enameled black; her eyes and eyebrows, both black, could not be improved upon and remained in their natural condition. Hernanda was a tall girl. Her breasts had been artificially reduced to little rounded hummocks; her torso was a rather gaunt cylinder over which she had drawn a tube of coarse white cloth, which compressed her haunches. On her shoulders stood small bronze ornaments, like urns or finials, into each of which she had placed a dram of her personal scent. On her hands she wore greaves of black metal clustered with green jewels. Under her right armpit was a socket and the bottom terminal was decorated with a pink heart on which were inscribed the initials B.H.

 

Hernanda stood proud and silent before Bo’s inspection, knowing herself perfect. Bo gave her no word of greeting; she said nothing to him. He strode into his inner room, bathed, and changed into a black and white diapered blouse, loose lime-green pantaloons, the legs long over his heels and tucked into sandals to expose his long white toes. He tied a purple and blue kerchief at a rakish angle to his head, and hung a string of black pearls from his right ear. When he returned to the living room Hernanda apparently had not moved. Silent as an obelisk she waited beside the far wall. Bo stood brooding. Hernanda was just right in every aspect. He was a lucky man to own the private plug to her socket. And yet... And yet what? Bo angrily thrust aside the thought.

 

“I want to go to the Old Lair,” said Hernanda.

 

“Do you have money?”

 

“Not enough.”

 

“I’m short as well. We’ll go down to Fotzy’s.”

 

They left the apartment and carefully adjusted the alarms; only last week gunkers had broken in and stolen Bo’s expensive term.

 

At Fotzy’s they pressed buttons to order the dishes of their choice: hot gobbets of paste in spice-sauce, a salad of nutrient crisps on a bed of natural lettuce from the hydroponic gardens of Old City. After a moment or two Bo said: “The spaceyards are no good. I’m going to get out.”

 

“Oh? Why?”

 

“A man stands watching me. Unless I work like a kaffir he harangues me. It’s simply not comfortable.”

 

“Poor old Bo.”

 

“But for that flashing probation I’d tie him in a knot and kite off. I was built for beauty, not toil.”

 

“You know Suanna? Her brother has gone off into space.”

 

“It’s like jumping into nothing. He can have all he wants.”

 

“If I got money I’d like to take an excursion. Give me a thousand dollars, Bo.”

 

“You give me a thousand dollars. I’ll go on the excursion.”

 

“But you said you wouldn’t go!”

 

“I don’t know what I want to do.”

 

Hernanda accepted the rejoinder in silence. They left the restaurant and walked out upon Shermond Boulevard. South beyond Old City, Cloudhaven rode among the sunset clouds; in the halcyon light it seemed as if it might have been, or should have been, the culminating glory of human endeavor; but everyone knew differently.

 

“I’d rather have an aerie,” muttered Bo.

 

One of Hernanda’s few faults was a tendency to enunciate the obvious with the air of one transmitting a startling new truth. “You’re not licensed for an aerie. They only give them to O.T.E.’s.”

 

“That’s all tripe. They should go to whoever can pay for them.”

 

“You still wouldn’t have one.”

 

“I’d get the money, never fear.”

 

“Remember your probation.”

 

“They’ll never fix on me again.”

 

Hernanda thought her private thoughts. She wanted Bo to take a cottage in Galberg, and work in the artificial flavor factory. Tonight the prospect seemed as flimsy as smoke. “Where are we going?”

 

“I thought we’d look into Kongo’s for the news.”

 

“I don’t like Kongo’s all that much.”

 

Bo said nothing. If Hernanda did not like Kongo’s she could go somewhere else. And only as recently as yesterday she had seemed such a prize!

 

They rode the slideway to the Prospect Escalator and up to Dip-shaw Knob. Kongo’s Blue Lamp Tavern commanded a fine view of the River Louthe, the spaceyards and most of West Hant, and was old beyond record or calculation. The woodwork was stained black, the brick floors were worn with the uneven passage of footsteps; the ceiling was lost in the dark blur of time. Tall windows looked across the far vistas of Hant, and on a rainy day Kongo’s was a tranquil haven from which to contemplate the city.

 

Kongo’s reputation was not altogether savory; curious events had occurred on the premises or shortly after patrons had departed. The Blue Lamp was known as a place where one must keep his wits about him, but the reputation incurred no loss of patronage; indeed the suffusion of vice and danger attracted folk from all Hant, as well as backland tourists and spacemen.

 

Bo led Hernanda to his usual booth, and found there a pair of his cronies: Raulf Dido and Paul Amhurst. Bo and Hernanda seated themselves without words of greeting, according to the tenets of current custom.

 

Bo presently said, “The spaceyard keeps me off punition, but this aside, it’s just too bad.”

 

“You’re earning an honest wage,” said Raulf Dido.

 

“Hah! Bah! Bo Histledine, a sixteen-dollar-a-day apprentice? You give me fits!”

 

“Talk to Paul. He’s on to something good.”

 

“It’s a beautiful new line of gunk,” said Paul Amhurst. “It’s produced in Aquitaine and it’s as good as the best.”

 

He displayed a selection of stills; the views were vivid and provocative.

 

“Ow-wow,” said Bo. “That’s good stuff. I’ll take some of that myself.”

 

Hernanda made a restless movement and pouted; it was bad manners to talk of gunk in front of one’s lady friend, inasmuch as gunk inevitably included erotic and hypererotic episodes.

 

“Somebody will get the Hant distributorship,” said Paul, “and I’m hoping it’s me. If so, I’ll need help: you and Raulf, maybe a few more if we have to bust into Julio’s territory.”

 

“Hmm,” said Bo. “What about the Old Man?”

 

“I put through an application a week ago. He hasn’t bounced it back. I saw Jantry yesterday and he gave me an up-sign. So it looks good.”

 

“Genine won’t fix it with Julio.”

 

“No. We’d have to gut it through by ourselves. It might get warm.”

 

“And wet,” said Paul, referring to the bodies sometimes found floating in the Louthe.

 

“That flashing probation,” spat Bo. “I’ve got to worry about that. In fact, look over there! My personal vermin, Clachey and Delmar. Hide that gunk! They’re coming by.”

 

The two detectives halted beside the table; they looked down with mercury-colored eyes, back and forth between Bo, Raulf and Paul. “A fine lot of thugs,” said Clachey. “What deviltry are you working up now?”

 

“We’re planning a birthday party for our mothers,” said Raulf. “Would you care to come?”

 

Delmar scrutinized Bo. “Your probation, as I recall, depends on avoiding bad company. Yet here you sit with a pair of gunk merchants.”

 

Bo returned a stony gaze. “They’ve never mentioned such things to me. In fact we’re all planning to enter the Police Academy.”

 

Clachey reached to the seat between Bo and Paul and came up with the stills. “Now, what have we here? Could it be gunk?”

 

“It looks like some photographs,” said Raulf. “They were on the seat when we arrived.”

 

“Indeed,” said Clachey. “So you think you’re going to import Aquitanian gunk? Do you have any tablets on you?”

 

“Of course not,” said Raulf. “What do you take us for? Criminals?”

 

“Empty your pockets,” said Delmar. “If there’s gunk in the group, somebody’s probation is in bad trouble.”

 

Paul, Raulf and Bo wordlessly arranged the contents of their pockets on the table. One at a time they stood up while Delmar deftly patted them up and down. “Oh, what’s this?” From Paul’s waistband he extracted one of those devices known as stingers, capable of hurling needles of lethal or anesthetic drugs across a room or a street and into a man’s neck. Bo and Raulf were clean.

 

“Pay your respects to all,” Clachey told Paul. “I believe that this is up and out, Amhurst.”

 

“It might well be,” Paul agreed dolefully.

 

A drunk lurched away from the bar and careened into the two detectives. “Can’t a man drink in peace without you noses breathing down his neck?”

 

A waiter tugged at his arm and muttered a few words.

 

“So they’re after gunkers!” stormed the drunk. “What of that? Up in Cloudhaven there’s fancy gunk-parlors; why don’t the noses go raid up there? It’s always the poor scroffs who get the knocks.”

 

The waiter managed to lead him away.

 

Bo said, “For a fact, how come you don’t raid Cloudhaven?”

 

“We got our hands full with the scroffs, like the man said,” replied Delmar, without heat.

 

Clachey amplified the remark. “They pay; they have the money. The scroffs don’t have the money. They loot to get it. They’re the problem, them and you merchants.”

 

Delmar said to Bo, “This is a final notification, which will be inserted into your record. I warn you that you have been observed in the company of known criminals. If this occurs again, it’s up and out.”

 

“Thank you for your concern,” said Bo in a heavy voice. He rose to his feet and jerked his hand at Hernanda. “Come along. We can’t even take a drink in a respectable tavern without persecution.”

 

Delmar and Clachey led away the despondent Paul Amhurst.

 

“Just as well,” said Raulf. “He’s too erratic.”

 

Bo grunted. “I’m going to have to lay low. Until I think of something.”

 

Raulf made a sign of comprehension; Bo and Hernanda departed Kongo’s. “Where now?” asked Hernanda.

 

“I don’t know ... I don’t feel like much. There’s nowhere to go.” As if involuntarily he glanced up to the stars which burned through the night-glare. Rampold? Where was Rampold?

 

Hernanda took Bo’s arm and led him down the escalator to the Shermond slideway. “I haven’t been over to Jillyville for a while. It’s just across the bridge.”

 

Bo grumbled automatically, but could think of nothing better.

 

They crossed River Louthe by the Vertes Avenue Bridge, and sauntered through the flower market which for centuries had created a zone of clotted color in the shadow of the Epidrome.

 

Hernanda wanted to wander through the Epidrome and perhaps risk a dollar or two at one of the games of chance. “So long as you use your own money,” said Bo gracelessly. “I don’t intend to throw gold down a rathole. Not at sixteen dollars a day on that buffing machine.”

 

Hernanda became sulky and refused to enter the Epidrome, which suited Bo well enough. The two moodily walked up to the Parade.

 

As they passed the Black Opal Cafe, Bo noticed Alice’s copper-glinting hair. He stopped short, then led Hernanda to a table. “Let’s have a drink.”

 

“Here? It’s the most expensive place along the Parade!”

 

“Money means nothing to Big Bo the Histle.”

 

Hernanda shrugged, but made no objection.

 

Bo selected a table twenty feet from where Waldo sat with Alice. He punched buttons, deposited coins; a moment later a waitress brought out their refreshment: lime beer for Bo and frozen rum for Hernanda.

 

Alice saw them and raised her camera; in irritation Bo put his head down on his hand. Hernanda stared at Alice and the camera. Tourists everywhere, taking photographs.

 

“We should be flattered.”

 

Bo gave Waldo a baleful examination. “Toffs out slumming—him, anyway. She’s off-world. A starlander.”

 

Hernanda scrutinized each detail of Alice’s gown, hair, face and her fillet of jade pebbles. “She’s just a child and a bit tatty. She looks as if she’d never seen a stylist in her life.”

 

“Probably hasn’t.”

 

Hernanda looked at him suspiciously, sidelong. “Are you interested?”

 

“Not all so much. She looks happy. I wonder why. It’s probably her first time to Hant; soon she’ll be heading back into nowhere. What has she got to live for?”

 

“She’s probably rolling in money. I could have it too if I were willing to put up with her kind of life.”

 

Bo chuckled. “It’s remarkable, for a fact. Well, she’s harmless, or so I suppose.”

 

“Certainly nothing much to look at. All young eagerness and dancing around the maypole. Hair like a straw pile . . .Bo!”

 

“What?”

 

“You’re not listening to me.”

 

“My mind is roving the star lanes.”

 

Waldo and Alice rose from their table and left the café. Bo’s lewd conjectures caused him to suck in his breath. “Come along.”

 

Hernanda sulkily swung her head away, and remained in her seat. Bo paid her no heed. Speechless with indignation, she watched him go.

 

Waldo and Alice halted to avoid a jeek. Bo reached from the side and gave the jeek’s tail horn a hard slap. The jeek voided upon Waldo. Alice glanced at Bo in consternation, then turned to Waldo. “It’s that man there who did it!”

 

“Where? Which man?” croaked Waldo.

 

Suddenly alive to the danger of apprehension and police charges, Bo slid away through the crowd. Reeking and smarting, Waldo pursued him. Bo ran across the Parade, off into one of the rancid little alleys of the Alien Quarter. Wild with rage, Waldo followed.

 

Bo ran across the plaza where a dozen or more jeeks stood at a chest-high bench ingesting salt-froth. Waldo halted, looking here and there; Bo darted forth and thrust him into the group of jeeks; Waldo’s impetus overturned the bench. Bo ran fleetly away, while the jeeks trampled Waldo, struck him with their secondary stubs, squirted him with tar.

 

Alice appeared with a pair of patrolmen, who flashed red lights at the jeeks and froze them into rigidity.

 

Waldo crept across the plaza on his hands and knees, and vomited the contents of his stomach.

 

“Poor Waldo,” said Alice.

 

“Leave him to us, miss,” said the corporal. “Just a question or two, then I’ll call down a cab. Who is this gentleman?”

 

Alice recited Waldo’s name and address.

 

“And how did he get in this mess?”

 

Alice explained as best she could.

 

“Was this man in the green pants known to either of you?”

 

“I’m sure not. The whole affair seems so strange.”

 

“Thank you, miss. Come along, I’ll call the cab.”

 

“What of poor Waldo?”

 

“He’ll be all right. We’ll take him to the dispensary to be cleaned up. Tomorrow he’ll be as good as new.”

 

Alice hesitated. “I don’t like to leave him, but I’d better be getting home; I’ve a great deal to do tomorrow.”

 

 

 

4

 

Bo gave no thought to Hernanda; he strode along the Parade in a strange savage mood, comprehensible to himself least of all. Why had he acted so? Not that he was sorry; on the contrary, he had hoped to soil the girl as well.

 

He returned to his Fulchock apartment, where he thought of Hernanda for the first time. She was nowhere in evidence, nor had he expected her, nor did he want her. What he craved was something unattainable, something indescribable.

 

He wanted the red-haired girl, and for the first time in his life he thought not in terms of sheer submission, but admiration and affection and a manner of living he could only sluggishly imagine.

 

He flung himself upon his couch and fell into a torpor.

 

 

 

Gray-blue light awoke Bo. He groaned, rolled over on his couch and sat up.

 

He went to look at himself in the mirror. The sullen heavy-jawed face under the tangle of blond ringlets provided him neither distress nor joy; Bo Histledine merely looked at Bo Histledine.

 

He showered, dressed, drank a mug of bitter mayhaw tea, and ruminated.

 

Why not? Bo rasped at himself. He was as good as anyone, and better than most. If not one way, then another—but own her, possess her he would. The aspirations of the night before were flimsy shadows; Bo was a practical man.

 

The spaceyards? The buffing machine? As remote as the winds of last summer.

 

Bo dressed with care in gray and white pantaloons, a loose dark-blue shirt with a dark-red cravat, a soft gray cap pulled low over his forehead. Examining himself in the mirror, Bo found himself oddly pleased with his appearance. He looked, so he thought, less bulky and even somewhat younger: perhaps because he felt excited.

 

He removed the cravat and opened the collar of his shirt. The effect pleased him: he looked—so he thought—casual and easy, less heavy in the chin and jaw. What of the tight blond curls which clustered over his ears and gave his face—so he thought—a sullen, domineering look? Bo yanked the cap down over his forehead and left his apartment.

 

At a nearby studio, a hairdresser trimmed away clustering curls and rubbed brown toner into the hair remaining. Different, thought Bo. Better? Hard to say. But different.

 

He rode the tube south to Lake Werle in Elmhurst, then went by slideway to the Academy.

 

Bo now moved tentatively; never before had he visited the Academy. He passed under the Gate of the Universe and stood looking across the campus. Giant elms stood dreaming in the wan morning sunlight; beyond rose the halls of the various academic disciplines. Students streamed past him: young men and women from the backlands and the far worlds, a few from Cloudhaven and the patrician suburbs, others from the working-class areas to the north.

 

The business of the day was only just beginning. Bo asked a few questions and was directed to the central cab landing; here he leaned against a wall and composed himself for a possibly long wait.

 

An hour passed. Bo frowned through a discarded student journal, wondering why anyone considered such trivia worth the printing.

 

A cab dropped from the sky; Alice stepped to the ground. Bo dropped the journal and watched her, keen as a hawk. She wore a black jacket, a gray skirt, black stockings reaching up almost to her knees; at her waist hung her note-taking apparatus. For a moment she stood looking about her, alert and attentive, mouth curved in a half-smile.

 

Bo leaned forward, encompassing her with the hot force of his will. He scrutinized her inch by inch, memorizing each of her attributes. Body: supple, slender; delightful slim legs. Hair flowing and glowing like brushed copper. Face: calm, suffused with—what? gaiety? merriment? optimism? The air around her quivered with the immediacy of her presence.

 

Bo resented her assurance. This was the whole point! She was smug! Arrogant! She thought herself better than ordinary folk because her father was a commander of the O.T.E. ... Bo had to admit that this was not true. He would have preferred that it were. Her self-sufficiency was inherent. Bo envied her: a bubble of self-knowledge opened into his brain. He wanted to be like her: easy, calm, magnificent. The inner strength of the starlander was such that she never thought to measure herself against someone else. True! Alice was neither smug nor arrogant; on the contrary, she knew no vanity, nor even pride. She was herself; she knew herself to be intelligent, beautiful and good; nothing more was necessary.

 

Bo compressed his lips. She must concede him equality. She must know his strength, recognize his fierce virility.

 

Tragedy might be latent in the situation. If so, let it come! He was Bo Histledine, Big Boo the Blond Brute, who did as he pleased, who drove through life, reckless, feckless, giving way to no one.

 

Alice walked toward the halls of learning. Bo followed, twenty feet behind, admiring the jaunty motion of her body.

 

 

 

5

 

That morning, immediately after breakfast, Alice had telephoned Waldo at Cloudhaven. The Waldo who appeared on the screen was far different from that handsome, serene and gallant Waldo who had arrived by cab the previous evening to show her the city. This Waldo was pale, gaunt and grim, and met Alice’s sympathetic inspection with a shifting, darting gaze. “No bones broken,” he said in a muffled voice. “I’m lucky there. Once the jeeks start on a man they’ll kill him, and they can’t be punished because they’re aliens.”

 

“And this stuff they squirted on you: is it poisonous?”

 

Waldo made a guttural sound and directed one of his burning suspicious glances into the screen. “They scoured me and scrubbed me, and shaved all my hair. Still I smell it. The stuff apparently reacts with skin protein, and stays until a layer of skin wears off.”

 

“Certainly a remarkable affair,” mused Alice. “I wonder who would do a thing like that? And why?”

 

“I know who, at least. It was the fellow in green pantaloons at the table opposite. I’ve been meaning to ask you: didn’t you photograph that couple?”

 

“Yes, indeed I did! They seemed such a typical pair! I don’t think you can identify the man; his head is turned away. But the woman is clear enough.”

 

Waldo thrust his head forward with something of his old animation. “Good! Will you bring over the photograph? I’ll show it to the police; they’ll work up an identification fast enough. Somebody’s going to suffer.”

 

“I’ll certainly send over the photograph,” said Alice. “But I’m afraid that I don’t have time to drop by. The Academy is on my schedule for today.”

 

Waldo drew back, eyes glittering. “You won’t learn much in one day. It usually takes a week just for orientation.”

 

“I think I can find the information I want in just an hour or two; anyway, that’s all the time I can spare.”

 

“And may I ask the nature of this information?” Waldo’s voice now had a definite edge. “Or is it a secret?”

 

“Of course not!” Alice laughed at the thought. “I’m mildly curious as to the formal methods of transmitting the urbanite ideology. Academicians are naturally a diverse lot, but in general they are confirmed urbanites: in fact, I suppose this is the basis upon which they attain their positions. After all, rabbits don’t hire lions to teach their children.”

 

“I don’t follow you,” said Waldo haughtily.

 

“It’s perfectly simple. The Academy indoctrinates young rabbits in rabbitry, to pursue the metaphor, and I’m mildly curious as to the techniques.”

 

“You’ll be wasting your time,” said Waldo. “I attend the Academy and I’m not aware of any ‘rabbitry,’ as you put it.”

 

“You would be more apt to notice its absence,” said Alice. “Goodbye, Waldo. It was kind of you to show me Jillyville; I’m sorry the evening ended unpleasantly.”

 

Waldo stared at the fresh young face, so careless and gay. “ ‘Goodbye’?”

 

“I may not be seeing you again. We won’t be in Hant all that long. But perhaps someday you’ll come out to the starlands.”

 

“Not bloody likely,” Waldo muttered.

 

 

 

A curious affair, Alice reflected, as she rode the cab down to the Academy. The man in the green pantaloons probably mistook Waldo for someone else. Or he might have acted out of sheer perversity; such folk were probably not uncommon in the psychological stew of the great city Hant.

 

The cab discharged her on a plat at the center of the campus. She stood a moment admiring the prospect: the walks and slideways leading here and there across landscaped vistas, the white halls under great elms, the great Enoie Memorial Clock Tower, formed from a single quartz crystal four hundred and sixty feet high. Students passed in their picturesque garments, each a small lonely cosmos exquisitely sensitive to the psychic compulsions of his environment. Alice gave her head a wistful shake and went to an information placard where the component structures of the Academy were identified: the Halls of Physical Science, Biologies, Mathematics, Human History, Anthropology and Comparative Culture, Xenology, Cosmology, Human Ideas and Arts, a dozen others. She read an informational notice addressed to visitors:

 

 

 

Each hall consists of a number of conduits, or thematic passages, equipped with efficient pedagogical devices. The conduits are interconnected, to provide a flexible passage through any particular discipline, in accordance with the needs of the individual. The student determines his special field of interest, and is issued a chart designating his route through the hall. He moves at a rate dictated by his assimilative ability; his comprehension is continuously verified; when the end is reached he has mastered his subject.

 

 

 

Alice proceeded to the Hall of History. Entering, she gazed in awe around the splendid lobby, which enforced upon the visitor an almost stupefying awareness of the human adventure. Under a six-inch floor of clear crystal spread a luminous map of the terrestrial surface, projected by some curious shifting means which minimized distortion. The dark-blue dome of the ceiling scintillated with constellations. Around the walls, somewhat above eye-level, ran a percept-continuum where marched a slow procession of men, women and children: straggling peasants; barbarians in costumes of feathers and leather; clansmen marching to a music of clarions and drums; heroes striding alone; prelates and sacerdotes; hetairae, flower-maidens and dancing girls; blank-faced folk in drab garments, from any of a dozen ages; Etruscans, Celts, Scythians, Zumbelites, Dagonites, Mennonites; posturing priests of Babylon, warriors of the Caucasus. At one side of the hall they appeared from a blur of fog; as they marched they turned an occasional glance out toward those who had come to visit the Hall of History; to the far side of the great room they faded into the blur and were gone.

 

Alice went to the information desk, where she bought a catalog. Listed first were the basic routes through the conduits, then more complicated routes to encompass the aspects of special studies. Alice settled upon the basic survey course: Human History: from the origin of man to the present. She paid the three-dollar fee for noncredit transit, received a chart indicating her route through the conduits. A young man in a dark shirt immediately behind her, so she chanced to notice, elected the same course: evidently a subject popular with the students.

 

Her route proved to be simple enough: a direct transit of Conduit 1, with whatever detours, turn-offs, loops rnto other conduits, which happened to arouse her interest.

 

The young man in the dark shirt went on ahead. When she entered the conduit she discovered him studying the display of human precursors. He glanced at Alice and politely moved aside so that she might inspect the diorama as well. “Rough-looking thugs!” he commented in a jocular voice. “All hairy and dirty.”

 

“Yes, quite so.” Alice moved along the diorama.

 

The young man kept pace with her. “Excuse me, but aren’t you a starlander? From Engsten, or more likely Rampold?”

 

“Why, yes! I’m from Rampold. How did you know?”

 

“Just a lucky guess. How do you like Hant?”

 

“It’s interesting, certainly.” Alice, rather primly erect, moved on along the display.

 

“Ugh,” said Bo. “What’s that they’re eating?”

 

“Presumably some sort of natural food,” said Alice.

 

“I guess you’re right,” said Bo. “They weren’t too fussy in those days. Are you a student here?”

 

“No,”

 

“Oh, I see. Just sightseeing.”

 

“Not exactly that either. I’m curious as to the local version of history.”

 

“I thought history was history,” said Bo.

 

Alice turned him a quick side-glance. “It’s hard for the historian to maintain objectivity, especially for the urban historian.”

 

“I didn’t know there was all that much to it,” said Bo. “I thought they just showed a lot of percepts and charts. Don’t they do it the same way on Rampold?”

 

“We have nothing quite so elaborate.”

 

“It all amounts to the same thing,” said Bo generously. “What’s done is dead and gone, but here they call it history and study it.”

 

Alice gave a polite shrug and moved on. Bo understood that he had struck the wrong tone, which annoyed him. Oh, why must he pussyfoot? Why must he appease? He said, “Of course I don’t know all that much about the subject. That’s why I’m here; I want to learn!”

 

The statement was uttered in a mincing over-delicate voice which Alice found amusing, and hence worth some small exploration. “All very well, if you learn anything useful. In your case, I doubt if . . .” Alice let her voice trail off; why discourage the poor fellow? She asked, “I take it you’re not a student either?”

 

“Well, no. Not exactly.”

 

“What do you do?”

 

“I—well, I work in the spaceyards.”

 

“That’s useful work,” Alice said brightly. “And it’s work you can be proud of. I hope you profit from your studies.” She gave him a gracious nod and passed on down the conduit, to a percept detailing the daily activities of a Mesolithic family.

 

Bo looked after her with a frown. He had pictured the encounter going somewhat differently, with Alice standing wide-eyed and coy, enthralled by the magnetism of his personality. He had worried only that she might recognize him, for she had seen him on two previous occasions. His fears were groundless. Evidently she had paid no attention to him. Well, she’d make up for that. And her attitude now was far too casual; she treated him as if he were a small boy. He’d fix that, as well.

 

Bo followed her slowly along the conduit. He considered the percept, then sidled a step closer. In a bluff voice he said, “Sometimes we don’t realize how lucky we are, and that’s a fact.”

 

“ ‘Lucky’?” Alice spoke in an abstracted voice. “Who? The people of Hant? Or the Cro-Magnons?”

 

“Us, of course.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“You don’t think so?” Bo spoke indulgently.

 

“Not altogether.”

 

“Look at them! Living in caves. Dancing around a campfire. Eating a piece of dead bear. That doesn’t look so good.”

 

“Yes, their lives lacked delicacy.” Alice continued along the conduit, moving briskly, and frowning just a trifle. She glanced into percepts depicting aspects of the proto-civilizations; she halted at a percept presenting in a time-compression sequence the development of Hialkh, the first city known to archaeologists. The annunciator commented, “At this particular instant in the human epic, civilization has begun. Behind: the long gray dawn ages. Ahead: the glories which culminate in Hant! But beware! look yonder across the Pontus! The cruel barbarians of the steppes, those expert wielders of sword and axe who time and time again have ravaged the cities!”

 

Bo’s now familiar voice spoke, “The only ravagers nowadays are the tourists.”

 

Alice made no comment, and continued along the conduit. She looked into the faces of Xerxes, Subotai, Napoleon, Shgulvarsko, Jensen, El Jarm. She saw battles, sieges, slaughters and routs. Cities developed from villages, grew great, collapsed into ruins, disappeared into flames. Bo enunciated his impressions and opinions, to which Alice made perfunctory acknowledgments. He was something of a nuisance, but she was too kind to snub him directly and hurt his feelings. Altogether she found him somewhat repulsive, a curious mixture of innocence and cynicism; of ponderous affability and sudden sinister silences. She wondered if he might not be a trifle deranged; odd for a person of his attributes to be studying the history of man! The percepts and displays, for all their splendor, began to bore her; there was simply too much to be encompassed at a casual inspection, and long ago she had learned what she wanted to know. She said to Bo, “I think I’ll be leaving. I hope you profit by your studies; in fact I know you will if you apply yourself diligently. Goodbye.”

 

“Wait,” said Bo. “I’ve seen enough for today.” He fell into step beside her. “What are you going to do now?”

 

Alice looked at him sidewise. “I’m going to find some lunch. I’m hungry. Why do you ask?”

 

“I’m hungry too. We’re not all that different, you and I.”

 

“Just because we’re both hungry? That’s not logical. Crows, vultures, rats, sharks, dogs: they all get hungry. I don’t identify myself with any of these.”

 

Bo frowned, examining the implications of the remark. They left the Hall of History and came out into the daylight. Bo asked gruffly, “You mean that you think I’m like a bird or a rat or a dog?”

 

“No, of course not!” Alice laughed at the quaint conceit. “I mean that we’re people of different societies. I’m a starlander; you’re an urbanite. Yours is a very old way of life, which is perhaps a bit-well, let’s say, passive, or introverted.”

 

Bo grunted. “If you say so. I never thought about it that way. Anyway just yonder is a branch of the Synthetique. Do you care to eat there? It’s on me.”

 

“No, I think not,” said Alice. “I’ve seen those colored pastes and nutritious shreds of bark and they don’t look very good. I think I’ll go up home for lunch. So once again: goodbye. Have a good lunch.”

 

“Wait!” cried Bo. “I’ve got a better idea! I know another place, an old tavern where spacemen and all kinds of people go. It’s very old and famous: Hongo’s Blue Lamp. It would be a shame if you didn’t see it.” He modulated his voice into that husky cajoling tone which had always dissolved female will power like warm water on sugar. “Come along, I’ll buy you a nice lunch and we’ll get to know each other better.”

 

Alice smiled politely and shook her head. “I think I’ll be getting on. Thank you anyway.”

 

Bo stood back, mouth compressed. He turned glumly away, raising a hand to his face. The gesture closed a circuit in Alice’s memory-bank. Why, this was the man who had victimized Waldo! How very odd! What a strange coincidence that she should meet him at the Academy! Coincidence? The chances seemed remote. She asked, “What is your name?”

 

Bo spoke in a grumbling resentful voice. “Bo, short for Bodred. The last name is Histledine.”

 

“Bodred Histledine. And you work at the spaceyards?”

 

Bo nodded. “What’s your name?”

 

Alice seemed not to hear. “Perhaps I’ll have lunch at this tavern after all—if you care to show me the way.”

 

“It’s not exactly a big expedition, with me running ahead like a guide,” growled Bo. “I’ll take you there as my guest.”

 

“No, I wouldn’t care for that,” said Alice. “But I’ll visit this tavern: yes. I think I’d like to talk with you.”

 

 

 

6

 

Waldo pushed the photograph across the desk to Inspector Vole, who examined it with care. “The man isn’t identifiable, as you can see for yourself,” said Vole. “The woman—I don’t recognize her, but I’ll put her through identification procedure and maybe something will show up.” He departed the room. Waldo sat drumming his fingers. From time to tune a faint waft of jeek body-tar odor reached his nostrils, causing him to wince and twist his head.

 

Inspector Vole returned with the photograph and a print-out bearing the likenesses of a dozen women. He pushed the sheet across the desk. “This is what the machine gave me. Do you recognize any of them?”

 

Waldo nodded. “This is the one.” He touched a face on the sheet.

 

“I thought so too,” said Vole. “Do you intend to place criminal charges?”

 

“Maybe. But not just yet. Who is she?”

 

“Her name is Hernanda Degasto Confurias. Her address is 214-19-64, Bagram. If you plan to confront this woman and her friend, I advise you to go in company with a police officer.”

 

“Thank you; I’ll keep your advice in mind,” said Waldo. He left the office.

 

Vole reflected a moment, then punched a set of buttons. He watched the display screen, which flashed a gratifying run of green lights: the name Hernanda Confurias was not unknown to the criminal files. Instead of a data read-out, the screen flickered to show the face of Vole’s colleague Detective Delmar.

 

“What have you got on Hernanda Confurias?” asked Delmar.

 

“Nothing of import,” said Vole. “Last night on the Parade—” Vole described the occurrence. “A senseless matter, or so it seems offhand.”

 

“Put through the photograph,” said Delmar. Vole facsimilated across a copy of the photograph.

 

“I wouldn’t swear to it,” said Delmar, “but that looks to me like Big Bo Histledine.”

 

 

 

Waldo found the apartment numbered 214-19-64, then went to a nearby park where he approached a pair of adolescent girls. “I need your help,” said Waldo. “A certain lady friend is angry with me, and I don’t think she’ll answer the door if she sees my face in the robber’s portrait, so I want one, or both, of you to press the door button for me.” Waldo produced a five-dollar note. “I’ll pay you, of course, for your trouble.”

 

The girls looked at each other and giggled. “Why not? Where does she live?”

 

“Just yonder,” said Waldo. “Come along.” He gave the girls instructions and led them to the door, while he waited beyond the range of the sensor eye, which produced the “robber portrait” on the screen within.

 

The girls pressed the button, and waited while the person within scrutinized their images.

 

“Who do you want?”

 

“Hernanda Degasto Confurias. We’re from the charm school.”

 

“Charm school?” The door opened; Hernanda looked forth. “Which charm school?”

 

Waldo stepped forward. “You girls come some other time. Hernanda, I want to speak with you.”

 

She tried to close the door, but Waldo pushed through the opening. Hernanda ran across the room to the alarm button. “Get out of here! Or I’ll press for the police!”

 

“I am the police,” said Waldo.

 

“No, you’re not! I know who you are.”

 

“Who am I?”

 

“Never mind. Leave here at once!”

 

Waldo tossed the photograph to the table. “Look at that.”

 

Hernanda gingerly examined the picture. “Well—what of it?”

 

“Who’s the man?”

 

“What’s it to you?”

 

“You say you know who I am.”

 

Hernanda gave her head a half-fearful, half-defiant jerk of assent. “He shouldn’t have done it—but I’m not saying anything.”

 

“You’ll either tell me or the police.”

 

“No! He’d cut my ears; he’d sell me to the gunkers.”

 

“He won’t get the chance. You can either tell me now in secret, or the police will take you in as his accomplice.”

 

“In secret?”

 

“Yes. He won’t know where I got his name.”

 

“You swear this?”

 

“I do.”

 

Hernanda came a timid step forward. She picked up the photograph, glanced at it, threw it contemptuously back down on the table. “Bodred Histledine. He lives in Fulchock: 663-20-99. He works in the spaceyards.”

 

“Bodred Histledine.” Waldo noted the name and address. “Why did he do what he did?”

 

Hernanda gave her head a meditative strike. “He’s a strange man. Sometimes he’s like a little boy, sad and sweet; then sometimes he’s a beast of the jungle. Have you noticed his eyes? They’re like the eyes of a tiger.”

 

“That may be. But why did he victimize me?”

 

Hernanda’s own eyes flashed. “Because of the girl you were with! He’s a crazy man!”

 

Waldo gave a grunt of bitter amusement. He inspected Hernanda thoughtfully; in her turn she looked at him. A patrician for certain: one of those Cloudhaven types.

 

“He’s always up at the Blue Lamp Tavern,” said Hernanda. “That’s his headquarters. He’s on probation, you know. Just yesterday the detectives warned him.” Hernanda, relaxing, had become limpid and charming; she came forward to the table.

 

Waldo looked her over without expression. “What did they warn him for?”

 

“Consorting with gunkers.”

 

“I see. Anything else you care to tell me?”

 

“No.” Hernanda now was almost arch. She came around the table. “You won’t tell him that you saw me?”

 

“No, definitely not.” Waldo once again caught a breath of that hateful odor. Rolling his eyes up and around, he turned and left the apartment.

 

 

 

7

 

Entering the Blue Lamp Tavern, Alice halted and peered through the gloom. For possibly the first time in her brash young life she felt the living presence of time. Upon that long black mahogany bar men of ten centuries had rested their elbows. The old wood exhaled vapors of the beer and spirits they had quaffed; their ghosts were almost palpable and their conversations hung in the gloom under the age-blackened ceiling. Alice surveyed the room, then crossed to a table under one of the tall windows which overlooked the many-textured expanse of Hant. Bo came at a rather foolish trot behind her, to pluck at her arm and urge her toward his usual booth. Alice paid him no heed, and seated herself placidly at the table she had chosen. Bo, drooping an eyelid and mouth, settled into the seat across from her. For a long moment he stared at her. Her features were fine and clean, but hardly extraordinary; how did she produce so much disturbance? Because she was insufferably confident, he told himself; because she enforced her own evaluation of herself upon those who admired her ... He’d do more than admire her; she’d remember him to the last day of her life. Because he was Bo Histledine! Bo the Histle! Big Boo the Whangeroo! who accepted nothing but the best. So now: to work, to attract her interest, to dominate her with his own pride. He said, “You haven’t told me your name.”

 

Alice turned from the window and looked at Bo as if she had forgotten his presence. “My name? Miss Tynnott. My father is Commander Tynnott.”

 

“What is your first name?” Bo asked patiently.

 

Alice ignored the question. Signaling the waiter, she ordered a sandwich and a mug of Tanglefoot. She looked around at the other patrons. “Who are these people? Workmen like yourself?”

 

“Some are workmen,” said Bo in a measured voice. “Those two”— he nodded his head—”are off a sea-ship from the river docks. That tall thin man is from the backlands. But I’m more interested in you. What’s your life like out on Rampold?”

 

“It’s always different. My father’s work takes him everywhere. We go out into the wilderness to plan canals and aquifers; sometimes we camp out for weeks. It’s a very exciting life. We’re about finished on Rampold; it’s becoming quite settled, and we may move on to a new wild planet; in fact that’s why we’re here on Earth.”

 

“Hmmf,” said Bo. “Seems as if you’d want to stay in Hant and enjoy yourself awhile; take in the percepts, meet people, buy new clothes, get your hair fixed in the latest style, things like that.”

 

Alice grinned. “I don’t need clothes. I like my hair as it is. As for percepts, I don’t have either time or inclination for vicarious living. Most urbanites, of course, don’t have much choice; it’s either vicarious experience or none.”

 

Bo looked at her blankly. “I don’t altogether understand you. Are you sure you know what you’re talking about?”

 

“Of course. Passive, fearful, comfort-loving people tend to live in cities. They have no taste for real existence; they make do with secondhand second-best experience. When they realize this, as most do consciously or subconsciously, sometimes they become hectic and frantic.”

 

“Bah,” growled Bo. “I live in Hant; I’d live nowhere else. Second-best isn’t good enough for me. I go after the best; I always get the best.”

 

“The best what?”

 

Bo looked sharply at the girl. Was she mocking him? But no, above the sandwich her eyes were guileless.

 

“The best of whatever I want,” said Bo.

 

“What you think you want is a shadow of what you really do want. Urbanites are dissatisfied people; they’re all lonesome for the lost paradise, but they don’t know where to find it. They search all the phases of subjectivity: they try drugs, music, percepts—”

 

“And gunk. Don’t forget gunk!”

 

“Urban life is the ultimate human tragedy,” said Alice. “People can’t escape except through catastrophe. Wealth can’t buy objectivity; the folk in Cloudhaven are the most subjective of any in Hant. You’re lucky to work in the spaceyards; you have contact with something real.”

 

Bo shook his head in wonder. “How old are you?”

 

“It’s really not relevant.”

 

“You certainly didn’t figure all that stuff out by yourself. You’re too young.”

 

“I’ve learned from my father and mother. Still, the truth is obvious, if you dare to look at it.”

 

Bo felt baffled and savage. “I’d say that maybe you’re not all that experienced yourself. Have you ever had a lover?”

 

“Last night,” said Alice, “someone put the question rather more delicately. He asked me if I’d ever been in love, and of course I didn’t care to discuss the matter.”

 

Bo drank deep from a tankard of lime beer. “And what do you think of me?”

 

Alice gave him a casual appraisal. “I’d say that you are an individual of considerable energy. If you directed and disciplined yourself, you might someday become an important person: a foreman or even a superintendent.”

 

Bo looked away. He picked up his tankard, drank and set it down with a carefully measured effort. He looked back at Alice. “What are you writing about?”

 

“Oh—I’m just jotting down ideas as they occur to me.”

 

“In regard to what?”

 

“Oh—the folk of the city and their customs.”

 

Bo sat glowering at her. “I suppose you’ve been studying me all morning. Am I one of the picturesque natives?”

 

Alice laughed. “I must be starting home.”

 

“One moment,” said Bo. “I see a man I want to talk to.” He crossed to a booth from which Raulf Dido quietly observed comings and goings.

 

Bo spoke in a harsh clipped voice. “You notice who I’m sitting with?”

 

Raulf nodded impassively. “Very tasty, in an odd sort of way. What is she?”

 

“She’s a starlander, and to talk to her you’d think she owns all Hant. I’ve never seen such conceit.”

 

“She looks like she’s dressed for a masquerade.”

 

“That’s the style out back of beyond. She’s absolutely innocent, pure as the morning dew. I’ll deliver. How much?”

 

“Nothing whatever. The heat’s on. It’s just too much of a hassle.”

 

“Not if it’s handled right.”

 

“I’d have to ship her off to Nicobar or Mauritan. It wouldn’t be worth the risk.”

 

“Come, now. Why not work up a quick sequence over in the studio like we did with that set of twins?”

 

Raulf gave his head a dubious shake. “There’s no scenery; we don’t have a script; we’d need a buck—”

 

“I’ll be the buck. All we need is the studio. No story, no sets: just the situation. She’s so arrogant, so haughty! She’ll throw a first-class display! Outrage. Apprehension. Fury. The works! I’m itching to lay hands on her beautiful body.”

 

“She’ll turn you in. If she’s around to do so.”

 

“She’ll be around. I want her to remember a long time. I’ll have to wear a clown-mask; I can’t risk having Clachey or Delmar look at the gunk and say ‘Hey! there’s Bo!’ Here’s how we can arrange it so we’re both clear—”

 

Raulf inclined his head toward Alice. “You’re too late. She’s leaving.”

 

“The wicked little wench, I told her to wait!”

 

“I guess she just remembered,” said Raulf mildly. “Because suddenly now she’s waiting.”

 

Alice had seen enough of the Blue Lamp Tavern, more than enough of Hant; she wanted to be back up on the aerie, high in the clear blue air. But a man had entered the room, to take an unobtrusive seat to the side, and Alice peered in wonder. Surely it wasn’t Waldo? But it was! though he wore a loose golden-brown slouch hat, bronze cheek-plates, a voluminous parasol cape of beetle-back green, all of which had the effect of disguising his appearance. Now, why had Waldo come to the Blue Lamp Tavern? Alice curbed a mischievous impulse to cross the room and put the question directly. Bo and his friend had their heads together; they were obviously plotting an escapade of some sort, probably to the discredit of both. Alice glanced back to Waldo to find him staring at her with furtive astonishment. Alice found his emotion highly amusing, and she decided to wait another few minutes to learn what eventuated.

 

Two other men approached Waldo and joined him at his table. One of the two directed Waldo’s attention to Bo with an almost imperceptible inclination of the head. Waldo darted a puzzled look across the room, then returned to his informant. He seemed to be saying, “But he’s not blond! The photograph showed blond hair!” And his friend perhaps remarked, “Hair dye is cheap.” To which Waldo gave a dubious nod.

 

Alice began to quiver with merriment. Waldo had been surprised to find her at the Blue Lamp Tavern, but in a moment Bo would come swaggering back across the room, and indeed Bo now rose to his feet. For a moment he stood looking off into nothing, with what Alice thought a rather unpleasant smirk on his face. His bulk, his meaty jaw, the round stare of his eyes, the flaring nostrils, suggested the portrayal of a Minoan man-bull she had noticed earlier in the day; the resemblance was fascinating.

 

Bo crossed the room to the table where Alice sat. Waldo leaned forward, jaw sagging in shock.

 

Bo seated himself. Alice was more than ever conscious of his new mood. The rather obsequious manner he had cultivated at the Academy was gone; now he seemed to exude a reek of bravado and power. Alice said, “I’m just about ready to go. Thank you for showing me the tavern here; it’s really a quaint old place, and I’m glad to have seen it.”

 

Bo sat looking at her, with rather more intimacy than she liked. He said in a husky voice, “My friend yonder is a police agent. He wants to show me a gunk studio they’ve just raided; perhaps you’d like to come along.”

 

“What’s a gunk studio?”

 

“A place where fanciful percepts are made. Sometimes they’re erotic; sometimes they’re wonderful experiences, and the person who wires into them becomes the person who takes part in the adventures. It’s illegal, naturally; a gunk addict can’t do much else but stay wired into gunk once he’s had a taste of it.”

 

Alice considered. “It sounds interesting, if one is in the mood for depravity. But I think I’ve had enough for today.”

 

“Enough what?” asked Bo jocularly. “Depravity? You haven’t seen anything yet.”

 

“Still, I’ll be leaving for home.” Alice rose to her feet. “It was pleasant meeting you, and I hope you do well at the spaceyards.”

 

Bo joined her. “I’ll show you the cab pad. This way, out the back. It’s just around the corner.”

 

Alice somewhat dubiously went with Bo along a dim corridor, down concrete steps to an iron door, which opened into an alley. Alice paused, glanced sidewise at Bo, who was standing rather closer than she liked. He lifted his hand and stroked her hair. Alice moved back with raised eyebrows. “And where is the cab pad?”

 

Bo grinned. “Just around the corner.”

 

Keeping a wary eye on Bo, Alice marched off down the alley, with Bo a pace or two behind. She noticed a small van parked to the side. As she passed, footsteps pounded behind her; she swung around to see two men bearing Bo to the ground. Another man threw a blanket over her head, looped a strap around her knees; she was picked up and tossed into the van. The door closed and a moment later the van moved off.

 

Alice rolled over and made herself as comfortable as possible. She found no difficulty breathing and her first emotion was outrage. How dared anyone treat her with such disrespect! She began to speculate as to the purpose of the deed, and her probable prospects; she was not at all cheered.

 

Kicking and elbowing, she worked the blanket loose, and freed herself, but her situation was hardly improved. The interior of the van was dark and the doors were locked.

 

The van halted; the back door opened to reveal the interior of a concrete-walled room. Two men looked in at her; Alice was somewhat reassured by the hoods which concealed their faces, which would seem to indicate that they planned to spare her life, if nothing else.

 

She jumped out of the van and looked about her. “What’s the reason for all this?”

 

“Come along; this way. You’re going to be famous.”

 

“Oh? In what way?”

 

“You’re to be the star of an exciting new percept.”

 

“I see. Is this what is called ‘gunk’?”

 

“I’ve heard it called ‘gunk.’ I like to think of it as ‘art.’”

 

“I’m afraid you’ll find me an uncooperative performer. The production will be a failure.”

 

“Nothing in life is a sure thing. Still, it’s worth trying. Come along this way.”

 

Alice went as she was directed, along a hall and into a large win-dowless room illuminated by panels in the ceiling and around the walls. From four angles and from above recording apparatus surveyed the room. A man in a white beret, a domino and cheek-plates stood waiting. He came to inspect Alice. “You don’t seem concerned.”

 

“I’m not, particularly.”

 

Raulf Dido, the man in the white beret, was momentarily disconcerted. “Maybe you like the idea?”

 

“I wouldn’t quite go that far.”

 

“Are you wired?”

 

Alice smiled, as if at the naive question of a child. “No.”

 

“We’ll want you to wear this induction device. It’s not as accurate as the direct connection but better than nothing.”

 

“Just what do you propose to do?” asked Alice.

 

“We plan to produce an erotic percept with emotional accompaniment. As you see, we have no exotic props, but we feel that your special personality will make the production interesting. Before you indulge in any tantrums or hysterics, we’ll want to attach this induction device to your neck.”

 

Alice looked at the adjuncts of the room: a couch, a chair, a case containing several objects which caused Alice to compress her lips in wry disgust. “You don’t understand my ‘special personality,’ as you put it. The percept will be very uninteresting. I wonder if you have a magazine or a newspaper I might read while you’re trying to make your percept?”

 

“You won’t be bored, never fear.” This was the comment of another man who had entered the room: a man tall and strong, bulky about the shoulders, with a head shaved bald. A mask of gold foil clung to his face; he wore loose black pantaloons, a blouse checked red, white and black; he looked almost monumental in his strength. Alice instantly recognized Bo, and burst out laughing.

 

“What’s so funny?” he growled.

 

“The whole affair is ridiculous. I really don’t care to be a party to such a farce. After all, I have my pride.”

 

The man in the gold mask stood looking at her sullenly. “You’ll find whether it’s ridiculous or not.” He spoke to the man in the domino. “Check my signals.” He pushed a clip into the socket under his right arm.

 

“Signals fine. You’re in good shape.”

 

“Put on her induction; we’ll get on with the business.”

 

The man in the domino advanced; Alice gestured, took the induction-cell, waved her hands and the cell was gone. Bo and Raulf Dido stared in annoyance. “What did you do with it?” asked Bo in a hard voice.

 

“It’s gone,” said Alice. “Forever. Or maybe it’s somewhere up here.” She jumped up to the recorder platform and pushed over equipment. Cameras, recorders crashed to the floor, evoking cries of rage from Raulf and Bo. They ran to catch her, then stopped short at the sound of contention: calls and curses, the thud of blows. Into the room burst four men. Waldo stood to the side while his companions advanced upon Raulf and Bo and commenced to beat them with leather truncheons. Raulf and Bo bellowed in rage and sought to defend themselves, with only small success, as the blows fell upon them from all sides.

 

Alice said, “Hello, Waldo. What are you doing here?”

 

“I might ask you the same thing.”

 

“Bodred brought me here in a van,” said Alice. “He seemed to want my help in making percepts; I was about to go when you arrived.”

 

“You were about to go?” Waldo laughed scornfully. He put his arm around Alice’s waist and drew her toward him.

 

She put her hands on his chest and held him away. “Now, Waldo, control yourself. I don’t need reassurance.”

 

“Do you know what they were going to do?” asked Waldo in a thick voice.

 

“I wasn’t particularly interested. Please, Waldo, don’t be amorous. I’m sure women of your own race are adequate to your needs.”

 

Waldo made a guttural sound. He called to his hirelings. “Hold off. Don’t kill them. Bring that man over here.”

 

The men pushed Bo across the room. Waldo held a small gun which he waved carelessly. “You were about to produce some gunk, evidently.”

 

“What if we were?” Bo panted. “Is it any of your affair? Why did you come busting in on us?”

 

“Think back to last night.”

 

“Oh. You were the geezer behind the jeek.”

 

“Correct. Go on with your gunk.” Waldo jerked his head toward Alice. “Take her. Use her. I don’t want her.”

 

Bo glanced uncertainly toward Raulf, still on the floor. He looked back to Waldo, glaring sidelong at Waldo’s gun. “What then?”

 

“I’m not done with you, if that’s what you’re worried about. You’ve got a lot coming, and you’re going to get it.”

 

Alice spoke in a puzzled voice. “Waldo, are you suggesting that these nasty creatures continue with what they were doing?”

 

Waldo grinned. “Why not? A little humility might do you good.”

 

“I see. Well, Waldo, I don’t care to participate in anything so sordid. I’m surprised at you.”

 

Waldo leaned forward. “I’ll tell you exactly why I’m doing this. It’s because your arrogance and your vanity absolutely rub me raw.”

 

“Hear, hear!” croaked Bo. “You talk the way I feel.”

 

Alice spoke in a soft voice. “Both you boys are mistaken. I’m not vain and arrogant. I’m merely superior.” She could not control her mirth at the expressions on the faces of Waldo and Bo. “Perhaps I’m unkind. It’s really not your fault; you’re both rather pitiful victims of the city.”

 

“A ‘victim’? Hah!” cried Waldo. “I live in Cloudhaven!”

 

And almost in the same instant, “Me, Big Bo, a victim? Nobody fools with me!”

 

“Both of you, of course, understand this—subconsciously. The result is guilt and malice.”

 

Waldo listened with a sardonic smile, Bo with a lowering sneer.

 

“Are you finished?” Waldo asked. “If so—”

 

“Wait! One moment,” said Alice. “What of the cameras and the induction-cell?”

 

Raulf, limping and groaning, went to one of the cameras which Alice had not thrown to the floor. “This one will work. The cell is gone; I guess we’ll have to dub in her track.”

 

Bo looked around the room. “I don’t know as I like all this company. Everybody’s got to go. I can’t concentrate.”

 

“I’m not going,” said Waldo. “You three wait in the hall. There’ll be more work for you after a bit.”

 

“Well, don’t beat me any more,” whined Raulf. “I didn’t do anything.”

 

“Quit sniveling!” Bo snarled. “Fire up that camera. This isn’t quite like I planned, but if it’s not good, we’ll do a retake.”

 

“Wait!” said Alice. “One thing more. Watch my hands. Are you watching?” She stood erect, and performed a set of apparently purposeless motions. She halted, held her palms toward Bo and Waldo, and each held a small mechanism. From the object in her right hand burst a gush of dazzling light, pulsating ten times per second; the mechanism in the left hand vented an almost solid tooth-chattering mass of sound: a throbbing scream in phase with the light: erreek erreek erreek! Waldo and Bo flinched and sagged back, their brain circuits overloaded and rendered numb. The gun dropped from Waldo’s hand. Prepared for the event, Alice was less affected. She placed the beacon on the table, picked up the gun. Waldo, Bo and Raulf staggered and lurched, their brain-waves now surging at dis-orientation frequency.

 

Alice, her face taut with concentration, left the room. In the hall she sidled past Waldo’s three hireling thugs, who stood indecisively, and so gained the street. From a nearby public telephone, she called the police, who dropped down from the sky two minutes later. Alice explained the circumstances; the police in short order brought forth a set of sullen captives.

 

Alice watched as they were loaded into the conveyance. “Goodbye, Waldo. Goodbye, Bo. At least you evaded your beating. I don’t know what’s going to happen to you, but I can’t extend too much sympathy, because you’ve both been rascals.”

 

Waldo asked sourly, “Do you make as much trouble as this wherever you go?”

 

Alice decided that the question had been asked for rhetorical effect and required no exact or accurate reply; she merely waved and watched as Waldo, Bo, Raulf Dido and the three thugs were wafted aloft and away.

 

 

 

Alice arrived back at the aerie halfway through the afternoon, to find that her father had completed his business. “I was hoping you’d get back early,” said Merwyn Tynnott, “so that we could leave tonight. Did you have a good day?”

 

“It’s been interesting,” said Alice. “The teaching processes are spectacular and effective, but I wonder if by presenting events so categorically they might not stifle the students’ imaginations?”

 

“Possible. Hard to say.”

 

“Their point of view is urbanite, naturally. Still, the events speak for themselves, and I suspect that the student of history falls into urbanite doctrine through social pressure.”

 

“Very likely so. Social pressure is stronger than logic.”

 

“I had lunch at the Blue Lamp Tavern, a spooky old place.”

 

“Yes. I know it well. It’s a back-eddy of ancient times, and also something of an underworld hangout. Dozens of spacemen have disappeared from the Blue Lamp.”

 

“I had an adventure there myself; in fact, Waldo Walberg misbehaved rather badly and I believe he’s now been taken away for penal processing.”

 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Merwyn Tynnott. “He’ll miss Cloud-haven, especially if he’s sent out to the starlands.”

 

“It’s a pity about poor Waldo, and Bodred as well. Bodred is the workman who flung his wrench upon my foot. You were quite right about his motives. I’m a trifle disillusioned, although I know I shouldn’t be.”

 

Merwyn Tynnott hugged his daughter and kissed the top of her head. “Don’t worry another instant. We’re off and away from Hant, and you never need come back.”

 

“It’s a strange wicked place,” said Alice, “though I rather enjoyed Jillyville.”

 

“Jillyville is always amusing.”

 

They went into the dome; Commander Tynnott touched the controls, and the aerie drifted away to the southeast.

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *

 

A SEA OF FACES

 

by Robert Silverberg

 

 

As the behavioral sciences progress, we’re approaching the great adventure, the literal exploration of the human psyche. Someday soon a psychiatrist may be able to penetrate directly into the mind of his patient, and understand clearly what problems lie there. Robert Silverberg, in a narrative rich in archetypal insights, suggests that such an ability might have its drawbacks.

 

* * * *

 

Are not such floating fragments on the sea of the

unconscious called Freudian ships?

—Josephine Saxton

 

 

FALLING.

 

It’s very much like dying, I suppose. That awareness of infinite descent, that knowledge of the total absence of support. It’s all sky up here. Down below is neither land nor sea, only color without form, so distant that I can’t even put a name to the color. The cosmos is torn open, and I plummet headlong, arms and legs pinwheeling wildly, the gray stuff in my skull centrifuging toward my ears. I’m dropping like Lucifer. From morn to noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, A summer’s day; and with the setting sun Dropp’d from the Zenith, like a falling star. That’s Milton. Even now my old liberal-arts education stands me in good stead. And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again. That’s Shakespeare. It’s all part of the same thing. All of English literature was written by a single man, whose sly persuasive voice ticks in my dizzy head as I drop. God grant me a soft landing.

 

* * * *

 

“She looks a little like you,” I told Irene. “At least, it seemed that way for one quick moment, when she turned toward the window in my office and the sunlight caught the planes of her face. Of course, it’s the most superficial resemblance only, a matter of bone structure, the placement of the eyes, the cut of the hair. But your expressions, your inner selves externally represented, are altogether dissimilar. You radiate unbounded good health and vitality, Irene, and she slips so easily into the classic schizoid faces, the eyes alternately dreamy and darting, the forehead pale, flecked with sweat. She’s very troubled.”

 

“What’s her name?”

 

“Lowry. April Lowry.”

 

“A beautiful name. April. Young?”

 

“About twenty-three.”

 

“How sad, Richard. Schizoid, you said?”

 

“She retreats into nowhere without provocation. Lord knows what triggers it. When it happens she can go six or eight months without saying a word. The last attack was a year ago. These days she’s feeling much better; she’s willing to talk about herself a bit. She says it’s as though there’s a zone of weakness in the walls of her mind, an opening, a trap door, a funnel, something like that, and from time to time her soul is irresistibly drawn toward it and goes pouring through and disappears into God knows what, and there’s nothing left of her but a shell. And eventually she comes back through the same passage. She’s convinced that one of these times she won’t come back.”

 

“Is there some way to help her?” Irene asked. “What will you try? Drugs? Hypnosis? Shock? Sensory deprivation?”

 

“They’ve all been tried.”

 

“What then, Richard? What will you do?”

 

* * * *

 

Suppose there is a way. Let’s pretend there is a way. Is that an acceptable hypothesis? Let’s pretend. Let’s just pretend, and see what happens.

 

* * * *

 

The vast ocean below me occupies the entirety of my field of vision. Its surface is convex, belly-up in the middle and curving vertiginously away from me at the periphery; the slope is so extreme that I wonder why the water doesn’t all run off toward the edges and drown the horizon. Not far beneath that shimmering swollen surface, a gigantic pattern of crosshatchings and countertextures is visible, like an immense mural floating lightly submerged in the water. For a moment, as I plunge, the pattern resolves itself and becomes coherent: I see the face of Irene, a calm pale mask, the steady blue eyes focused lovingly on me. She fills the ocean. Her semblance covers an area greater than any continental mass. Firm chin, strong full lips, delicate tapering nose. She emanates a serene aura of inner peace that buoys me like an invisible net: I am falling easily now, pleasantly, arms outspread, face down, my entire body relaxed. How beautiful she is! I continue to descend and the pattern shatters; the sea is abruptly full of metallic shards and splinters, flashing bright gold through the dark blue-green; then, when I am perhaps a thousand meters lower, the pattern suddenly reorganizes itself. A colossal face, again. I welcome Irene’s return, but no, the face is the face of April, my silent sorrowful one. A haunted face, a face full of shadows: dark terrified eyes, flickering nostrils, sunken cheeks. A bit of one incisor is visible over the thin lower lip. O my poor sweet Taciturna. Needles of reflected sunlight glitter in her outspread waterborne hair. April’s manifestation supplants serenity with turbulence; again I plummet out of control, again I am in the cosmic centrifuge, my breath is torn from me and a dread chill rushes past my tumbling body. Desperately I fight for poise and balance. I attain it, finally, and look down. The pattern has again broken; where April had been, I see only parallel bands of amber light, distorted by choppy refractions. Tiny white dots —islands, I suppose—now are evident in the glossy sea.

 

What a strange resemblance there is, at times, between April and Irene!

 

How confusing for me to confuse them. How dangerous for me.

 

* * * *

 

—It’s the riskiest kind of therapy you could have chosen, Dr. Bjornstrand.

 

—Risky for me, or risky for her?

 

—Risky both for you and for your patient, I’d say.

 

—So what else is new?

 

—You asked me for an impartial evaluation, Dr. Bjornstrand. If you don’t care to accept my opinion—

 

—I value your opinion highly, Erik.

 

—But you’re going to go through with the therapy as presently planned?

 

—Of course I am.

 

* * * *

 

This is the moment of splashdown.

 

I hit the water perfectly and go slicing through the sea’s shining surface with surgical precision, knifing fifty meters deep, eighty, a hundred, cutting smoothly through the oceanic epithelium and the sturdy musculature beneath. Very well done, Dr. Bjornstrand. High marks for form.

 

Perhaps this is deep enough.

 

I pivot, kick, turn upward, clutch at the brightness above me. I may have overextended myself, I realize. My lungs are on fire and the sky, so recently my home, seems terribly far away. But with vigorous strokes I pull myself up and come popping into the air like a stubborn cork.

 

I float idly a moment, catching my breath. Then I look around. The ferocious eye of the sun regards me from a late-morning height. The sea is warm and gentle, undulating seductively. There is an island only a few hundred meters away: an inviting beach of bright sand, a row of slender palms farther back. I swim toward it. As I near the shore, the bottomless dark depths give way to a sandy outlying sunken shelf, and the hue of the sea changes from deep blue to light green. Yet it is taking longer to reach land than I had expected. Perhaps my estimate of the distance was overly optimistic; for all my efforts, the island seems to be getting no closer. At moments it actually appears to be retreating from me. My arms grow heavy. My kick becomes sluggish. I am panting, wheezing, sputtering; something throbs behind my forehead. Suddenly, though, I see sun-streaked sand just below me. My feet touch bottom. I wade wearily ashore and fall to my knees on the margin of the beach.

 

* * * *

 

—Can I call you April, Miss Lowry?

 

—Whatever.

 

—I don’t think that that’s a very threatening level of therapist-patient intimacy, do you?

 

—Not really.

 

—Do you always shrug every time you answer a question?

 

—I didn’t know I did.

 

—You shrug. You also studiously avoid any show of facial expression. You try to be very unreadable, April.

 

—Maybe I feel safer that way.

 

—But who’s the enemy?

 

—You’d know more about that than I would, doctor.

 

—Do you actually think so? I’m all the way over here. You’re right there inside your own head. You’ll know more than I ever will about you.

 

—You could always come inside my head if you wanted to.

 

—Wouldn’t that frighten you?

 

—It would kill me.

 

—I wonder, April. You’re much stronger than you think you are. You’re also very beautiful, April. I know, it’s beside the point But you are.

 

* * * *

 

It’s just a small island. I can tell that by the way the shoreline curves rapidly away from me. I lie sprawled near the water’s edge, face down, exhausted, fingers digging tensely into the warm moist sand. The sun is strong; I feel waves of heat going thratala thratata on my bare back. I wear only a ragged pair of faded blue jeans, very tight, cut off choppily at the knee. My belt is waterlogged and salt-cracked, as though I had been adrift for days before making landfall. Perhaps I was. It’s hard to maintain a reliable sense of time in this place.

 

I should get up. I should explore.

 

Yes. Getting up, now. A little dizzy, eh? Yes. But I walk steadily up the gentle slope of the beach. Fifty meters inland, the sand shades into sandy soil, loose, shallow; rounded white coral boulders poke through from below. Thirsty soil. Nevertheless, how lush everything is here. A wall of tangled vines and creepers. Long glossy tropical green leaves, smooth-edged, big-veined. The corrugated trunks of the palms. The soft sound of the surf, fwissh, fwissh, underlying all other textures. How blue the sea. How green the sky. Fwissh.

 

Is that the image of a face in the sky?

 

A woman’s face, yes. Irene? April? The features are indistinct. But I definitely see it, yes, hovering a few hundred meters above the water as if projected from the sun-streaked sheet that is the skin of the ocean: a glow, a radiance, having the form of a delicate face—nostrils, lips, brows, cheeks, certainly a face, and not just one, either, for in the intensity of my stare I cause it to split and then to split again, so that a row of them hangs in the air, ten faces, a hundred, a thousand faces, faces all about me, a sea of faces. They seem quite grave. Smile! On command, the faces smile. Much better. The air itself is brighter for that smile. The faces merge, blur, sharpen, blur again, overlap in part, dance, shimmer, melt, flow. Illusions born of the heat. Daughters of the sun. Sweet mirages. I look past them, higher, into the clear reaches of the cloudless heavens.

 

Hawks!

 

Hawks here? Shouldn’t I be seeing gulls? The birds whirl and swoop, dark figures against the blinding sky, wings outspread, feathers like fingers. I see their fierce hooked beaks. They snap great beetles from the steaming air and soar away, digesting. Then there are no birds, only the faces, still smiling. I turn my back on them and slowly move off through the underbrush to see what sort of place the sea has given me.

 

So long as I stay near the shore, I have no difficulty in walking; cutting through the densely vegetated interior might be a different matter. I sidle off to the left, following the nibbled line of beach. Before I have walked a hundred paces I have made a new discovery: the island is adrift.

 

Glancing seaward, I notice that on the horizon there lies a dark shore rimmed by black triangular mountains, one or two days’ sail distant. Minutes ago I saw only open sea in that direction. Maybe the mountains have just this moment sprouted, but more likely the island, spinning slowly in the currents, has only now turned to reveal them. That must be the answer. I stand quite still for a long while and it seems to me that I behold those mountains now from one angle, now from a slightly different one. How else to explain such effects of parallax? The island freely drifts. It moves, and I move with it, upon the breast of the changeless unbounded sea.

 

* * * *

 

The celebrated young American therapist Richard Bjornstrand commenced his experimental treatment of Miss April Lowry on the 3rd of August, 1987. Within fifteen days the locus of disturbance had been identified, and Dr. Bjornstrand had recommended consciousness-penetration treatment, a technique increasingly popular in the United States. Miss Lowry’s physician was initially opposed to the suggestion, but further consultations demonstrated the potential value of such an approach, and on the 19th of September the entry procedures were initiated. We expect further reports from Dr. Bjornstrand as the project develops.

 

* * * *

 

Leonie said, “But what if you fall in love with her?”

 

“What of it?” I asked. “Therapists are always falling in love with their patients. Reich married one of his patients, and so did Fenichel, and dozens of the early analysts had affairs with their patients, and even Freud, who didn’t, was known to observe—”

 

“Freud lived a long time ago,” Leonie said.

 

* * * *

 

I have now walked entirely around the island. The circumambulation took me four hours, I estimate, since the sun was almost directly overhead when I began it and is now more than halfway toward the horizon. In these latitudes I suppose sunset comes quite early, perhaps by half past six, even in summer.

 

All during my walk this afternoon the island remained on a steady course, keeping one side constantly toward the sea, the other toward that dark mountain-girt shore. Yet it has continued to drift, for there are minor oscillations in the position of the mountains relative to the island, and the shore itself appears gradually to grow closer. (Although that may be an illusion.) Faces appear and vanish and reappear in the lower reaches of the sky according to no predictable schedule of event or identity: April, Irene, April, Irene, Irene, April, April, Irene. Sometimes they smile at me. Sometimes they do not. I thought I saw one of the Irenes wink; I looked again and the face was April’s.

 

The island, though quite small, has several distinct geographical zones. On the side where I first came ashore there is a row of close-set palms, crown to crown, beyond which the beach slopes toward the sea. I have arbitrarily labeled that side of the island as east. The western side is low and parched, and the vegetation is a tangle of scrub. On the north side is a high coral ridge, flat-faced and involute, descending steeply into the water. White wavelets batter tirelessly against the rounded spires and domes of that pocked coral wall. The island’s southern shore has dunes, quite Saharesque, their yellowish pink crests actually shifting ever so lightly as I watch. Inland, the island rises to a peak perhaps fifty meters above sea level, and evidently there are deep pockets of retained rainwater in the porous, decayed limestone of the undersurface, for the vegetation is profuse and vigorous. At several points I made brief forays to the interior, coming upon a swampy region of noisy sucking quicksand in one place, a cool dark glade interpenetrated with the tunnels and mounds of termites in another, a copse of wide-branching little fruit-bearing trees elsewhere.

 

Altogether the place is beautiful. I will have enough food and drink, and there are shelters. Nevertheless I long already for an end to the voyage. The bare sharp-tipped mountains of the mainland grow ever nearer; someday I will reach the shore, and my real work will begin.

 

* * * *

 

The essence of this kind of therapy is risk. The therapist must be prepared to encounter forces well beyond his own strength, and to grapple with them in the knowledge that they might readily triumph over him. The patient, for her part, must accept the knowledge that the intrusion of the therapist into her consciousness may cause extensive alterations of the personality, not all of them for the better.

 

* * * *

 

A bewildering day. The dawn was red stained with purple veins— a swollen, grotesque, traumatic sky. Then came high winds; the palms rippled and swayed and great fronds were torn loose. A lull followed. I feared toppling trees and tidal waves, and pressed inland for half an hour, settling finally in a kind of natural amphitheater of dead old coral, a weathered bowl thrust up from the sea millennia ago. Here I waited out the morning. Toward noon thick dark clouds obscured the heavens. I felt a sense of menace, of irresistible powers gathering their strength, such as I sometimes feel when I hear that tense little orchestral passage late in the Agnus Dei of the Missa Solemnis, and instants later there descended on me hail, rain, sleet, high wind, furious heat, even snow, all weathers at once. I thought the earth would crack open and pour forth magma upon me. It was all over in five minutes, and every trace of the storm vanished. The clouds parted; the sun emerged, looking gentle and innocent; birds of many plumages wheeled in the air, warbling sweetly. The faces of Irene and April, infinitely reduplicated, blinked on and off against the backdrop of the sky. The mountainous shore hung fixed on the horizon, growing no nearer, getting no farther away, as though the day’s turmoils had caused the frightened island to put down roots.

 

* * * *

 

Rain during the night, warm and steamy. Clouds of gnats. An evil humming sound, greasily resonant, pervading everything. I slept, finally, and was awakened by a sound like a mighty thunderclap, and saw an enormous distorted sun rising slowly in the west.

 

* * * *

 

We sat by the redwood table on Donald’s patio: Irene, Donald, Erik, Paul, Anna, Leonie, me. Paul and Erik drank bourbon, and the rest of us sipped Shine, the new drink, essence of cannabis mixed with (I think) ginger beer and strawberry syrup. We were very high. “There’s no reason,” I said, “why we shouldn’t avail ourselves of the latest technological developments. Here’s this unfortunate girl suffering from an undeterminable but crippling psychological malady, and the chance exists for me to enter her soul and—”

 

“Enter her what?” Donald asked.

 

“Her consciousness, her anima, her spirit, her mind, her whatever you want to call it”

 

“Don’t interrupt him,” Leonie said to Donald.

 

Irene said, “Will you bring her to Erik for an impartial opinion first, at least?”

 

“What makes you think Erik is impartial?” Anna asked.

 

“He tries to be,” said Erik coolly. “Yes, bring her to me, Dr. Bjornstrand.”

 

“I know what you’ll tell me.”

 

“Still. Even so.”

 

“Isn’t this terribly dangerous?” Leonie asked. “I mean, suppose your mind became stuck inside hers, Richard?”

 

“Stuck?”

 

“Isn’t that possible? I don’t actually know anything about the process, but—”

 

“I’ll be entering her only in the most metaphorical sense,” I said.

 

Irene laughed. Anna said, “Do you actually believe that?” and gave Irene a sly look.

 

Irene merely shook her head. “I don’t worry about Richard’s fidelity,” she said, drawling her words.

 

* * * *

 

Her face fills the sky today.

 

April. Irene. Whoever she is. She eclipses the sun, and lights the day with her own supernal radiance.

 

* * * *

 

The course of the island has been reversed, and now it drifts out to sea. For three days I have watched the mountains of the mainland growing smaller. Evidently the currents have changed; or perhaps there are zones of resistance close to the shore, designed to keep at bay such wandering islands as mine. I must find a way to deal with this. I am convinced that I can do nothing for April unless I reach the mainland.

 

* * * *

 

I have entered a calm place where the sea is a mirror and the sweltering air reflects the reflected images in an infinitely baffling regression. I see no face but my own, now, and I see it everywhere. A million versions of myself dance in the steamy haze. My jaws are stubbled and there is a bright-red band of sunburn across my nose and upper cheeks. I grin and the multitudinous images grin at me. I reach toward them and they reach toward me. No land is in sight, no other islands, nothing, in fact, but this wall of reflections. I feel as though I am penned inside a box of polished metal. My shining image infests the burning atmosphere. I have a constant choking sensation; a terrible languor is coming over me; I pray for hurricanes, waterspouts, convulsions of the ocean bed, any sort of upheaval that will break the savage claustrophobic tension.

 

* * * *

 

Is Irene my wife? My lover? My companion? My friend? My sister?

 

* * * *

 

I am within April’s consciousness and Irene is a figment

 

* * * *

 

It has begun to occur to me that this may be my therapy rather than April’s.

 

* * * *

 

I have set to work creating machinery to bring me back to the mainland. All this week I have painstakingly felled palm trees, using a series of blunt, soft hand-axes chipped from slabs of dead coral. Hauling the trees to a promontory on the island’s southern face, I lashed them loosely together with vines, setting them in the water so that they projected from both sides of the headland like the oars of a galley. By tugging at an unusually thick vine that runs down the spine of the whole construction, I am indeed able to make them operate like oars; and I have tied that master vine to an unusually massive palm that sprouts from the central ridge of the promontory. What I have built, in fact, is a kind of reciprocating engine; the currents, stirring the leafy crowns of my felled palms, impart a tension to the vines that link them, and the resistance of the huge central tree to the tug of the master vine causes the felled trees to sweep the water, driving the entire island shoreward. Through purposeful activity, said Goethe, we justify our existence in the eyes of God.

 

* * * *

 

The “oars” work well. I’m heading toward the mainland once again.

 

* * * *

 

Heading toward the mainland very rapidly. Too rapidly, it seems. I think I may be caught in a powerful current.

 

* * * *

 

The current definitely has seized my island and I’m being swept swiftly along, willy-nilly. I am approaching the isle where Scylla waits. That surely is Scylla, that creature just ahead. There is no avoiding her; the force of the water is inexorable and my helpless oars dangle limply. The many-necked monster sits in plain sight on a barren rock, coiled into herself, waiting. Where shall I hide? Shall I scramble into the underbrush and huddle there until I am past her? Look, there: six heads, each with three rows of pointed teeth, and twelve snaky limbs. I suppose I could hide, but how cowardly, how useless. I will show myself to her. I stand exposed on the shore. I listen to her dread barking. How may I guard myself against Scylla’s fangs? Irene smiles out of the low fleecy clouds. There’s a way, she seems to be saying. I gather a cloud and fashion it into a simulacrum of myself. See: another Bjornstrand stands here, sunburned, half naked. I make a second replica, a third, complete to the stubble, complete to the blemishes. A dozen of them. Passive, empty, soulless. Will they deceive her? We’ll see. The barking is ferocious now. She’s close. My island whips through the channel. Strike, Scylla! Strike! The long necks rise and fall, rise and fall. I hear the screams of my other selves; I see their arms and legs thrashing as she seizes them and lifts them. Them she devours. Me she spares. I float safely past the hideous beast. April’s face, reduplicated infinitely in the blue vault above me, is smiling. I have gained power by this encounter. I need have no further fears: I have become invulnerable. Do your worst, ocean! Bring me to Charybdis. I’m ready. Yes. Bring me to Charybdis.

 

* * * *

 

The whole, D. H. Lawrence wrote, is a strange assembly of apparently incongruous parts, slipping past one another. I agree. But of course the incongruity is apparent rather than real, else there would be no whole.

 

* * * *

 

I believe I have complete control over the island now. I can redesign it to serve my needs, and I have streamlined it, making it ship-shaped, pointed at the bow, blunt at the stem. My conglomeration of felled palms has been replaced; now flexible projections of island-stuff flail the sea, propelling me steadily toward the mainland. Broad-leafed shade trees make the heat of day more bearable. At my command fresh-water streams spring from the sand, cool, glistening.

 

Gradually I extend the sphere of my control beyond the perimeter of the island. I have established a shark-free zone just off shore within an encircling reef. There I swim in perfect safety, and when hunger comes, I draw friendly fishes forth with my hands.

 

I fashion images out of clouds: April, Irene. I simulate the features of Dr. Richard Bjornstrand in the heavens. I draw April and Irene together, and they blur, they become one woman.

 

* * * *

 

Getting close to the coast now. Another day or two and I’ll be there.

 

* * * *

 

This is the mainland. I guide my island into a wide half-moon harbor, shadowed by the great naked mountains that rise like filed black teeth from the nearby interior. The island pushes out a sturdy woody cable that ties it to its berth; using the cable as a gangplank, I go ashore. The air is cooler here. The vegetation is sparse and cactusoidal: thick fleshy thorn-studded purplish barrels, mainly, taller than I. I strike one with a log and pale pink fluid gushes from it: I taste it and find it cool, sugary, vaguely intoxicating.

 

Cactus fluid sustains me during a five-day journey to the summit of the closest mountain. Bare feet slap against bare rock. Heat by day, lunar chill by night; the boulders twang at twilight as the warmth leaves them. At my back sprawls the sea, infinite, silent. The air is spangled with the frowning faces of women. I ascend by a slow spiral route, pausing frequently to rest, and push myself onward until at last I stand athwart the highest spine of the ranged On the inland side the mountains drop away steeply into a tormented irregular valley, boulder-strewn and icy, slashed by glittering white lakes like so many narrow lesions. Beyond that is a zone of low breast-shaped hills, heavily forested, descending into a central lowland out of which rises a pulsing fountain of light—jagged phosphorescent bursts of blue and gold and green and red that rocket into the air, attenuate, and are lost. I dare not approach that fountain; I will be consumed, I know, in its fierce intensity, for there the essence of April has its lair, the savage soul-core that must never be invaded by another.

 

I turn seaward and look to my left, down the coast. At first I see nothing extraordinary: a row of scalloped bays, some strips of sandy beach, a white line of surf, a wheeling flock of dark birds. But then I detect, far along the shore, a more remarkable feature. Two long slender promontories jut from the mainland like curved fingers, a thumb and a forefinger reaching toward one another, and in the wide gulf enclosed between them the sea churns in frenzy, as though it boils. At the vortex of the disturbance, though, all is calm. There! There is Charybdis! The maelstrom!

 

It would take me days to reach it overland. The sea route will be quicker. Hurrying down the slopes, I return to my island and sever the cable that binds it to shore. Perversely, it grows again. Some malign influence is negating my power. I sever; the cable reunites. I sever; it reunites. Again, again, again. Exasperated, I cause a fissure to pierce the island from edge to edge at the place where my cable is rooted; the entire segment surrounding that anchor breaks away and remains in the harbor, held fast, while the remainder of the island drifts toward the open sea.

 

Wait. The process of fission continues of its own momentum. The island is calving like a glacier, disintegrating, huge fragments breaking away. I leap desperately across yawning crevasses, holding always to the largest sector, struggling to rebuild my floating home, until I realize that nothing significant remains of the island, only an ever-diminishing raft of coral rock, halving and halving again. My island is no more than ten meters square now. Five. Less than five. Gone.

 

* * * *

 

I always dreaded the ocean. That great inverted bowl of chilly water, resonating with booming salty sounds, infested with dark rubbery weeds, inhabited by toothy monsters—it preyed on my spirit, draining me, filling itself from me. Of course it was the northern sea I knew and hated, the dull dirty Atlantic, licking greasily at the Massachusetts coast. A black rocky shoreline, impenetrable mysteries of water, a line of morning debris cluttering the scanty sandy coves, a host of crabs and lesser scuttlers crawling everywhere. While swimming I imagined unfriendly sea-beasts nosing around my dangling legs. I looked with distaste upon that invisible shimmering clutter of hairy-clawed planktonites, that fantasia of fibrous filaments and cluttering antennae. And I dreaded most of all the slow lazy stirring of the kraken, idly sliding its vast tentacles upward toward the boats of the surface. And here I am adrift on the sea’s own breast. April’s face in the sky wears a smile. The face of Irene flexes into a wink.

 

* * * *

 

I am drawn toward the maelstrom. Swimming is unnecessary; the water carries me purposefully toward my goal. Yet I swim, all the same, stroke after stroke, yielding nothing to the force of the sea. The first promontory is coming into view. I swim all the more energetically. I will not allow the whirlpool to capture me; I must give myself willingly to it.

 

* * * *

 

Now I swing round and round in the outer gyres of Charybdis. This is the place through which the spirit is drained: I can see April’s pallid face like an empty plastic mask, hovering, drawn downward, disappearing chin-first through the whirlpool’s vortex, reappearing, going down once more, an infinite cycle of drownings and disappearances and returns and resurrections. I must follow her.

 

* * * *

 

No use pretending to swim here. One can only keep one’s arms and legs pressed close together and yield, as one is sluiced down through level after level of the maelstrom until one reaches the heart of the eddy, and then—swoosh!—the ultimate descent. Now I plummet. The tumble takes forever. From morn to noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve. I rocket downward through the hollow heart of the whirlpool, gripped in a monstrous suction, until abruptly I am delivered to a dark region of cold quiet water, far below the surface of the sea. My lungs ache; my rib-cage, distended over a bloated lump of hot depleted air, shoots angry protests into my armpits. I glide along the smooth vertical face of a submerged mountain. My feet find lodging on a ledge; I grope my way along it and come at length to the mouth of a cave, set at a sharp angle against the steep wall of stone. I topple into it.

 

Within, I find an air-filled pocket of a room, dank, slippery, lit by some inexplicable inner glow. April is there, huddled against the back of the cave. She is naked, shivering, sullen, her hair pasted in damp strands to the pale column of her neck. Seeing me, she rises but does not come forward. Her breasts are small, her hips narrow, her thighs slender: a child’s body.

 

I reach a hand toward her. “Come. Let’s swim out of here together, April.”

 

“No. It’s impossible. I’ll drown.”

 

“I’ll be with you.”

 

“Even so,” she says. “I’ll drown, I know it.”

 

“What are you going to do, then? Just stay in here?”

 

“For the time being.”

 

“Until when?”

 

“Until it’s safe to come out,” she says.

 

“When will that be?”

 

“I’ll know.”

 

“I’ll wait with you. All right?”

 

* * * *

 

I don’t hurry her. At last she says, “Let’s go now.”

 

This time I am the one who hesitates, to my own surprise. It is as if there has been an interchange of strength in this cave and I have been weakened. I draw back, but she takes my hand and leads me firmly to the mouth of the cave. I see the water swirling outside, held at bay because it has no way of expelling the bubble of air that fills our pocket in the mountain wall. April begins to glide down the slick passageway that takes us from the cave. She is excited, radiant, eyes bright, breasts heaving. “Come,” she says. “Now! Now!”

 

We spill out of the cave together.

 

The water hammers me. I gasp, choke, tumble. The pressure is appalling. My eardrums scream shrill complaints. Columns of water force themselves into my nostrils. I feel the whirlpool dancing madly far above me. In terror I turn and try to scramble back into the cave, but it will not have me, and rebounding impotently against a shield of air, I let myself be engulfed by the water. I am beginning to drown, I think. My eyes deliver no images. Dimly I am aware of April tugging at me, grasping me, pulling me upward. What will she do, swim through the whirlpool from below? All is darkness. I perceive only the touch of her hand. I struggle to focus my eyes, and finally I see her through a purple chaos. How much like Irene she looks! Which is she, April or Irene? It scarcely matters. Drowning is my occupation now. It will all be over soon. Let me go, I tell her, let me go, let me do my drowning and be done with it. Save yourself. Save yourself. Save yourself. But she pays no heed and continues to tug.

 

We erupt into the sunlight

 

Bobbing at the surface, we bask in glorious warmth. “Look,” she cries. “There’s an island! Swim, Richard, swim! We’ll be there in ten minutes. We can rest there.”

 

Irene’s face fills the sky.

 

“Swim!” April urges.

 

I try. I am without strength. A few strokes and I lapse into stupor. April, apparently unaware, is far ahead of me, cutting energetically through the water, streaking toward the island. April, I call. April. April, help me. I think of the beach, the warm moist sand, the row of palms, the intricate texture of the white coral boulders. Yes. Time to go home. Irene is waiting for me. April! April!

 

She scrambles ashore. Her slim bare form glistens in the hot sunlight.

 

April?

 

The sea has me. I drift away, foolish flotsam, borne again toward the maelstrom-

 

* * * *

 

Down. Down. No way to fight it. April is gone. I see only Irene, shimmering in the waves. Down.

 

This cool dark cave.

 

Where am I? I don’t know.

 

Who am I? Dr. Richard Bjornstrand? April Lowry? Both of those? Neither of those? I think I’m Bjornstrand. Was. Here, Dickie Dickie Dickie.

 

How do I get out of here? I don’t know.

 

I’ll wait. Sooner or later I’ll be strong enough to swim out. Sooner. Later. We’ll see. Irene? April?

 

Here, Dickie Dickie Dickie. Here.

 

Where?

 

Here.

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *

 

AND READ THE FLESH BETWEEN THE LINES

 

by R. A. Lafferty

 

 

Did you ever suspect that there were things left out of the history books, crucial connections not made and important explanations not given? There may be a reason, and it may be something a lot like R. A. Lafferty’s contention here—whole millennia of history and breeds of men lost to us because we can no longer fit them in. But if they’re real, can they be lost forever? Probably not, certainly not. They’ll find their way back in through the nooks and crannies of history, and between the panels of cartoons.

 

* * * *

 

1

 

A Cave, a Cove, a Hub, a Club,

A crowded, jumbled flame:

The Magic Tree, the Future Shrub,

Nostalgia is its name.

 

—Old scribble on the wall of That Room

by John Penandrew

 

 

THERE HAD been a sort of rumbling going on in that old unused room over the garages at Barnaby Sheen’s place. Nobody paid much attention to it. After all, there were queerer things than a little rumble at Barnaby’s.

 

There were the spooks, there were the experiments, there was the houseboy and bartender who should have been dead for a million years. There were the jokers and geniuses who came there. Who notices a rumble in an unused room? There were rumbles of many sorts going on at Barnaby’s.

 

“The rumble in the old room is menacing and dangerous,” Barnaby told us one evening. “No, really, fellows, it isn’t one of my tricks. I don’t know what it is.”

 

“It sounds like a friendly rumble to me,” Harry O’Donovan said. “I like it.”

 

“I didn’t say that it was malevolent,” Barnaby gruffed with that odd affection which he sometimes put into his voice. “I like it too. We all like it. It likes us. But it is dangerous, very dangerous, without meaning to be. I have been over everything there: I can’t find the source of the rumble or the danger. I ask you four, as a special favor to me, to examine the room carefully. You all know the place since years long gone by.”

 

The four of us, Dr. George Drakos, Harry O’Donovan, Cris Benedetti, who were three smart ones, and me, who wasn’t, went down and examined the old room. But just how thoroughly did we examine it?

 

We examined it, at least, in more ways and times than the present. For that reason it is possible that we neglected it a little bit in its present state. The past times of it were so strong that it may have intended its present state to be neglected, or it may have insisted that its whole duration was compressed in its casual present state.

 

Let’s hear a little bit about this room, then.

 

In the time of Barnaby Sheen’s grandfather, who came out here from Pennsylvania at the very first rumor of oil and who bought an anomalous “mansion,” this was not a room over the garages, but over the stables and carriagehouse.

 

It was a hayloft, that’s what it was; an oatloft, a fodderloft. And a little corner of it had been a harness room with brads and hammers and knives and needles as big as sailmaker’s needles, and cobbler’s bench; and spokeshaves (for forming or trimming singletrees) and neat’s-foot oil and all such. The room, even in its latter decades, had not lost any of its old smells. There would always be the perfume of timothy hay, of sweet clover, of little bluestem grass and of prairie grass, of alfalfa, of Sudan grass, of sorghum cane, of hammered oats and of ground oats, of rock salt, of apples. Yes, there was an old barrel there that would remember its apples for a hundred years. Why had it been there? Do not horses love apples for a treat?

 

There was the smell of shorts and of bran, the smell of old field tobacco (it must have been cured up there in the jungle of rafters), the smell of seventy-five-year-old sparks (and the grindstone that had produced them was there, operable yet), the smell of buffalo robes (they used to use them for lap robes in wagons and buggies). There was a forge there and other farrier’s tools (but they had been brought up from downstairs no more than sixty years ago, so their smell was not really ancient there).

 

Then there were a few tokens of the automobile era, heavily built parts cabinets, tools, old plugs, old oil smell. There were back seats of very old cars to serve as sofas and benches, horns and spotlights and old battery cases, even very old carbide and kerosene headlights. But these were in the minority: there is not so much use for a room over the garages as for a room over the stables.

 

There was another and later odor that was yet very evocative: it could only be called the smell of almost-ape.

 

And then there were our own remnants somewhat before this latter thing. This had been a sort of clubroom for us when we were schoolboys and when we were summer-boys. There were the trunks full of old funny papers. They were from the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the St. Louis Globe, the Kansas City Star, the Chicago Tribune—those were the big-city papers that were hawked in our town, and our own World and Tribune. There were a few New York and Boston and Philadelphia funny papers also. And the funnies of the different papers were not nearly so uniform then as they later became.

 

There were the comparatively more recent comic books. We had been older then, almost too old for such things. Yet there were a few thousand of them, mostly the original property of Cris Benedetti and John Penandrew.

 

There was the taxidermy of George Drakos: stuffed owls, snakes, barn swallows, water puppies, mountain boomers, flying squirrels, even foxes and wildcats. And there were the dissections (also of Drakos) of frogs, of cat brains, of fish, of cow eyes, and many other specimens. The best of these (those still maintaining themselves in good state) were preserved in formaldehyde in Pluto Water bottles. Pluto Water bottles, with their bevel-fitted glass corks and wire-clamp holders, will contain formaldehyde forever: this is a fact all too little known. (Is Pluto Water still in proper history, or has it been relegated out?)

 

There were the lepidoptera (the butterfly and night-moth collections) of Harry O’Donovan, and my own aggregations of rocks and rock fossils. And there were all the homemade radios, gamma-ray machines, electrical gadgets generally, coils, magnet wire, resistors, tubes, of Barnaby Sheen.

 

There were also—hold it, hold it! If everything in that room were listed, there would not be books enough in the world to contain it all (there were even quite a few books there). There would be no limit to the remnants, not even to the remnants of a single day.

 

But we had all of us lived several mutually exclusive boyhoods that hinged on that room. Within the framework of history as now constituted, these variants could not all have happened. But they did.

 

* * * *

 

The room had developed a benevolent rumble that might be dangerous. Barnaby Sheen couldn’t find what it was; and we could not. It was a soundly built room, oak and hickory and black locust wood; it had been there a long time. It was older than the fine house that had replaced the anomalous old “mansion” there. If it was dangerous (and Barnaby said that it was), we could not discover that danger.

 

The world itself had a deeper and more worrisome series of rumbles. We leave the room over the garages now and go to the world. We are sorry to have spent so much time on such a little thing as that room. It is just that it has stuck in our minds somehow.

 

* * * *

 

2

 

Young Austro said “carrock, carrock.”

O’Donovan said “grumble.”

Loretta gave with spirit knock.

The room said “rumble, rumble.”

—Rocky McCrocky (in cartoon balloon)

 

 

We were together for the first time in eighteen months. Barnaby Sheen was back in the country, Cris Benedetti was back in the country, Harry O’Donovan was back in the state, George Drakos was back out of his seclusion. I was there; I hadn’t been anywhere.

 

Really, Barnaby was back for the second time. He’d been home two weeks before this, and that after more than a year’s absence. Then, after he’d unpacked most of his things, he snapped his fingers and said as though dreaming some lively dream, “I forgot something over there. I’ll just go back and see about it. I’ll be back again in a couple of weeks.”

 

But “over there” was halfway around the globe, in Ethiopia, about seventy miles northwest of Magdala on the Guna slopes. Barnaby had mineral concessions there. There also he had found a concentration of most interesting fossils, some of them still living and walking. Barnaby used a cover story of doing seismograph petroleum survey work, but he was into many things.

 

But now he was back for the second time and we were together.

 

Austro had just brought us our drinks, though listlessly. Austro was houseboy and bartender and was of an old and doubted species. But he worked distractedly now, not with his old sharpness. Since he had learned to read he always had some crude sheet or sheaf of gaudy and juvenile literature under his arm or in his hand.

 

“Well, Barney, you went halfway around the world again,” Drakos said. “Did you bring back what you went after?”

 

“Oh, no. It wasn’t a thing such as one can bring or carry. At least I don’t believe that it was.”

 

“But you said that you had forgotten something over there and that you were going to go back and see about it.”

 

“Yes, I said that, but I wasn’t too lucky in seeing about the matter. I couldn’t remember what it was; that’s the trouble. I still can’t quite.”

 

“You went halfway around the world to get something you had left behind? And when you got there you had forgotten what it was? Barney!” This was Harry O’Donovan chiding him.

 

“Not quite right, Harry,” Barnaby said. “I didn’t forget it when I got back there. I went back there because I had already forgotten it: because I had always forgotten it, I guess. I went back there to try to remember it. I consulted with some of Austro’s elder kinsmen (he’s only a boy, you know). I meditated a bit in those mountains. I’m good at that: I should have been a hermit (why, I suppose that I am!) or a prophet. But I remembered only part.”

 

* * * *

 

These were really the men who knew everything? Sometimes it didn’t quite seem like it.

 

* * * *

 

“How does Austro handle things when you are gone?” George Drakos asked. “Being able to speak only one word might be a disadvantage, and beyond that he isn’t very bright. How is he accepted?”

 

“Austro is quite bright, George,” Barnaby told him. “He is accepted within the house, and he doesn’t go out much. Here there are several persons who accept and understand him perfectly, in spite of his seeming to speak only one word.”

 

“Which several persons, Barney?”

 

“Oh, my daughter Loretta. And, ah, Mary Mondo.”

 

“Barney, they don’t count!” Drakos shouted in near anger.

 

“They do with me. They do with Austro. They do with all of you a little.”

 

“Barney, George means, or at least I mean, is Austro accepted as human?” Cris asked.

 

“Oh, well, yes, he’s accepted as of the kindred. It’s hard to put into words. There’s a missing kindred word, you know. Besides mother, father, brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother, son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, uncle, aunt niece, nephew, cousin, female cousin, in-laws, there is yet another. Delineate it, name it: then we may know what Austro is.”

 

“Whatever are you talking about, Barney?” Cris asked, puzzled.

 

“Kinship, apposition, parallelism, the riddle of flesh and of election. Austro was found in Ethiopia, on the Guna slopes, northwest of Magdala. But there is another Magdala, more blessed by its circumstance and location; it is near Tiberias on the shores of the Lake of Galilee. Its first name (the first name of both of them, I suspect) is Migdol, the Watch-Tower. Tell me the kinship between the two cities (there are very many analogs and references to the Two Cities) and then perhaps I can tell you the kinship between Austro and ourselves.”

 

(Austro, the houseboy and bartender, was of the species called Australopithecus, which is either ape or ape-man or man: we don’t really know. He could speak only one word, “carrock,” but he could speak it in a hundred different ways. And he had now learned to read and write very hairy English.)

 

(Loretta Sheen was a life-sized sawdust-filled doll: Barnaby always insisted that this object was the body of his real daughter Loretta. We all knew Barnaby very well from boyhood, but there was a cloud here. We couldn’t remember for sure whether he had ever had a real daughter or not.)

 

(Mary Mondo was a ghost. Actually she was the schizo-personality of the ghost of a girl named Violet Lonsdale who was long dead.)

 

Few households have three such unusual persons.

 

* * * *

 

“I believe that Austro is a qualified col to us,” Harry O’Donovan tried to explain in his rather high voice. “In Irish, col means first a prohibition, a sin, a wickedness; and only after that does it mean a cousin. So first cousin (col ceathar) really means first impediment or first wickedness, and second cousin (col seisear) really means second impediment or second wickedness. But there is (yes, you are right, Barney) another relationship whose very name is forgotten. Perhaps it is col carraig or rock cousin. Whyever did I think of a thing like that? Tis flesh which is the opposite of rock. But this outside thing is at the same time a holy and a forbidden relationship. It is the Flesh Between.”

 

“Has anyone ever sounded the real meaning of Dutch Uncle?” Cris asked. “Frisia (which is Dutch) was the latest home in Europe of some almost-men or early-men.”

 

“In Greek, cousin is exadelphus,” George Drakos contributed as he studied the thing, “the out-brother or outer-brother. But it isn’t an old word. The old word for cousin is unwritten and forgot. And yet there is, or there was, another kindred name (as Barnaby says) that is not father or mother, not son or daughter, not brother, sister, niece or nephew, not uncle or aunt or maternal grandfather. There is another and expunged relationship name, I agree: and it does represent an expunged flesh. But all expunged things leave traces.”

 

“Austro is such a trace,” Barnaby insisted. “He is the flesh between: not entirely expunged, though. Nor let us forget that we also have angelic and diabolic kindred. We’re a big family.”

 

“Ishmael was a more moral and more upstanding man than Isaac,” Cris Benedetti said suddenly. “Why was Isaac more blessed? Why are we more blessed than Austro?”

 

* * * *

 

These were the four men who knew everything? They may have been. Do you know other men who talk like that?

 

* * * *

 

“Carrock, carrock,” said Austro, coming in and refilling Barnaby’s drink: spilling it too, for he was reading an old funny paper (Elmer Tuggle, it was) at the same time, and he wasn’t good at doing two things at once.

 

“Rumble, rumble,” said that old unused room a few yards distant.

 

* * * *

 

3

 

The past it is a big balloon,

I blow it all I can.

We all be ghost and all buffoon,

A close, explosive clan.

—Lines expressed by Mary Mondo

(medium unknown)

 

 

Several evenings later it was, in the same place, and the talk had turned to ancient libraries. I don’t know how it had. I came late.

 

“The present explosion of knowledge is fact,” Barnaby Sheen was saying. “But there is also an occasional (though continuing) explosion of knowledge in another sense. One of the most false of legends is that the two great libraries at Alexandria, with their seven hundred thousand books or rolls, were deliberately destroyed, partly by Aurelian, more completely by Theodosius. That’s all false, I tell you. Those two royal gentlemen would no more destroy valuable books and scrolls than you royal gentlemen here would burn up hundred-dollar bills. They knew what things had money value, and those old book-rolls had it.

 

“The only thing correct about the story is the chronology. Actually the two libraries exploded: the one in the Serapeum in the time of Aurelian; the one in the Museum in the time of Theodosius.”

 

* * * *

 

Give him a while. Barnaby always liked to savor his own startling statements for a few moments after he had made them. Don’t ask him (for the while) what he’s talking about. He’ll clarify it in a few moments.

 

* * * *

 

“Austro really looks more like a big frog than like an ape,” Harry O’Donovan commented as the unusual houseboy ambled (is it more froggish than apish to amble?) into the room. Austro winked at Harry. Austro had learned to wink; he had also learned how to draw cartoons.

 

* * * *

 

“There is the leaky past, but it cannot leak out fast enough for safety.” Barnaby had taken up his tale again. He always came as directly as possible to a point, but the point was often a tricky one. “The staggering corpus of past events is diminished swiftly. More and more of the things that once happened are now made not to have happened. This is absolute necessity, even though the flesh between the lines (it is, I guess, the supposedly expunged flesh) should scream from the agony of the compression.

 

“Velikovsky was derided for writing that six hundred years must be subtracted from Egyptian history and from all ancient history. He shouldn’t have been derided, but he did have it backwards. Indeed, six times six hundred years must be added to history again and again to approach the truth of the matter. It’d be dangerous to do it, though. It’s crammed as tight as it will go now, and there’s tremors all along the fault lines. As a matter of fact, several decades have been left out of quite recent United States history. They should be put back in (for they’re interesting, and we lived through parts of them) if it were safe to do so.”

 

“Just what do you have in mind, Barney?” Cris Benedetti asked him.

 

“I have never discovered any historical event which happened for the first time. Either life imitates anecdote, or very much more has happened than the bursting records are allowed to show as happening. As far back as one can track it, there is history, and I do not mean prehistory. I doubt that there was ever such a time as prehistory. I doubt that there was ever uncivilized man. I also doubt that there was ever any manlike creature who was not full man, however unconventional the suit of hide that he wore.

 

“But when you try to compress a hundred thousand years of history into six thousand years, something has to give. When you try to compress a million years, it becomes dangerous. There comes the revenge of events left out.

 

“Were there eight kings of the name of Henry in England, or were there eighty? Never mind: someday it will be recorded that there was only one, and the attributes of all will be combined in his compressed story.

 

“There is a deep texture of art and literature (no matter whether it is rock scratching or machine pressed) that goes back over horizon after horizon. There is the deeper texture of life itself that is tremendous in its material and mental and psychic treasures. There are dialects now that were once full vernaculars, towns now that were once great cities, provinces that were nations. The foundations and lower stories of a culture or a building are commonly broader than the upper stories. A structure does not balance upside-down, standing on a point.

 

“A torch was once lighted and given to a man, not to a beast. And it has been passed on from hand to hand while the hills melted and rose again. What matter that some of the hands were more hairy than others? It was always a man’s hand.”

 

“It may be that you are balancing upside-down on your pointed head, Barney,” Harry O’Donovan told him.

 

“It may be, but I believe that is not the case. Atrox Fabulinus, the Roman Rabelais, reconstructs some of the omissions and compressions in the form of fables. It is a common belief that a fable is less weighty than history and less likely to break down the great scaffold; it was a fabled straw, though, that broke the camel’s back (a real event). We know from Atrox that there were three Roman Kingdoms, three Roman Republics, and three Roman Empires, each series extending for more than a thousand years. We know that some of the later Roman Emperors (as today presented in history) are each composed of several men who may be a thousand or more years apart. We know that some of the more outré and outrageous of the Emperors (and Kings and Tyrants and Demagogs and Rebels and Tribunes) are no longer to be found in proper history at all. Clio is a skittish muse and very fearful of the breakdowns.

 

“Yet Humerus Maximus and Nothus Nobilis and Anserem-Captator and Capripex Ferox were in reality men of such bursting vigor and feats that history has not been able to contain them. But their suppression shouts at us and shocks us.

 

“And it goes back many times farther, the stone pages that have been crowded (for a while) out of history. It was clear man from the beginning, but at its earliest it was man in an ape suit.”

 

* * * *

 

Austro had a bunch of patio blocks (thin concrete blocks) under his arm. Austro was very strong and he carried two dozen of them easily. He was drawing cartoons on them; no, he was drawing primordial pictures: they are almost, but not quite, the same. He drew with a bone stylus and used an ocher and water mixture for his paint. How had he known to do that? He showed his drawings to the saw-dusty Loretta Sheen and to the unbalanced ghostly Mary Mondo. They laughed gaily at the drawings, and then they laughed with a peculiar pathos.

 

Mary Mondo brought some of the stones to us. We looked and laughed. Then we looked more and laughed less. They were sharp cartoons, striking caricatures. They were something more. Once there was a species to which humor was more important than seriousness. Once there was a species so vivid and vibrant that it had to be forgotten by history (and Austro was a member of it). But, for a moment there, we almost knew what kindred Austro was to us.

 

* * * *

 

“François, the French Rabelais, pulled greater tricks than did Atrox,” Barnaby Sheen was saying. “As you have probably suspected, there are a full thousand years lost out of the Lower Middle Ages. History ran up to the year fourteen hundred and fifty-three once, and then reverted to the year four hundred and fifty-three. It was a much different Year Four Hundred and Fifty-Three than had been the first time, though. The Millennium really has been and gone, you know. It’s forgotten now; it wasn’t what had been expected, but it was what had been promised.

 

“Nobody promised you that it would be a thousand years of peace and prosperity; nobody promised that it would be an era of learning and suavity; and certainly nobody promised that it would be a time of ease and gentility.

 

“It was the Millennium itself, and the Devil was bound for a thousand years. But he surely was not quiet about his binding. He clanked and howled; he shook the whole world and he caused land tides and sea tides. He caused mountains to collapse and people to go fearful or even to die literally petrified. And then the people discovered a cloud-capping and roaring humor in their tearfulness. A giantism appeared, a real awareness, a ridiculousness which has always been the authentic rib-rock of the world.

 

“François Rabelais caught a little of that giantism and jollity. But it is banned from history (that thousand years) though it was more real than most things in history. History is too fragile to contain it. History, and all its annals and decades and centuries, would be shattered forever if these ten centuries were included.”

 

“What happened afterwards, Barney?” Harry O’Donovan asked, “when the Devil was unbound again and we resumed the historical count (wrong by a thousand years, of course, but who minds that?) and things became as they are now? How are they now?”

 

“Oh, the unbound Devil fragmentized (an old trick of his) and spread himself wherever he could. His is a feigned omnipresence, so there is a little of him in everything and every person. He believes (he isn’t really very bright) that he can’t be bound again if he keeps himself scattered. But his shriveling effect is on us all: we are no longer giants.”

 

* * * *

 

“Barnaby, would you like your daughter to be carrying on seriously with an ape-man?” George Drakos asked with the veriest bit of mockery.

 

“There was never an ape-man, George,” Barnaby Sheen said softly. “There was, and there still is, this not-quite series of cousins for whom we miss the name. But it’s a ghostliness, not an apishness, that sets him a little apart from us who are his kindred. And my daughter (whether she lived in flesh or not I no longer know for sure) is now no more than a girl-sized doll full of sawdust and a few words or mottos. And yet she is more than that. If not a true ghostliness, then she has at least a polter-ghostliness about her. So has Mary Mondo.

 

“The children, Austro and Loretta and Mary (none of the three is more than a child or at most an adolescent), are close kindred, closer to each other, perhaps, than to us. It is common, perhaps universal, that children are of a slightly different race (I mean it literally) than they will later become. But it is all right with them.”

 

“When were the several decades left out of United States history, Barnaby?” Cris Benedetti asked him.

 

“Early, and recent, and present, for I rather suspect that our own contingent present will not be firmly inscribed in the records. I’ll give but one example: there is the case of father, son, and grandson from one family, John Adams, John Braintree Adams, and John Quincy Adams being Presidents of the United States. I notice, though, that only two of them are now believed in, or should I say are now written in? The best of the three (wouldn’t you believe it? it’s always the best) has been left out. And part of the foreshortening, I believe, took place during our own boyhoods. There was much more happened there (three times more) than we are allowed to remember. Sometimes it seems that it was a million years and not just a couple of decades left out here.”

 

“You don’t mean this literally,” said Harry O’Donovan. “You talk in parables, do you not?”

 

“Am I Christ that I should talk in parables? No, I talk literally, Harry. These things have happened, or rather, they have been made to seem not to have happened.”

 

“By what possible process could it have been done? It would have required a simultaneous and multitudinous altering of records and of minds.”

 

“By the human process it was done, and I cannot say more about that mysterious process. It isn’t a natural thing, of course, for man isn’t a natural animal. He is supernatural, or he is preternatural or he is unnatural. I’m not sure which class this weird and repeating amnesia (with its mechanical adjuncts) belongs to.”

 

“I suspect that I should professionally recommend you to an alienist, Barney,” said Dr. George Drakos.

 

“I suspect that you should professionally study this problem yourself, George,” Barnaby said somewhat stubbornly. “Even medical men have good ideas sometimes.”

 

* * * *

 

“Did there used to be a funny paper named Rocky McCrocky?” Harry O’Donovan asked the ceiling (he always sat leaning far back in his chair). “It was about, it seems, cave men.”

 

“I don’t remember it,” Cris said. “If there had been one, John Penandrew would know, but we seldom see John in these latter times. There was Alley Oop, of course, and later B.C. And many of the others, Happy Hooligan, Down on the Farm, Her Name Was Maud, Boob McNutt, Toonerville Trolley, were troglodyte or cave-man funny papers in disguise.”

 

“I wonder if the, ah, troglodytes themselves had funny papers?” George Drakos asked.

 

“Certainly,” said Cris. “Has not Austro just been making such funny papers and passing them around? And he is a troglodyte, or a troll, which is the same thing.

 

“And our older rock-uncles (they of the kindred forgotten, of the flesh between) have left such funny papers in thousands of places. Mostly they were scratched on slate-rock or on limestone or on old red sandstone; and they had, it seems to me, the intensity and context almost strong enough to move mountains.”

 

“By the way,” Barnaby Sheen said dreamily, “there was once an explosion or implosion of certain archives or annals at Migdol which in fact did move a mountain. It was quite a strong blast. And we are inclined to forget just what an explosive pun is the word ‘magazine’ in its several senses. For it means a periodical publication, which is to say a Journal or Annals. But it also means a depot in which explosives and ammunition are stored. Every library, I believe, is a magazine in both these senses, and I use the word ‘library’ quite loosely.”

 

“You’ve nibbled at it from every edge, Barnaby,” George Drakos said. “You might as well go ahead and tell us what you mean when you say that the two great libraries at Alexandria exploded, and when you say that the archives or annals at Migdol (the Magdala of the more blessed location, I presume) exploded so violently as to move a mountain.”

 

“Yes, I’ll get with it,” Barnaby said. “Where is that Austro? He’s never here when we want a refill.”

 

“He’s down in that funny room over the garages, the one that rumbles,” Mary Mondo expressed. “He lives there now.”

 

“Can you tell him to come here, Mary?” Barnaby asked.

 

“I just have,” Mary expressed. “He says there’s no great hurry. He says he’ll be along by and by.”

 

“Thank you, Mary,” Barnaby said. “Ah, you slipped one over on me that time.”

 

(Barnaby Sheen ordinarily did not recognize the presence or existence of the schizo-ghost Mary Mondo, but she was handy at communicating at a distance.)

 

* * * *

 

“Gentlemen,” said Barnaby then, “there are very many cases of archives and libraries exploding; cases that seem incredible. Some of them were libraries whose books were tablets of hewn stone, some of baked brick, some of glazed tile, some of flaky clay, some of papyrus rolls or other split reeds made into near-paper, some of parchment or thinned sheepskin, some of vellum or scraped calfskin or kidskin, some of velum or the palate membrane of the common dragon (‘vellum’ and ‘velum’ are sometimes confused by the ignorant; just remember that the latter is fire-resistant), some of paper of the modern sort”

 

“Some of the libraries consist of trunks filled with pulp-paper funny papers and comic books,” the sawdust-filled doll named Loretta conveyed.

 

“These collections,” said Barnaby (not having received the message his daughter had given), “being of such diverse material, would seem to have nothing in common to make them explode. But the annals and decades and centuries that were excised from them did very often force their way back in with great power. Nothing is forgotten forever. The repositories very often did explode.”

 

“How, Barney, how?” Harry O’Donovan challenged.

 

“I believe that it always begins with an earth-rumble, with a cavern-rumble,” Barnaby said.

 

“With a room-rumble,” contributed a sawdust-filled doll, but Barnaby did not attend the message.

 

“Decades and centuries refusing to be suppressed!” said Barnaby.

 

“Poor relations refusing to be suppressed,” said Harry O’Donovan with sudden insight.

 

“A million years refusing to be frozen out,” expressed Mary Mondo. “Say, do you know the real process responsible for the ice ages? Oh, never mind. A thrice-repeated boyhood refusing to be suppressed. A group ghosthood refusing to give itself up. They all build power.”

 

“Fortunately my own library is quite small and quite technical,” Barnaby said. “I carry so much in my head, you see. Were it not so, I could almost feel the rumble of a coming explosion now.”

 

“Oh, brother! Cannot we all?” Dr. Drakos cried in sharp-eared comprehension.

 

* * * *

 

4

 

“Kabloom, kabloom!”

Said McCrocky’s room.

—Motto taken from the rubble and dust

of Loretta Sheen

 

 

It was that old room over the garages that now rumbled fearfully as though to illustrate Barnaby’s words. This was no ordinary rumble. We were all white-faced with fear. Then it exploded Kabloom!!

 

It stunned ears, it paralyzed throats, it singed eyes. It buckled the floor of the study where we were, even though the exploding room was in a building apart. It shook sawdust out of Loretta Sheen. It gave Harry O’Donovan a nosebleed, and it knocked Barnaby Sheen out cold. It is believed that it moved a small mountain over behind us, a small mountain known as Harrow Street Hill.

 

* * * *

 

A little while, a little while, and the dazed Austro came in, singed but laughing. He was a tough one. “Carrock, carrock, we bust the crock,” he said. It was the first complete sentence that he had ever spoken. He winked; he winked crookedly; he would never wink straight again. One of his eyes had been blasted askew. But he had salvaged an armload of blackened patio blocks and he was drawing on them with happy abandon. And what he was drawing was the million-year-long saga of Rocky McCrocky.

 

We remembered now. John Penandrew used to draw Rocky McCrocky when we were boys. But Austro was Rocky McCrocky. No wonder he had always looked familiar.

 

“Cousin, rock-cousin,” said Harry O’Donovan, “you have given me back the lost two thirds of my boyhood. You have intruded a lost million years into a small room. We will never remember it all, but we have remembered part of it that we thought lost forever.”

 

“It could not have happened,” Barnaby muttered, still out, still overpowered. “That room was not library, that room was not annals.”

 

It was, though.

 

Somewhere there is the true full story about man and his kindred (Austro winked crookedly; Loretta dribbled sawdust and a profound written motto fell from her open throat), about their origins and destinations (Mary Mondo, that schizo-ghost, laughed in that way they have: she had remembered it all the time), about who and what they are.

 

How is it that this story has become so forgotten?

 

* * * *

 

Well, you see, it has a tendency to explode when—

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *

 

MY SWEET LADY JO

 

by Howard Waldrop

 

 

In the nineteenth century, when H. G. Wells and a few other pioneers were first exploring ideas like time travel and immortality and invasions from other worlds, the term “science fiction” hadn’t yet been coined. The usual designation for such stories was “A Scientific Romance,” the latter word referring not to love but to the literary style known as Romanticism (the influence of Rousseau in The Time Machine, for instance). Today we seldom hear of “scientific romance”—but Howard Waldrop’s short tale here might fit that term in all interpretations.

 

* * * *

 

HIS NAME, according to the birth certificate, was Edward Smith. He was left at the hospital by “Mrs. Smith” when she left for parts unknown. He was raised in the Sylacauga Home on 12th Street in Birmingham, Alabama.

 

The child was precocious, else he wouldn’t have been noticed. Psychologists were led to believe that his mother and father were both of genius level. He hadn’t gotten his brains behind a truck-stop café. What led “Mrs. Smith” to leave a newborn child alone in the maternity ward of a great metropolitan hospital was unknown.

 

Suffice it to say that by the age of twenty-seven, Edward NMI Smith was appointed director of public information of the Space Science Services Administration. The youngest, and brightest, man ever placed so high within the government. At the time, he was unhappily married, the father of one child; a very lonely man.

 

The year he took the directorate, the first men came back from the stars. They had gone to Alpha Centauri twenty-six years before, accelerating to near-light speeds for the middle third of their journey. They got there in twelve years. Sixteen years after the first ships left, a message dropped out of the clear sky one night.

 

Seven of the original nine ships made the trip. For the duration, the crews remained awake like any other spacecraft crew. They guided the great craft through the darkness, monitoring those colonists they carried frozen in hopes of finding a new world orbiting the nearest star.

 

Alpha Centauri IV, named Nova Terra (of course), had been found in short order. Less gravity, more sunlight, less oxygen, more nitrogen. A good world.

 

The message came from the new transmitter on Nova Terra. The radio station had been broadcasting four years when its first message reached the Earth, and it would be another four before they knew whether Earth had received it. The distances immense, the blackness deep, the stars bright.

 

Meanwhile, two and a half years after the settlement of Nova Terra, an expedition headed back. Due to the time lag between broadcast and reception, the message of their departure from Nova Terra was received eighteen and a half years after the ships left Earth.

 

Someone quickly figured that the ships had been on their way back four years already, and would arrive in another eight.

 

The message said, “Two ships to return to Earth. Methods developed here allow crews to sleep in shifts. Some colonists returning. See you in twelve years.”

 

Eight years later the ships coasted into solar orbit a few hundred miles above the Earth. At night, they were brighter than Venus, brighter than the space stations wheeling near them; two new stars on the zenith.

 

Ed Smith, the new director of information of the Space Science Services Administration, and his team were on Station No. 3 to meet the first men and women to return from the stars.

 

* * * *

 

“Mom Church! Any time now,” said Newton Thornton, looking at the clock on the wall.

 

“Easy, Newton,” I said. “This is the Station’s moment of glory. First they’ve had since the starships left almost three decades ago. You can’t blame them for taking a little longer in decompression than they have to.”

 

“I know that, Mr. Smith,” he said, “but damn, they’re sure taking their time.”

 

“Well, well have them long enough,” I said.

 

The doors opened and out they came, the station’s director striding before them like head lion of the pride.

 

His glad hand came out almost automatically. “Mr. Smith, the head of Space Services information, ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Smith, the crew and colonists from Nova Terra.”

 

I made an impatient little bow. Several of the crewmen returned the bow, stiffly, formally. Two of the women curtsied.

 

We all broke into smiles.

 

* * * *

 

Commander Gunderson was breathing smoke from the cigar as if it were air. “You’d be surprised to know,” he said, “that tobacco will not grow well on the areas of Nova Terra we settled. Most of the soil is too acid. Of course, that was . . . what? twelve years ago. Place may have more tobacco than North Carolina by now.” He breathed more of the cigar smoke.

 

“I hope so,” said Newton. “Carolina doesn’t have any.”

 

“What?”

 

“Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, lost more than three quarters of their crops eleven years ago. New fungal disease. Spread quickly. Spores in the ground so thick the land still can’t be used for years. What tobacco is raised is now done in Arizona, New Mexico and parts of the California plains . . . still partly desert land when you left,” said Newton.

 

“I’ll be damned,” said Gunderson. Weariness crossed his face. “It’ll take a while to get used to things . . . you know.” He stared at the burning ash of his cigar. “I went out as a colonist. Twenty-six years ago. That’s a long time. Decided that, even with my Services training, it’d be better for me to go out asleep. Just in case they ever wanted to come back, and the crews didn’t want to make another twelve-year trip.” He rubbed his graying hair.

 

“The crewmen who went out . . . they aged. I didn’t. I thought I’d be like them on this trip back. That was before we developed the rapid cryogenics that allowed the crew to sleep in shifts. I’ve only been up seven months, since we left Nova Terra.

 

“I knew there’d be people who’d want to come back. It’s not adventure out there, you know. It’s hard work.”

 

He put out the stub of the cigar very carefully.

 

“Hell, I’ve only aged three years and seven months since I left Earth twenty-six years ago. Course, I was old when I left”

 

Thornton laughed.

 

Commander Gunderson became serious. “There are some people who only aged three years,” he said. “Some of the colonists went out asleep. They’ve come back asleep. They were only up three years. They didn’t like what they found there any more than they liked what they left.”

 

He sighed and leaned back in his chair.

 

“I guess that’s why I went out asleep, rather than as a crew member. I knew there’d be people like that who’d need to get back more than they needed to leave. I guess that’s why.”

 

After he left, Newton Thornton looked at me. “How are they ever going to make it?” he asked.

 

“Like everybody else does,” I said, remembering. “They just get along, one way or another.”

 

* * * *

 

The debriefings lagged. The reports occupied a small room. Birth and deaths, arability, mineral deficiencies; all the things that tell you what a planet is so you can decide how to make it what you want it to be. We still had twelve returning colonists to interview, and Captain Welkins. Welkins had gone out as a crewman and had come back as one. Remaining awake the whole time. The psychologists were questioning him first. We would talk to him later. The colonists and crewmen were anxious to get down to the planet that they had left twenty-six years before. We were going as fast as we could and still get all the information we needed. And we were as tired as they were. We could all use a rest.

 

* * * *

 

Sometime that second week I called my wife and boy.

 

Me: Hello, Angie.

 

AN: Is that you? Ed?

 

Me: Yes. How’re you? How’s Billy?

 

AN: Oh. We’re fine. Just fine.

 

Me: Tell him I don’t know when I’ll be back. But it shouldn’t be too long. A

week at most

 

AN: He misses you. He asks about you all the time.

 

Me: Well, I miss both of you, I guess.

 

AN: You guess?

 

Me: Hell, you know what I mean.

 

AN: Well, I guess I hope you get home soon.

 

Me: Dammit, Angie. It’s just that I need a rest. I’m beat. I’ve got a lot of work

here.

 

AN: Then maybe you can take Billy to the mountains in a couple of weeks.

 

Me: I don’t want to take Billy anywhere. I just want to rest.

 

AN: Pardon me.

 

Me: Look, Angie. Just tell Billy I’ll see him soon.

 

AN: What about me? Me: What about you?

 

AN: Can’t you even try to be nice sometime?

 

Me: I quit a long time ago. I’ll see you soon.

 

AN: Are you sure it won’t cut into your valuable time?

 

I hung up. Damn. Damn.

 

* * * *

 

Her name was Jo Ellen Singletary. She was one of the people Commander Gunderson had spoken about. She was very pretty. Sometimes, as she talked, small lines formed around her mouth. Tiny lines. She looked twenty, maybe twenty-five.

 

I had her partial records out. I never looked at anybody’s until I had to write up the finished reports. I worked from the bio Newton wrote on each person. I still hadn’t interviewed Welkins. The psychologists were holding us up.

 

“You’re one of the special cases,” I said.

 

“Special? Oh. You mean turnaround.”

 

“Yes. Turnaround.”

 

“I suppose I am, then. Special,” she said.

 

“What made you decide to come back?” I asked.

 

“I ... I didn’t especially like it out there.” She shifted her weight in the chair. Newton had gone to get us some sandwiches. She looked around the room. “So I came back. I want to start over again, here. On Earth.”

 

“You realize that things have changed in the twenty-six years you’ve been gone,” I said.

 

For an answer, her eyes started to water up. I didn’t like women crying. I started to get up out of my chair, then decided against it. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” I said. “I only meant it as a question.”

 

“No. No, you didn’t.” Her face tensed. “You meant it won’t be any easier living here now than it was when I left. Didn’t you?”

 

I looked down at the papers on my desk. “No. It’s been a busy week. I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. There is no excuse.”

 

“I know you’ve been busy,” she said, still staring at me. She started to cry again. “There’s no excuse for me crying, either.”

 

She really began crying now.

 

I put my pen down, walked around the desk, then stood like a dummy beside her while she cried. Her hair smelled musky. She wore a new perfume which she must have bought at the station. Angie had some of the same at home.

 

It was then I realized what she faced. She returned to Earth, aged only three years more than when she left. She came back to an entirely different world. What she must have seen outside the station windows was not the familiar Earth, but another blue planet where they happened to speak the same language. Culture shock waited with trapjaw mouth. Technological shock lurked behind every street corner, in every new sound. And she had not touched down yet.

 

I put my hand on the back of her head. I patted it. “I can get one of the doctors to get you something,” I said.

 

She shook her head no.

 

She leaned toward my hand. “I’m so afraid,” she said.

 

“I know. I know,” I said.

 

I lied.

 

* * * *

 

You never mean for it to happen.

 

It just does, like marriages turning bad, and it is such an easy thing that you do not notice it for days, or hours, until you see what has happened. And then there is nothing you can do, because it has you by the guts and heart.

 

There are no bells ringing, no birds singing. I know that I shouldn’t have helped her as much as I did the next few days. But I know too that it couldn’t have happened to me with anyone else, anywhere.

 

The interviews were finished, even with Welkins. Welkins we would keep in touch with. Some of the crew and all the returned colonists wanted to leave the Space Services. That was a legal tangle decided by the courts. If a man had been in the service thirty years, he got his retirement pay, plus the hazardous duty pay accruing, even though he had been in deep cryogenic sleep twelve or more of those thirty years.

 

I could leave those problems to lawyers. There were the usual jokes about sleeping on duty, and getting promoted in your sleep, and all those other things I could do without.

 

It wasn’t just the last two and a half weeks that made me tired. I was really tired. Tired of work. Tired of living at the very sharp edge I had for the last five years, pushing myself. I was as far as I wanted to go in the Service. They could try to promote me to some admin slot in the labs, but I didn’t want it. My life had been writing, working with words. I didn’t want a job where the only words I’d use would be in the Annual Report to the Nation. I didn’t want out; I just didn’t want up.

 

Jo Ellen, the tiredness, the loneliness, the work; all got to me at the same time.

 

I couldn’t just let her go away, get lost in the masses, with only a letter every three weeks or so.

 

* * * *

 

She had been to Accounting to get her separation pay. With that last payroll signature, our relationship was no longer official. The sun was bright in the blue morning sky above the Space Services building. No rockets shining in the sun. No aircraft whizzing overhead. All the launchings took place Out There, except for the shuttle runs from Florida.

 

She was dressed in a new pantsuit set. She was beautiful, her bronze hair shining in the light Heat waves had begun to shimmer off the concrete of the mall.

 

“Well,” she said.

 

“Yeah. This is where it all ends,” I said.

 

She looked at me. I looked at her. Visions of doom and stardust

 

“I don’t guess it is,” she whispered. In front of God and everybody.

 

Hand in hand, across the mall.

 

* * * *

 

The PACV we’d rented sluffed to a stop as I killed the engines.

 

The stars, one of them the same star she’d been to and returned from, glowed overhead.

 

Angie and Billy and thoughts of Angie and Billy a thousand miles away. Frogs from Florida in the background. A girl from the stars at my elbow. Beer from Milwaukee in the cooler. Hell of a note.

 

We listened to the frogs.

 

“There aren’t any,” she said.

 

“What?”

 

“Frogs.”

 

“What?”

 

“There aren’t any frogs there. On Nova Terra. No frogs.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Later, after a silence: “What will your wife say? You have children, don’t you?”

 

“One,” I said. “A boy. Five. Name is-”

 

“I don’t want to know,” she said. “I don’t.”

 

“All right. Don’t worry.”

 

“I am. You are.”

 

“Jesus,” I said. “Jesus.”

 

She kissed me. “Am I worth it? I can’t be.”

 

“Yes,” I said.

 

* * * *

 

A neighbor lady called the hotel five days later. She was upset. Angie had found out all about it and was crying all the time. The neighbor lady said the least I could do was have the decency to call. The photostats of the colonists’ records had arrived at the house. The least I could do was tell what I wanted done with them. And so on and so on and so on.

 

I told her to tell Angie I’d be there tomorrow.

 

* * * *

 

Jo Ellen packed for me next morning. She was crying, and trying not to.

 

I hadn’t told her. I woke up and watched her finish putting the last of my clothes into the suitcase.

 

“There’s a bath run. Your suit is hanging by the tub. I’ve got a flight for you at eleven forty. You’ll have to hurry just a little bit.”

 

How did you find out? I asked.

 

I can tell. This isn’t a new thing with me. It’s one of the reasons I left in the first place. It wasn’t any better out there.

 

I’ll be back in a few days.

 

I know, she said, crying.

 

I shaved, bathed and shined. When I came out of the bathroom, she was gone. Leaving no note.

 

The weather calm, the flight uneventful.

 

* * * *

 

“You didn’t bring Jo Ellen?” she asked when I came in the door.

 

I got a case of the ass that lasted till I left. There was no compromise, no hope, no use arguing or pleading. She had taken Billy to her mother’s. She already had a lawyer. She didn’t want anything but out and Billy. I told her she could have it all. To leave the records where they were. I’d have the Agency come and get them. And goodbye.

 

Bad moods. Hate. All that

 

* * * *

 

There are only so many places you can run when your world has changed completely. I found her at one of them.

 

I came up very quietly and sat down beside where she sunbathed. It was a few minutes before she turned her head to where I sat.

 

“Hi,” I said.

 

She jumped, then lay her head back down on the sand. “I didn’t think you’d come back, Ed. The last one didn’t”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I did.”

 

She continued to stare at the sand awhile.

 

I doodled in the glistening beach. “Tell me,” I said. “What’s it like out there?”

 

She laughed and cried and pulled me to her.

 

The waves moved and susurrated against the shore. The tide was coming in.

 

* * * *

 

We first noticed the private detective about three days later. He was a fat little man who went to two of the same places we did. Jo Ellen saw him first

 

What with the resurgence of Mom Church, there are some new archaic laws on the books. Some require you to be gone for six months and a day before desertion is declared. Or you have to sign mental cruelty affidavits that make you look like a real sonofabitch. There’s still one way for a divorce to be granted in a few weeks.

 

* * * *

 

I tried to kill the bastard before he and his buddy popped the flashbulb that night. There were still people who made their livings getting divorce evidence. I don’t know what’ll happen when man gets enlightened enough to dissolve a marriage when two people don’t get along any more.

 

The lamp I threw bounced off the doorsill beside the photographer. The big one, the muscle, stepped toward me as I climbed out of bed. I kicked at him hard as I could. He grabbed my foot and dumped me on my ass. My head smacked the bed. Pain shot through me. I lay there with my head buzzing.

 

“You get up again, I’ll hurt you,” the big one said. The little fat one popped another snapshot, waved the big one out the door.

 

Jo Ellen was crying as she helped me up. The fat one left. I was crying too. At least it would be over, soon.

 

After I got my head cleared, I began writing my resignation.

 

* * * *

 

We thought it would be over. Angie wouldn’t let go, though. She called me that night. She wanted to see me. She wanted us to have one more go at it. Think of Billy.

 

“After your hoods did what they did?”

 

“I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t know they’d do it that way. You know I had to have those pictures.”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Honey, come back to me. I’ll forget. I’ll forget if you will. I’ll tear up the pictures. We’ll pretend this never happened. Please, honey, please.”

 

“Give your pictures to the judge. And to the papers if you want. I’m quitting the Service. There’ll be a scandal anyway; might as well be a big one. Do it up right”

 

“I don’t want to hurt you, honey. I’d. . .I don’t want to.”

 

“You’re a bitch, Angie.”

 

“Don’t say that. Don’t.”

 

“Get out of my life.” I slammed down the receiver.

 

* * * *

 

The morning before I turned in my resignation. We lay in bed.

 

I looked at Jo Ellen’s stomach. Tiny stretch marks ran in a fine net up her abdomen. Funny the things you don’t notice for a long time.

 

She wasn’t married. I looked at the marks. I didn’t say anything.

 

She rubbed her hands through my hair. “What are we going to do?” she asked. “They’ll follow us anywhere we go.”

 

“Not anywhere.” In that instant, I made up my mind.

 

“Where?”

 

“Out there,” I said.

 

“Oh. Ed, no. I couldn’t do it. I don’t think I could. Not again.”

 

“There’s nothing to it, you said. Just going to sleep and waking up somewhere else.”

 

“No. Not that. What if something happens? What if one of us . . . doesn’t . . . doesn’t wake up? Or either of us? Or the ship doesn’t make it? Two of ours didn’t,” she said.

 

“We can’t stay here. I don’t want to. Too many memories, all bad. Except you.” I kissed her wet eyelids.

 

“When?” she asked.

 

“Next month. The twelve ships. We could forget it all, all of it. Your troubles, my troubles.”

 

“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

 

* * * *

 

space official quits

wife of space director seeks divorce

love story from the stars

 

It was very quiet in the Cryogenics section. The papers had lost us; we were safe until after the ships left. I still had some friends in the Service.

 

Preparation Room No. 3. White-smocked technicians left us alone.

 

“You’ll be all right,” I said. “You’ve done it twice before. You’ll go right under. Me, they’ll have to chain me in.”

 

“No,” said my sweet lady Jo. “You’ll go right under too. Next thing you know, we’ll be on a new planet, starting over.”

 

She was crying. She was beautiful. She was mine.

 

“Go ahead. I love you. I’ll see you later,” I said. I kissed her. I had given her a rose, and she held it like a butterfly and cried on it.

 

“I love you,” she said. She kissed me. A technician took her away. She was light and air and I loved her.

 

I waited for the needle.

 

Someone was in the room. I looked.

 

A month had changed Angie. She looked twice as old. Her face was drawn, her eyes red. She had a wild look on her face, an animal hid beneath the skin, waiting to pounce out. I was afraid.

 

There was no one else with her.

 

“You didn’t bring the newsmen?” I asked. “Can’t let go, can you? Are you going to watch, make sure I’m going through with this?”

 

“No,” she said. “I wanted you to read this. I just got it from the detectives. I just wanted you to know what you’re doing. I couldn’t let you go through with it.”

 

“You think you can stop us?”

 

“No. Not me. You’ll stop yourself.”

 

She turned and was gone. I couldn’t believe it. No pleas, no threats. I tore open the envelope.

 

The top page was a message from the head of the detective agency. The following information, etc., etc. There were tearstains on the page.

 

The second page was Jo Ellen’s records, one of the copies which had been at the house. I read it. Then I turned the page.

 

* * * *

 

Angie, you couldn’t let go, could you?

 

Can you forgive me, Jo Ellen? I love you so much.

 

Angie couldn’t let go. Had to pry. Had to. Down the long trail reaching back twenty-seven years.

 

Angie’s life. My life. Your life.

 

Cool cool the needle going into the vein. Hot the drug. Quick the rush of sleep.

 

Angie didn’t think I could still go through with it.

 

Heavy my eyelids, dark the night in my brain. Sleep, like a stone.

 

Jo Ellen, I love you, no matter what. Years will go by in quick darkness. There’ll be a green planet there, maybe.

 

A cool green planet. The perfect place for a boy to take his mother on their honeymoon.

 

Hopefully, not another Earth.

 

Because Earth really messes some people up.

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *

 

STUNGUN SLIM

 

by Ron Goulart

 

 

Ron Goulart has discovered a frequently overlooked fact about stories of the future, other planets, strange creatures: they offer virtually unlimited opportunities for satire on today, this planet, us. In “Stungun Slim” he considers how far out our present merchandising tendencies could get, and has a few observations about machines that nag people. (You think it’s humiliating to be nagged by your car to fasten your seat belt? Ah, but that’s the nature of machines, and as they get more sophisticated . . .)

 

* * * *

 

THERE WAS Jelly Roll Morton sprawled down on the lawn, flat on his back under his piano.

 

Exhaling through his nose, Josh Birely set the air cruiser for landing and let it carry him down gently through the twilight.

 

They’d already loaded the clarinet player, whatever his name was, and Kid Ory and all the drummer’s drums into the big see-through landvan.

 

Josh’s willowy blond wife was standing at the edge of the landing deck, clutching a trombone sadly to her. “Do you have three hundred dollars?” she asked when he hopped out of the cruiser.

 

Josh gave a snort. “Gee, Glendora. What kind of greeting is that? You don’t even ask how the execution went.”

 

Glendora rubbed at her left eye. Kid Ory’s trombone extended to its full length and hit her lovely right foot. “I’m sorry, Josh. How was the execution?”

 

“Disgusting,” he said. He glanced over at their house as two lizard men in the familiar Territorial Credit Detective Agency uniform came out carrying the drummer android.

 

“You ought to really think about quitting,” suggested Glendora. “I need the three hundred dollars to—”

 

“Didn’t you watch the execution on TV?”

 

“We don’t have television at the moment, Josh. I called you about that this morning, but you were in conference with the advertising department, your android secretary said.”

 

“She’s not an android, I keep telling you.” Josh started to walk along the ramp leading to the house. “Ella just happens to have an aluminum head. What happened to the TV?”

 

“Inspector Custer will explain the details,” said the willowy Glendora. “Basically it’s because we neglected a few payments, I think. The Territorial Credit Detective Agency took it away this morning.”

 

“The whole TV wall?”

 

“The living room and dining room are all one now,” said Glendora. “I think you’ll like the illusion of space.”

 

“Gee, Glendora,” he said. “I’m earning nearly fifty thousand dollars a year as merchandising director with the Trombeta Territory Penal System. A job I have some moral doubts about, as you know. Where does the money all go?”

 

“The cost of living index went up 0.07 percent last month.”

 

“Gee, Glendora.”

 

On the threshold of their house a smiling cyborg appeared. “Hiya, Josh. I thought you were going to keep up the payments on the Jazz Archives Entertainment Unit. Since Glendora is so fond of it”

 

“On the what?”

 

“On Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers,” said Inspector Custer of the Territorial Credit Detective Agency. Custer turned his half-metal head to call into the house, “We’re still missing the diamond out of Jelly Roll’s front tooth, boys. Keep hunting around.”

 

“Oh,” said Glendora. “I think I gave the diamond to the goat milk people to settle our last bill.”

 

Custer smiled with his iron teeth. He pushed a button on his left hand, which was made of copper, and a folding of fax paper whirred out of the wrist slot. “I think I gave you this already, Glendora, but it won’t hurt to give you another copy. Tells you how to balance your budget I didn’t write it myself, though I’m a pretty good buddy of the computer who did. Really, anybody should be able to live within their means.”

 

“Excuse me, Inspector,” said one of the lizard movers. “We can’t locate one set of drumsticks and one trombone.”

 

“Here’s the trombone,” said Glendora.

 

“We’ll forget about the sticks,” said Custer. “TCDA is capable of a magnanimous gesture now and again.”

 

“I’d like to go in and take a shower,” said Josh. “If we still have a bathroom.”

 

Custer’s right elbow clicked and a streamer of yellow paper came out. After consulting it, he said, “You kids are only thirty days behind on that solid-state compact health spa bathroom. So I won’t be coming after it for . . . oh, say, another month or two. Maybe by then you’ll get some coherence into your financial picture.”

 

“I saw an ad in the last Sears catalog for a robot clerk,” said Glendora as she handed the trombone around to the lizard man, “who’s supposed to be very good at managing household funds. He’s about this high with a little green eyeshade and only costs fifteen hundred dollars.”

 

“Gee, Glendora.”

 

Custer said, “With all the retrievals today, Josh, I missed the public execution. It’ll be rerun, won’t it?”

 

“At eight and ten tonight” said Josh. “And we sold an edited-down version to the Tarragon Kids’ Network, so it’ll be on all the schoolcasts across the planet tomorrow at ten a.m.”

 

Snapping his copper fingers, Custer said, “Doggone. My oldest boy won’t be in school tomorrow. We have to take him into the capital to get his first tin ear. He’s a great fan of Ma Boskins.”

 

“Oh, so?” said Josh.

 

“I suppose she was one of the great mass poisoners of the decade,” said the inspector.

 

“One of the great mass poisoners of the century,” corrected Josh automatically.

 

“Both the boys have to have Ma Boskins Mass Poisoner Games and the littlest girl screamed for a Ma Boskins victim doll with three changes of costume,” said the still-smiling cyborg. “Of course my oldest girl prefers Stungun Slim. At that age they seem to go for the mad-dog killer type. When have you got him scheduled for?”

 

“The execution date isn’t firm yet,” said Josh. “It’ll probably be the middle of next month.”

 

Custer nodded. “You know, Josh, a young fellow like yourself with a topflight mind and an enviable position shouldn’t be in hock all the time. Maybe after you read that little budget booklet you’ll be able to get yourself unscrewed.”

 

“Yeah, maybe.” Josh pushed around the partially metal inspector and went into the house. It did look more spacious with Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers and one wall gone.

 

* * * *

 

Slightly hunched, Josh sat in his den talking to their computer. “For a nine-thousand-dollar portable table-top computer,” he told the little silver machine, “you’re not much help.”

 

“What did I tell you before, ninny? You should have bought the four-thousand-dollar home computer J.C. Penney makes. It’s plenty good enough for your needs.”

 

“Yes, but Glendora thought . . .”

 

“Ah,” said the machine on Josh’s floating desk.

 

“Okay, okay. I know she’s a little extravagant, but—”

 

“I’ll say she is. Twelve thousand dollars for Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers in musical simulacra form from Sloane’s Barnum System Android Store,” remarked the little computer. “Twelve thousand dollars for a half-dozen mechanical jigaboos.”

 

“I don’t know why they programmed you to be a bigot.”

 

“Just one of the many extras in the nine-thousand-dollar model. Twelve thousand dollars for Jelly Roll Morton. That’s where the money goes.”

 

“Yeah, but originally she wanted the Benny Goodman big band,” Josh reminded the computer.

 

“You should have talked her into the Benny Goodman quartet,” said the machine. “I’ve always thought those Lionel Hampton andies were sort of fun, and they know their place.”

 

“Look, the problem now is . . . how far in the hole are we?” said Josh. “I’ve stuck with a job I really have strong qualms about for almost a year mainly because of the relatively good salary. I mean, on an income of nearly fifty thousand dollars-a year I think we—”

 

“Have you heard about the quint?”

 

Josh slouched a little more in his servochair and watched the ceiling of the den for a moment. “The what?”

 

“She just ordered a quint from Abercrombie and Fitch,” the computer told him. “Price tag: four thousand dollars.”

 

“More sports equipment?”

 

“Chump, a quint is a small furry animal native to the planet Murdstone. It is supposed to be quite intelligent and be able to speak a little. Quite a fad object in the upper-middle-class circles here on Tarragon.”

 

“Fifty thousand dollars a year doesn’t put you in the upper middle class.”

 

“So tell your wife.”

 

“Of course,” said Josh, watching the silver machine again, “Glendora’s here alone all day while I’m at the prison. Maybe a pet would be good for her.”

 

“Four thousand dollars good?”

 

“That is a little steep.”

 

“If you maybe had a couple of kids, chump, it might—”

 

“You know that’s impossible. You saw the three-thousand-dollar bill for having that five-year birth control device implanted in Glendora.”

 

“Macy’s had one for thirteen hundred dollars.”

 

“My wife isn’t going around with a Macy’s five-year birth control device implanted in her.”

 

The pixphone beeped. Josh waited to see if Glendora was going to pick it up in the bedroom. She didn’t, and he answered on the seventh beep. “Hello.”

 

“Still up, huh? You look frazzled.”

 

“Here goes another couple of thou,” said the computer when it recognized Josh’s father.

 

“Are you and Glendora having one of your wild parties, Joshua?” asked his small weatherbeaten father.

 

“No, I’m alone in my den working on the budget, Dad.”

 

“Well, get rid of the computer. I have something confidential to say.”

 

“No more money, Dad. I can’t loan you any more money.”

 

His father sighed, wrinkles rippling his sixty-two-year-old face. “I don’t want to borrow anything, Joshua. I want to help you and Glendora get out of the financial hole you’re in.”

 

“The last time he said that, we sunk three thousand dollars in his fried chicken teleporting business,” the computer reminded Josh.

 

“I don’t want to come in on any more deals, Dad.”

 

“I know your computer is badmouthing me, Son. Turn it off for a moment and listen to me. I’m your father, not some flimflam artist.”

 

“Ha!” said the computer.

 

“Dad, I’ll talk to you some other time. I’m working on our budget.”

 

“Wouldn’t one hundred thousand dollars help you come out even?” his crinkled little father asked.

 

“One hundred thousand dollars?” Josh turned off the computer. “Gee, Dad, how can we make that kind of money?”

 

His father’s eyes narrowed. “You’re alone, huh?”

 

“Yeah, sure.”

 

Leaning forward on the pixscreen, his father said, “We could make as much as one million dollars on this, Joshua.”

 

“A million?”

 

“The only hitch is, I know I brought you up to be so damn honest.”

 

“You didn’t bring me up to be honest. I’m honest as a reaction to you, to the way you’re always—”

 

“We’ll agree I sail closer to the wind than you, to save time. Now, you and Glendora are still up to your ears in debt. Right? She still spends money like a—”

 

“Gee, Dad,” cut in Josh. “You don’t understand the situation. Glendora is a very bright, intelligent girl. Intelligent people are often sensitive. So that coming out here to Tarragon a year ago, and taking what is in many ways a disgusting job, it all puts a lot of pressure on Glendora. Because actually she had her heart set on going to Earth in the Solar System and us settling on an organic carrot farm near Cleveland, Ohio. Since we were already in debt on Barnum, though, we had—”

 

“I understand, Joshua. I hung around with a cyborg hooker on Barafunda who was the same way,” said his little father. “That was when I was in the lifelike orange business.”

 

“Some bimbo on Barafunda isn’t Glendora.”

 

After a second of silence, his father said, “When I said it was one hundred thousand dollars, Joshua, that was because I don’t yet know how many ways we’ll have to split the million. That’s a minimum estimate, in other words. You’re going to make at least one hundred thousand dollars.”

 

“But I have to do something dishonest.”

 

“Is what you’re doing now all that honest, Son, being a handmaiden to the public executioner?”

 

“Okay, I have some qualms about handling the merchandising on executed killers,” admitted Josh. “Here on Tarragon people think nothing of watching the executions on TV and buying souvenirs and novelties. Whatever it may be, it’s legal.”

 

“Joshua, of all the parts in this scheme, yours is the least dishonest.”

 

“What scheme?”

 

“You know I’ve always been a true crime buff.”

 

“You’ve always been a crook, is what you mean.”

 

“You’re frazzled and worn down by domestic and money worries, so I’ll ignore the more direct insults, Joshua,” said his father. “The thing I’m getting at is that one of the safest crimes in the whole Barnum System, according to all the latest statistics, is highjacking. There’s little risk, very little violence and the odds against ever getting caught are—”

 

“Wait, now, Dad. You’re asking me to come in on some kind of highjacking operation with you?”

 

“I’m offering you a big hunk of a million dollars.”

 

Josh looked from the phone screen to the silent computer. “What do you plan to highjack?”

 

“Stungun Slim,” said his father.

 

Josh hung up on him.

 

* * * *

 

Far below they were painting the bleachers which surrounded the scaffold. Josh turned away from the see-through wall of his office. This put him facing a chubby bushy-haired cat man named Floyd Inch, Jr. “We have to have ten thousand dollars, Floyd,” he said.

 

Inch had a lapful of rough drawings, each protected with a plyo overlay. “Ten big ones? We licensed Ma Boskins for InchEmpire, Unlimited, for only five big ones, Josh.”

 

“The Territorial Penal System feels Stungun Slim is a much more exploitable property.” Josh doodled the figure ten thousand dollars on the desk top with his thumbnail. “He ran amok in the ghettos of the territory for nearly two whole years before the police ran him to ground, striking terror into the hearts of all law-abiding . . . well, you know the story.” Josh returned to watching the public execution yard. The morning sun made the screws in the scaffold trap flare.

 

The large fluffy cat man scratched at his whiskers. He propped one of the drawings up on his knee. “I think these’ll go real well,” he said, lifting the protective flap. “We’ve got to get into production today, though. Otherwise we won’t have them ready to hawk on the day of the execution.”

 

“What are they?”

 

“Salt and pepper shakers. Stungun Slim and his lovely blond victim,” explained the novelty-house president. “He’s pepper and the poor unfortunate harlot is salt.”

 

Josh’s desk phone beeped. “Excuse me, Floyd. Hello?”

 

Two tiny eyes appeared on the screen, surrounded by shaggy blue fur. “Hello, hello, hello,” said a small falsetto voice.

 

“Gee, Glendora, will you stop letting that stupid damn quint play with the phone?”

 

“He’s far from stupid, Josh. He punched your number and said hello very nicely.”

 

“Hello, hello, hello,” said the quint.

 

“Four thousand dollars for a hairy blue thing who knows how to use the phone.”

 

“No, no, no,” complained the quint as Glendora pried him away from the phone.

 

“Josh?” said his lovely willowy wife.

 

“What?”

 

“Inspector Custer is coming over.”

 

Josh leaned down close to the phone to ask, “Gee, Glendora, what’s wrong now?”

 

“It’s something about the guest houses,” said his wife. “Galactic Esso didn’t really explain about the additional teleport charges, and now the inspector says if we don’t pay an extra one thousand dollars he’ll have to cart them away.”

 

“Which guest houses? The inflatable ones?”

 

“No, I returned those to Neiman-Marcus because they kept springing leaks. These are the folding ones, and if we’re going to have that party after the Stungun Slim execution, we’ll need guest houses for your friends, since they’re always collapsing and having to spend the-”

 

“Maybe we won’t have the party, Glendora. Frankly all these executions are starting to—”

 

“Whether we have the party or not, we can always use an extra guest house or two.”

 

“Hello, hello, hello, hello.” The quint blocked out the view of Glendora.

 

“So can you get another one-thousand-dollar advance on your salary?”

 

Inch had shuffled through his roughs and had a new one on his knee. When Josh glanced toward him the cat man said, “We’ve got this one just about ready to roll. A board game for young and old alike. Tentatively it’s called the Rape In The Fog Game. Six little harlot counters and one Stungun Slim. You each draw cards and get chased through this slum here on the board.”

 

“Can you, Josh?”

 

“I don’t think so, Glendora. I’ll phone you after lunch.”

 

“But the inspector’s coming then.”

 

“I have somebody here now. Stungun Slim’s public execution is only two and a half weeks off. The merchandising end of it is really accelerating. Bye.”

 

“Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye,” said the quint.

 

“Here’s a design for a rubberoid pillow made up to resemble Stungun Slim.” Inch showed him a fresh drawing. “When your friends sit on it unawares, it gives off a loud raucous pooty-pooty sound. Good for a laugh.” He stroked his whiskers again. “Would a loan of a thousand bucks, one big one, help you out of your domestic dilemma, Josh?”

 

Josh blinked. “Sure, Floyd, but I still don’t think I can sell you a product license on Stungun Slim for under ten thousand dollars.”

 

From a pseudoleather billfold Inch took ten one-hundred-dollar bills. “Of course, Josh. I’ll drop in on you this afternoon to see what you’ve found out about the price. Oh, and we have to set up an interview with Stungun Slim himself. So my artists can get pictures of him for our merchandise.”

 

“Everybody wants to interview him,” said Josh, checking a schedule. “Time, Newsweek and The Literary Digest are doing man-of-the-week cover stories on him, Calling All Girls is planning an in-depth interview. Gourmet wants to talk to him, too, though I’m not sure why.”

 

“Maybe they’ve got him mixed up with Ma Boskins,” chuckled the cat man. He placed the bills on Josh’s desk, gathered his roughs together and stood. “Until this afternoon.”

 

After Inch left, Josh sat with his hand on the money. Finally he reached out for the phone.

 

He called his father.

 

* * * *

 

The dog-faced boy was very militant. He kept pacing around Josh’s den, buttoning and unbuttoning his paramilitary jacket. “I tell you what I’m going to do with my share of the booty,” he said. “I’ll give seventy percent... no, but at least sixty percent or so . . . I’ll give sixty percent or so to the Dog-Faced Boys’ Liberation Front.”

 

“Selma, sit down and listen,” ordered Josh’s wrinkled-up old father.

 

L. Q. Selma snarled and seated himself on a see-through sofa filled with tinted glass balls. “You treat dog-faced boys like everybody else on this lousy planet.”

 

Josh said, “Gee, Dad, if you and your crew are going to keep yelling, we better not hold this planning session here tonight.”

 

His father ignored him, telling the red-furred Selma, “How many people would give a dog-faced boy an equal share of a cool million bucks just for doing a little driving?”

 

Selma shrugged, folded his arms.

 

The other man in the room was a tall thin lizard named Harry Miles Minter. He had a bushy brown mustache and was smoking a soy cigar. “Let’s get on with outlining this caper, Amos.”

 

After a few seconds Josh remembered his father’s name was Amos. “I brought the forms you asked for, Dad,” he said. “You sure these aren’t going to tie me in with the highjacking?”

 

After taking the three sheets of paper from his son, the old man said, “We’re not going to use these. We’re going to use counterfeits. That way, it looks like a completely outside job, see?”

 

Josh said, “Gee, Dad, I’m not sure—”

 

“We’re going to need one thousand dollars in front to pay the forger. He’s not going to get cut in on the loot we get out of the penal system.”

 

“I thought we made money on this,” said Josh.

 

“Our expenses aren’t going to be over two thousand dollars, tops,” his father assured him.

 

“The circus wagon may run fifteen hundred dollars.” Selma was frowning at a shadowy corner of the den.

 

“Circus wagon?” Absently Josh took a kelp chip from one of the snack bowls on the floating coffee table. “Why a circus wagon?”

 

“I like the looks of them,” said his father. “And nobody ever suspects a circus truck of evil intentions.”

 

“I would,” said Josh. “If I saw a big circus wagon in the vicinity of the prison, I’d suspect it.”

 

“We’re not going to have the truck anywhere near the prison, it’ll be a mile away.”

 

The dog-faced boy asked, “Is all you have to eat this cracker crap?”

 

“Yes, it’s very healthful. My wife has it teleported in from a health-food shop on Mars.”

 

“Didn’t your wife ever hear that dog-faced boys like chunks of lean red meat?”

 

“I didn’t tell her I was having you people over. She doesn’t know anything about this . . . this caper. She thinks you’re old school friends of my dad,” said Josh. “Dad, how are you going to snatch Stungun Slim with the truck a mile from the prison?”

 

“I’m not going to snatch him,” replied the old man. “I’m not going anywhere near the prison. I’m going to be sitting comfortably in that circus wagon waiting for Stungun Slim to appear.”

 

“Oh, so?” said Josh, nibbling again.

 

Harry Miles Minter rubbed his scaly brown-green palms together. “I do the job.”

 

“How?”

 

“Watch.” The lean lizard man locked his fingers together, closed his eyes, strained.

 

“I suppose you don’t have any bones, either,” said Selma.

 

“No, we—” Josh found himself sitting across the room from where he bad been. “Gee.”

 

Something in the shadowy corner whimpered and said, “My, my, my.”

 

“Harry is a telek,” explained Josh’s father. “One of the great tele-kinetic thieves of our day.”

 

“You’re going to teleport Stungun Slim out of his cell,” said Josh, still sitting where the lizard man had put him, “and all the way to the waiting truck?”

 

“A cinch,” said Minter. “One time I teleported a race horse, complete with jockey, from here out to a secluded paddock on the edge of town.”

 

“What the crap is that whimpering over there?” asked Selma, growling.

 

“Oh, that’s my wife’s quint.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“A pet. He’s harmless.” Josh bit his lip. “I take it Harry has to be in the same room with Stungun Slim to do it.”

 

“No, that’s no problem,” said his father. “Harry only has to see Stungun Slim before he does it, to get his coordinates worked out.”

 

“To get the feel of the place and of the subject,” added Harry.

 

“Then he can leave and go anywhere within a mile or two of the prison and still move Stungun Slim from there to us.”

 

“I was in prison twice,” said Selma. “On Barnum and here on Tarragon. They have a rotten exercise program in your prison system here. For instance, you have to do push-ups and toe touches, but there’s no regular daily regiment of rolling over and playing dead, and you hardly ever get to chase a stick.”

 

Josh crossed back to his original chair. “So what else do I have to do?”

 

“Make sure Harry gets an interview with Stungun Slim,” said his father. “He’s going to pretend to be a toy manufacturer who wants to sketch Slim.”

 

“That’s all?”

 

“Right. Harry cases things, sizes up Stungun Slim and comes out. Then pam! Stungun Slim is now in our circus wagon, heading for our hideout in the farm belt beyond the city.”

 

“You really think the penal system’ll pay a million to get Stungun Slim back?”

 

His father’s wrinkled face grinned. “Wouldn’t you if you were them, Joshua? From what you tell me, two television networks, one cable system, a tri-op service, a satellite broadcast system and three cassette firms have paid for the rights to broadcast or record the public execution of Stungun Slim. How much does that amount to in fees paid to the territorial prison system?”

 

“Six point two million,” answered Josh.

 

“If Stungun Slim isn’t there to be hanged, disemboweled, quartered and beheaded, will they get the six point two million?”

 

“No. The fees would all be returned if the execution doesn’t come off.”

 

“Then they’ll pay out a million if it’s the only way they can make six,” his father said. “It’s good business.”

 

* * * *

 

Harry Miles Minter, the lizard telek, had a straw-colored mustache today. He handed the forged forms over to Josh, saying, “Here are all the necessary papers I need to pay a little visit to Stungun Slim, Mr. Birely.”

 

Down in the execution yard they were tacking multicolor bunting to the scaffold for tomorrow’s execution. “You’re getting in just under the wire, Mr. . . .” He squinted at the forged permission papers. “Mr. Wallman. The execution is only a day away.”

 

“I’ll just need a few snaps of Stungun Slim for our box people to work from.” Minter patted the robot camera perched on his shoulder. The camera twittered and took a picture of Josh.

 

“You folks manufacture . . . ?”

 

Minter poked a scaly finger at the fake papers. “Stunguns,” he said. “Candy-filled stunguns.” From a side pocket of his one-piece business suit he took a green jellybean. “You might like a sample of our candy.”

 

“Thanks. Now I’ll-”

 

Josh’s phone beeped. When he answered it, his lovely willowy wife appeared on the screen and told him, “He took the quint”

 

“Who?”

 

“Inspector Custer.” Glendora rubbed at her left eye. “Snatched him right out of my arms, saying there was a seven-hundred-fifty-dollar import fee I neglected to pay. Do you happen to have seven hundred fifty dollars so I can hop over to the credit detective warehouse and get him back?”

 

“Tell her to wait a couple of days,” suggested Minter.

 

Josh shook his head at him. “Not right now, Glendora.”

 

“Quints don’t do well in captivity, especially warehouse captivity.”

 

“I’ll think of something and call you back. Goodbye.” He pushed a button in the bank of them hanging above his desk.

 

In answer to the button an android in a gray suit came into the office. “Yessir, Mr. Birely?”

 

“This is Mr. Wallman. He’s been cleared for an interview with Stungun Slim. Will you escort him across to the prison, please?”

 

“Stungun Slim’s going to turn out to be the biggest draw we’ve had all season,” remarked the android. “Bigger even than Anmar the Thrill Killer.”

 

As he went out Minter said, “I’m sure we’ll all benefit from his popularity.”

 

Josh stayed at his desk with his hands gripping the edges. “Okay, this isn’t quite ethical,” he said to himself. “It’s really, though, not as bad as the public executions themselves. And I’m only going to try it once, then I’ll have the money. Gee, with a quarter of a million I won’t have to do this kind of disgusting work any more. We can pay all the bills off. After a decent interval, when suspicion has died down, I can quit here and . . . and do whatever I want.”

 

Josh sat for over forty-seven minutes, alternately watching the prison yard below and the ceiling of his office.

 

Forty-eight minutes after Minter left, an enormous hooting commenced in the prison. It was the escape warning.

 

He let go of his desk and said, “Gee, a quarter of a million dollars.”

 

* * * *

 

He was smiling toward Glendora and walked into the TV wall. “How’d you get the wall back?”

 

“I only rented this one on our Master Charge. I thought you’d want to keep up with the details of the daring daylight escape of Stungun Slim.”

 

Smiling more broadly, Josh said, “There’s something I haven’t told you, Glendora. Now, I know there’s an ethical... a moral question involved, but I think when—”

 

“Do you know who helped him escape?”

 

Josh stopped smiling “Who helped who escape?”

 

“Who helped Stungun Slim escape, obviously.”

 

“Was that on the news?”

 

“An hour ago,” said Glendora. “Here, I’ll flick on the six o’clock news for you. It really surprised me because he always gave me the impression of being so fantastically solvent.”

 

“My father solvent?”

 

His wife frowned at him. “I’m talking about Inspector Custer.”

 

On the wall screen a sleek cat man newscaster was saying, “...authorities are still baffled to some extent. However, high-placed officials conjecture that possibly a telekinetic thief was employed by Custer in this daring daylight break. As you know, Custer, long believed to be a trusted credit detective, is now known to be the master mind behind the escape plan.”

 

“Inspector Custer?” Josh dropped into a see-through chair filled with fresh-cut wildflowers.

 

“Custer cannot be questioned since he still lies in a stunned state in the territorial hospital. Authorities, who found the once-respected inspector in a circus wagon two miles from the prison, conjecture that after Custer brought off the daring daylight escape, he and the vicious Stungun Slim had a falling out. A routine check of the stungun found beside Inspector Custer’s stunned body revealed the gun had been recently used by none other than Stungun Slim, thus enabling police to link . . .”

 

The phone in Josh’s den began beeping. Rising out of the wild-flower chair, he shuffled to answer it.

 

It was his father on the pixphone screen. His lower lip was swollen. “I got punched in the mouth by your inspector friend.”

 

Josh ran back to close the door panel. At the phone again he asked, “Gee, Dad, how did Inspector Custer get to be the mastermind of your plot?”

 

“Don’t blame me,” said the old man. “Apparently he was even more in debt than you and your pea-brained wife. The credit dick computer tipped him his accounts were about to be audited, and he decided he had to raise some dough quick.”

 

“You should have told me you were cutting him in.”

 

“I didn’t cut him in,” said Josh’s father. “Your pea-brained wife’s pet quint cut him in.”

 

“You don’t have to keep picking on Glendora just because you feel frustrated, Dad. What do you mean the quint did it?”

 

“The pea-brained animal heard what we were planning when it was skulking around your den the other evening,” explained his wrinkled little father. “When Custer repo’d the thing today, it blurted out the whole caper and Custer decided to try to take it away from us.”

 

“But the quint can only say ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ and a few simple phrases.”

 

“For Glendora maybe, but for that cyborg inspector the damn thing was loquacious.”

 

“How did Stungun Slim come to stun Custer?”

 

“Ask Custer,” said his father. “The tin-eared bastard tossed me and Minter and Selma out of the truck the minute Stungun Slim materialized. He went barreling off toward the sticks.”

 

“Gee, Dad, maybe it’s just as well,” said Josh. “I mean, it’s bad enough doing what I’m doing for a living without adding grand theft and-”

 

His father asked, “Who’s getting executed next month, Joshua?”

 

“One-Eyed Wally,” replied Josh, “the Lovers’ Lane sneak thief.”

 

“No, he’s not popular enough. How about the execution after that?”

 

After thinking a few seconds, Josh said, “That would be Madeleine MacLowney, the Motel Murderer.”

 

“Ah.” His little father rubbed his hands raspingly together. “She’s sure to be even more popular than Stungun Slim.”

 

Josh turned away from the phone screen. “Even so, I’d really like to forget the-”

 

“Sure, if we highjack her we’ll stand to make even more than we would have with Slim.”

 

Josh looked again at his father. He asked, “How much more?”

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *

 

DESERT PLACES

 

by Pamela Sargent

 

 

The end of the world comes in many ways. And of course a lot of it depends on just whose world it is that’s ending.

 

* * * *

 

“I DON’T know what you expect to see today, I don’t know how you can pick up anything,” Tiel Obrine muttered. She watched the fog in the streets, smoky wisps winding and unwinding slowly between the narrow avenues, slowly hiding the cobblestone roads.

 

“Shut up,” said Eggar Knute. He stared at a large, ancient television screen while squatting on his heels. The screen revealed another narrow cobblestoned road not unlike the one Tiel Obrine was observing outside the window. All Eggar could see was fog, and the dim outlines of the tall thin wooden buildings on either side of the street. The buildings appeared to be tilting slightly toward each other across the narrow road.

 

“Try camera three,” said Man Mountain L’ono. Man Mountain was carving a piece of wood, his huge hands holding the wood carefully, moving the knife painstakingly. He was carving Tiel Obrine. He glanced over at Tiel, saw her staring out the window, hands on slightly large hips, right foot tapping the floor, black hair stiff around her head.

 

“Tiel!” Eggar shouted. She swung around, glaring at him with her small pale-blue eyes, her white face looking almost phosphorescent in the dim light. “Get me a beer,” Eggar said.

 

“I’m not-”

 

“Shut up, you stupid bitch, and get me a beer,” Eggar said. Tiel clenched her fists, and then stomped toward the kitchen.

 

“Try camera three,” said Man Mountain, still carving. Eggar pushed a button, saw only another narrow street with fog. Eggar stared at the screen.

 

“Here,” mumbled Tiel, thrusting an opened beer can in front of Eggar’s face.

 

He reached out, took the can, held Tiel’s arm with his other hand. “Sit down,” he said.

 

“Let go.”

 

“I’m sorry, honey, sit down.” Tiel sat, looking away from Eggar, chin quivering. He put his arm around her. “Don’t cry.”

 

“I’m not.”

 

“I shouldn’t have called you a stupid bitch.”

 

“I am.”

 

“No you’re not.” Eggar kissed her on the forehead, then turned back to the screen. He watched as the buildings farthest from the camera shook, then slowly crumbled to the ground. He pushed a button, and the screen went blank. “Damn it,” he said to Tiel, “we’re going to have to move soon.”

 

“Oh, Eggar, not again.” Tiel got up and walked over to the window, then turned to face him. “We can’t move all this stuff again.”

 

“We won’t take everything,” said Eggar. “Just my equipment, a few cameras, and some of your things.”

 

“There’s a good place a few blocks down,” Man Mountain said. “Nik and me was looking at it before. Near the park. It’s got a freezer full of food that’s still working, and about a hundred cans of food in the kitchen. Nice place.”

 

“I’m sick of it,” said Tiel. “I want to settle down.”

 

“We will,” said Eggar.

 

“Try camera three again,” Man Mountain said. Eggar turned on the screen. More buildings had collapsed, and one of the flying things, buzzing softly, was hovering over the rubble. The rest of the buildings slowly collapsed toward the street. The screen went blank.

 

“Damn it,” said Eggar. “We’ll have to move tomorrow. What a pain.”

 

“I hate moving,” said Tiel. “It always makes me depressed, and then I have to get used to a new place.”

 

“There’s a place only a few blocks away,” said Man Mountain. “Me and Nik was looking at it.”

 

“It’s easy for him to talk,” Tiel said angrily to Eggar. “All he has to move is a knife and some wood. But I’ll never get all my clothes moved. Am I just supposed to wear the same old thing all the time?”

 

Man Mountain stopped carving and looked up. “You look good without clothes, Tiel,” he said, looking bewildered.

 

“I can’t walk around naked all the time.”

 

“I’ll move them for you,” Man Mountain said. “Don’t worry. Even if I take a year. I’ll move them.”

 

“I’m going to lie down for a while,” the girl said. She left the room.

 

“I’ll move them,” Man Mountain said, resuming his carving. “Even if it takes a year.” A bearded face suddenly appeared at the window, grinned; a hand waved at Eggar.

 

“Come on in,” Eggar hollered. A thin man danced through the door, holding a bottle.

 

“Hi, Nik,” Man Mountain said. The thin man perched on one of the chairs, took a swig from the bottle.

 

“Camera three went today,” Eggar said to Nik. “We’re going to move soon. Man Mountain says you saw a good place a few blocks down.”

 

“We sure did,” Nik said. “I just moved in across the street from it. Of course, I don’t have as much to move as you.” He looked around the room at Eggar’s cameras.

 

“We’re just taking the essentials this time,” said Eggar. “All I have to do is set up a camera on this block and then we’ll go.”

 

“Where’s Tiel?” asked Nik.

 

“She’s kind of tired, Nik, I think she just wants to rest awhile. I don’t think she’d be in the mood for anything.”

 

“I could cheer her up,” Nik said, taking another drink. “One look at my unclothed body, and she’ll be begging me to—”

 

“You want to cheer her up,” said Man Mountain, “you help me move her stuff.”

 

“When are you moving?”

 

“Tomorrow,” Eggar replied.

 

* * * *

 

Eggar stood in the street with a television camera while Man Mountain carried out the last trunk of Tiel’s clothes. There were two trunks filled with clothes and cosmetics already sitting in the middle of the street. Tiel sat on one, looking dismayed.

 

Man Mountain put down the trunk he had brought out of the house on his back, walked over to the small girl and put a huge hand on her shoulder. “Aw, cheer up, Tiel, I told you I’d move all your stuff,” Man Mountain said. Eggar looked around at the houses, trying to figure out where to place the camera. “Besides,” the big man went on, “we got a nice place. You wait and see.” Tiel looked up at Man Mountain and smiled weakly.

 

The fog had lifted, but the sky was overcast, a very dark shade of gray. Eggar, looking around for a place for his camera, felt almost as if the sky were pressing in on them, and that it was only the narrow wooden houses which held the clouds up, keeping them from billowing through the streets around him. “Hey, Tiel, where should I put this camera?” Eggar asked.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Put it on a roof and you can see the whole street,” Man Mountain offered.

 

“I don’t have enough wire for that.” Eggar walked down to the corner, looked at an old mailbox, paint peeling off its sides. He stood by the mailbox and glanced back up the street at Tiel, Man Mountain and the trunks. “I think I’ll put it on the mailbox,” Eggar yelled. “If I attach it right here-”

 

“Hey, Nik,” Man Mountain shouted, waving his arms. Eggar turned around and saw the thin bearded man walking toward him, hands in his pockets.

 

“You look worried,” Eggar said to Nik. Nik shrugged his shoulders. They walked up the street. Man Mountain had hoisted one of the trunks onto his back and Tiel was holding a large burlap bag.

 

“We’re going to start moving this stuff,” said Tiel.

 

“Sure,” Eggar answered. “Come on inside a minute, Nik.” The two men went inside. Eggar had packed his old television equipment in boxes, which sat in the middle of the living-room floor. “Want to help move some of this, Nik?”

 

“Could I ask you something, Eggar?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Are you going to set up any camera in the south end?”

 

Eggar sat on the edge of the chair and looked at Nik. “Why should I set up anything towards the south? We’re moving south, so I cover the north, three cameras, north, northeast and northwest. I’m setting up one at the end of this block and I’ll set up two more after we move, so . . .”

 

“Well, I just wondered. I walked south today, I don’t know how many blocks, but I was going for a while, so it could have been—”

 

“What’s the point, Nik?”

 

“I thought I heard some buildings caving in.”

 

Eggar was silent

 

“So I thought, maybe you might want to put a camera up around there.”

 

Eggar sighed. “Look, Nik, you might have just been hearing things. Or maybe some old house caved in by itself, I mean some of them aren’t too sturdy.”

 

“Well, why don’t you come with me and look around, after you get your stuff moved.”

 

Eggar remembered a boyhood venture, packing a lunch, roaming through the city, wondering how far it went. He had been lost, gone for two days before coming back to his home, walking in circles. His parents had been hysterical. They had moved for the first time soon afterward, and were to move more frequently as time passed.

 

“Sure, I’ll bring one of the remote cameras, what the hell.” Eggar got up and walked toward the window. He looked up toward the sky.

 

“What’s the matter, Eggar?”

 

“I thought I heard something.” The humming sound Eggar had heard was growing louder. Nik joined him at the window. One of the slender flying things was overhead, whirring quietly, silvery and opaque. The two men watched it as it hovered, and then left. Eggar was puzzled.

 

“That’s funny,” said Nik. “I wonder what it was doing around here?”

 

* * * *

 

Tiel was humming as she dusted the furniture. She had been depressed after they had finally managed to move everything, but Eggar had been relieved, as well as a little surprised, when she had begun energetically to clean the house and arrange things. She had admitted then that the move was worth it, the house was beautiful. She had also offered Nik the chance to move in with them, but Nik had turned the offer down, as Eggar had felt he would. Nik enjoyed coming over to talk, or sleep with Tiel, but he wanted to be alone most of the time.

 

Tiel was dusting and humming, and Man Mountain was lying on a sofa, carving. Eggar felt uneasy, and was not certain about why. He had taken Tiel for a walk the day before in the nearby park, and it had reminded him of a park that had been near one of his parents’ homes, far to the north now.

 

“There was this crazy old lady who lived in that park,” he said to Tiel. “In an old shack.”

 

There were men who were not as we are, who chose the ways that are not man’s, who sought to remove us all from the air and light . . .

 

“That’s one way of putting it,” the old woman said.

 

In ancient times, they spoke to us of wonders, and tried to lead us to evil, and we rose up and drove them from our midst. . .

 

“Bunk,” the old woman said. “They up and left themselves. And it weren’t that long ago, my grandfather’s time maybe.”

 

Their spirits fly over us, the ghosts of those destroyed by pride will strike him down who ventures too far .. .

 

“Superstitious bunk,” the old woman said. “How else they going to tell a kid why people disappear?” Eggar, bursting with his newly acquired wisdom, had told his parents of the old woman’s talk, and had been beaten and told to stay away from the park; a needless precaution, for several days later, the old woman had packed up and disappeared—struck down, Eggar’s father said, for her arrogance. Eggar had remembered the lesson.

 

Eggar went over to his television receiver and turned on the screen, the sole legacy of his parents and ancestors, switched to cameras one, two, three, saw only narrow cobblestoned streets with old houses. He turned the screen off. There was a knock at the door.

 

“Come on in, Nik,” Tiel shouted.

 

Nik came inside. “Hey, Eggar, you busy today?”

 

“Not particularly.”

 

“How about taking a walk?”

 

“Might as well.” Eggar got up. “Want to come along?” he asked Man Mountain.

 

“Not me,” the big man replied. “I’m taking it easy.”

 

“You go ahead, Eggar,” Tiel said. Eggar and Nik went outside. The sky was gray, the wind cool.

 

“I suppose you want to go south,” Eggar said.

 

“Yeah.” Nik pulled a flask out of his pocket, took a swig, then replaced the flask.

 

“I don’t see the point, but what the hell.” The two men began to move south, silently, Eggar wondering to himself whether Nik had been drinking too much again.

 

* * * *

 

“I heard one of those flying things last night, over our houses,” Nik said. Eggar and he had been walking for almost three hours. They were sitting on a curb across the street from an old stone house and several wooden buildings. The glass was missing from most of the windows.

 

Eggar shuddered, recalled childhood tales about the silvery things. He had been told that spirits of the evil were imprisoned in the flying objects. He was not sure about what he believed now. “You couldn’t have,” he said. “I didn’t hear a thing.”

 

“I heard it, though, right over me.” Nik pulled out his flask. “You were probably asleep.”

 

“If I didn’t hear it, Man Mountain would have. He’s a light sleeper. If you breathe funny, he wakes up.”

 

“Well, did you ask him if he heard it?”

 

“He would have told me if he did.”

 

Nik got up. “Come on, we better get moving,” he said.

 

“Look, Nik, we could keep this up for days. I’m tired. Why bother?” Eggar yawned. “Let’s go home.”

 

“Just a few more blocks, Eggar, and I’ll quit.”

 

“All right.” Eggar got up, and the two men continued down the street. Eggar was exasperated. He should have told Nik to go on by himself, instead of encouraging him by going along.

 

They walked silently for another few minutes, Eggar staring at his feet and cursing Nik mentally.

 

Then Nik grabbed his arm. “Look,” Nik said, pointing ahead. Eggar looked.

 

Ahead of him, the cobblestoned road curved up over a hill, but the houses on either side of it were gone. All Eggar could see was rubble, and the skeletal structures of a few buildings, tilted slightly toward the road.

 

“Oh my God,” Eggar mumbled. He sat down on a curb. “Oh my God.” He was shaking.

 

“I told you,” said Nik, shifting from one foot to the other. “I told you I heard something.”

 

“I don’t believe it,” Eggar said, still sitting. “We always moved from north to south. Ever since I was a kid.”

 

“I told you.”

 

“We always moved south. Nik, we better get out of here.”

 

“Come on,” Nik said, shifting on his feet so rapidly that he appeared to be dancing. “Come on, Eggar.”

 

“You’re out of your mind. Let’s get out of here.”

 

The thin bearded man turned to look at him. “I’m going over that hill, Eggar, maybe there’s some houses further on. Come on.”

 

“Not me.”

 

“What’s the matter with you?” Nik asked, still dancing. “Oh, I know. Evil spirits will strike us down. Well, for once, I’ll find out.” Eggar trembled and began to look around fearfully. Nik looked at him for a few minutes, then turned and began to walk up the street, up the hill. Eggar got up and began to walk home quickly, not daring to turn around.

 

* * * *

 

“Nik’s been gone more than a month,” Tiel said, walking over to the window and looking out.

 

“Don’t worry about it,” Man Mountain said. “Nik’s a loner.” Man Mountain was carving a tiny replica of one of the old park benches.

 

Eggar had been watching his television screen. Every few minutes, he would switch from one camera to another. All he could see were houses and cobblestoned streets. He stared at the screen.

 

Tiel sat down next to him. “Maybe you should look for him, Eggar,” she said softly.

 

“Don’t worry, Tiel,” Man Mountain said. “Nik’s a loner. He’ll come back when he gets horny.”

 

Tiel stood up. “Damn it,” she muttered between clenched teeth. “You just sit there carving all day and eating us out of house and home.” She glared at Eggar. “And you just sit there staring at that goddamn screen of yours. You don’t even worry. After all, he’s only our best friend.” Tiel began pacing across the room.

 

“That’s not hardly fair,” Man Mountain said, looking hurt. “I found all those cans the other day, and moved them here, all by myself.”

 

“He’s been gone ever since that day you two went out for a walk,” Tiel went on. “Didn’t he tell you where he was going?”

 

“I found them and moved them here, all by myself.”

 

Eggar turned off his screen. “No, he didn’t tell me where he was going and he’ll probably be back soon.”

 

“You could at least look!” shouted Tiel, clenching her fists. “You could at least try to find him. He might be sick or something. But no, you’ve got to sit in front of that screen all day.” She turned to Man Mountain. “And you’ve got to sit there Whittling wood and getting splinters all over the floor.”

 

The big man looked more downcast. “I’m carving them for you,” he said sadly. “I mean, I’m carving them for you, Tiel.”

 

“All right,” said Eggar wearily, getting to his feet. “I’ll look for him, just so you stop nagging, Tiel. I’ll start tomorrow.”

 

“He might be sick, Eggar,” the girl said.

 

“All right, I’ll look for him today, I don’t know where the hell you expect me to go.” Eggar ambled toward the door. “And you could apologize to Man Mountain. He didn’t do anything.” Tiel stood in the middle of the room, looking embarrassed.

 

“It’s okay, Tiel,” Man Mountain said. “I’m not sore.”

 

Eggar walked outside, down the street, and stopped at the comer. He turned and began to walk west, trying not to remind himself of where he should start looking, trying not to remember where Nik had been going when he last saw him.

 

Eggar was afraid.

 

After a few minutes, he turned again and began to walk south.

 

* * * *

 

Eggar stood where he had last seen Nik, and looked up the hill. Some of the rubble had been cleared away, and the cobblestoned road was fairly clean. He began the climb up the hill, knees trembling, stopped to rest every few minutes.

 

When he was three fourths of the way up, he could hear the hum of fliers, but louder than he had ever heard it before. Eggar cowered in the streets, hands shaking, looking up. Three flying things passed overhead, going west. He waited until they were gone, reciting the words his mother had told him would appease the spirits, and then continued up the hill. The humming noise was louder.

 

He reached the top, and raised his head.

 

The entire landscape was silver, tall silver rectangles, smaller silver domes, as far as he could see, and in the distance, tall silver spires that seemed to reach the sky. Eggar knelt and watched the small silver flying things buzzing among the buildings, saw moving metal bands where the streets should have been.

 

They sought to imprison us, to make us as the machines they worshiped, to imprison us in shells, as crustaceans. . .

 

“We just didn’t care for their ways, son,” the old woman said. “They didn’t like ours much, so I reckon we’re outcasts to them.”

 

Two of the flying silver insects passed overhead, and hovered above him. Uselessly now, he began to recite a litany to ward off evil, while staring at the metallic landscape. The flying things still hovered.

 

Eggar turned and fled.

 

* * * *

 

Eggar sat in front of his television screen, switched to camera one. The old houses trembled, then collapsed.

 

He switched to camera two, and watched as the houses fell, his old house crushed beneath the falling debris.

 

He switched to camera three. The buildings were already tumbling, two silver flyers hovering over them. The screen went blank.

 

Tiel sat with Man Mountain on the sofa, huddling next to him, hiding her face in his chest.

 

“We’ve got to move soon; we can try going west,” Eggar said.

 

“I want to settle down,” Tiel whimpered.

 

“But we always go south,” Man Mountain said.

 

“We’d better start packing,” Eggar said, still staring at the screen.

 

“We always went south,” Man Mountain said. “Ever since I was little.”

 

Eggar sat by the screen and heard the soft hum of a flyer passing overhead. The unnatural ones were nearing the end of their work, he thought. Soon there would be no place left. In the rock garden, there is room for polished stone and silver ornaments only, and no place for grasshoppers.

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *

 

IF THE STARS ARE GODS

 

by Cordon Eklund and Gregory Benford

 

 

Gordon Eklund is a full-time science fiction writer, author of three novels, including Beyond the Resurrection; Gregory Benford is a professor of physics in southern California and recently published his second novel, Jupiter Project. When they collaborate, there’s a great deal of talent at work. Here is a thought-provoking novella about mankind’s first contact with creatures from the stars ... a story with a number of intriguing aspects, including the fact that its protagonist is not the young, physically vigorous hero of so many sf tales; instead he is middle-aged, with a full lifetime of sometimes bitter experience already behind him. How his greater maturity affects his reactions to alien beings lends surprising depth to this story.

 

* * * *

 

A dog cannot be a hypocrite, but neither can he be sincere.

 

-LUDWIG Wittgenstein

 

 

 

 

 

It was deceptively huge and massive, this alien starship, and somehow seemed as if it belonged almost anywhere else in the universe but here.

 

Reynolds stepped carefully down the narrow corridor of the ship, still replaying in his mind’s eye the approach to the air lock, the act of being swallowed. The ceilings were high, the light poor, the walls made of some dull, burnished metal.

 

These aspects and others flitted through his mind as he walked. Reynolds was a man who appreciated the fine interlacing pleasures of careful thought, but more than that, thinking so closely of these things kept his mind occupied and drove away the smell. It clung to him like Pacific fog. Vintage manure, Reynolds had decided the moment he passed through the air lock. Turning, he had glared at Kelly firmly encased inside her suit. He told her about the smell. ‘Everybody stinks,’ she had said, evenly, perhaps joking, perhaps not, and pushed him away in the light centrifugal gravity. Away, into a maze of tight passages that would lead him eventually to look the first certified intelligent alien beings straight in the eye. If they happened to have eyes, that is.

 

It amused him that this privilege should be his. More rightly, the honor should have gone to another, someone younger whose tiny paragraph in the future histories of the human race had not already been enacted. At fifty-eight, Reynolds had long since lived a full and intricate lifetime. Too full, he sometimes thought, for any one man. So then, what about this day now? What about today? It did nothing really, only succeeded in forcing the fullness of his lifetime past the point of all reasonableness into a realm of positive absurdity.

 

The corridor branched again. He wondered precisely where he was inside the sculpted and twisted skin of the ship. He had tried to memorize everything he saw but there was nothing, absolutely nothing but metal with thin seams, places where he had to stoop or crawl, and the same awful smell. He realized now what it was about the ship that had bothered him the first time he had seen it, through a telescope from the moon. It reminded him, both in size and shape, of a building where he had once lived not so many years ago, during the brief term of his most recent retirement, 1987 and ‘88, in Sao Paulo, Brazil: a huge ultramodern lifting apartment complex of a distinctly radical design. There was nothing like it on Earth, the advertising posters had proclaimed; and seeing it, hating it instantly, he had agreed. Now here was something else truly like it, but not on Earth.

 

The building had certainly not resembled a starship but then, neither did this thing. At one end was an intricately designed portion, a cylinder with interesting modifications. Then came a long, plain tube and at the end of that something truly absurd: a cone, opening outward away from the rest of the ship and absolutely empty. Absurd, until you realized what it was.

 

The starship’s propulsion source was, literally, hydrogen bombs. The central tube evidently held a vast number of fusion devices. One by one the bombs were released, drifted to the mouth of the cone and were detonated. The cone was a huge shock absorber; the kick from the bomb pushed the ship forward. A Rube Goldberg star drive.

 

Directly ahead of him, the corridor neatly stopped and split, like the twin prongs of a roasting fork. It jogged his memory: roasting fork, yes, from the days when he still ate meat. Turning left, he followed the proper prong. His directions had been quite clear.

 

He still felt very ill at ease. Maybe it was the way he was dressed that made everything seem so totally wrong. It didn’t seem quite right, walking through an alien maze in his shirtsleeves and plain trousers. Pedestrian.

 

But the air was breathable, as promised. Did they breathe this particular oxygen-nitrogen balance, too? And like the smell?

 

Ahead, the corridor parted, branching once more. The odor was horribly powerful at this spot, and he ducked his head low, almost choking, and dashed through a round opening.

 

This was a big room. Like the corridor, the ceiling was a good seven meters above the floor, but the walls were subdued pastel shades of red, orange and yellow. The colors were mixed on all the walls in random, patternless designs. It was very pretty, Reynolds thought, and not at all strange. Also, standing neatly balanced near the back wall, there were two aliens.

 

When he saw the creatures, Reynolds stopped and stood tall. Raising his eyes, he stretched to reach the level of their eyes. While he did this, he also reacted. His first reaction was shock. This gave way to the tickling sensation of surprise. Then pleasure and relief. He liked the looks of these two creatures. They were certainly far kinder toward the eyes than what he had expected to find.

 

Stepping forward, Reynolds stood before both aliens, shifting his gaze from one to the other. Which was the leader? Or were both leaders? Or neither? He decided to wait. But neither alien made a sound or a move. So Reynolds kept waiting.

 

What had he expected to find? Men? Something like a man, that is, with two arms and two legs and a properly positioned head, with a nose, two eyes and a pair of floppy ears? This was what Kelly had expected him to find-she would be disappointed now-but Reynolds had never believed it for a moment. Kelly thought anything that spoke English had to be a man, but Reynolds was more imaginative. He knew better; he had not expected to find a man, not even a man with four arms and three legs and fourteen fingers or five ears. What he had expected to find was something truly alien. A blob, if worst came to worst, but at best something more like a shark or snake or wolf than a man. As soon as Kelly had told him that the aliens wanted to meet him-’Your man who best knows your star’-he had known this.

 

Now he said, ‘I am the man you wished to see. The one who knows the stars.’

 

As he spoke, he carefully shared his gaze with both aliens, still searching for a leader, favoring neither over the other. One-the smaller one-twitched a nostril when Reynolds said, ‘... the stars’; the other remained motionless.

 

There was one Earth animal that did resemble these creatures, and this was why Reynolds felt happy and relieved. The aliens were sufficiently alien, yes. And they were surely not men. But neither did they resemble blobs or wolves or sharks or snakes They were giraffes. Nice, kind, friendly, pleasant, smiling, silent giraffes. There were some differences, of course. The aliens’ skin was a rainbow collage of pastel purples, greens, reds and yellows, similar in its random design to the colorfully painted walls. Their trunks stood higher off the ground, their necks were stouter than that of a normal giraffe. They did not have tails. Nor hooves. Instead, at the bottom of each of their four legs, they had five blunt short fingers and a single wide thick offsetting thumb.

 

‘My name is Bradley Reynolds,’ he said. ‘I know the stars.’ Despite himself, their continued silence made him nervous. ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked.

 

The shorter alien bowed its neck toward him. Then, in a shrill high-pitched voice that reminded him of a child, it said, ‘No. ‘ An excited nervous child. ‘That is no,’ it said.

 

‘This?’ Reynolds lifted his hand, having almost forgotten what was in it. Kelly had ordered him to carry the tape recorder, but now he could truthfully say, ‘I haven’t activated it yet.’

 

‘Break it, please,’ the alien said.

 

Reynolds did not protest or argue. He let the machine fall to the floor. Then he jumped, landing on the tape recorder with both feet. The light aluminum case split wide open like the hide of a squashed apple. Once more, Reynolds jumped. Then, standing calmly, he kicked the broken bits of glass and metal toward an unoccupied comer of the room. ‘All right?’ he asked.

 

Now for the first time the second alien moved. Its nostrils twitched daintily, then its legs shifted, lifting and falling. ‘Welcome,’ it said, abruptly, stopping all motion. ‘My name is Jonathon. ‘

 

‘Your name?’ asked Reynolds.

 

‘And this is Richard.’

 

‘Oh,’ said Reynolds, not contradicting. He understood now. Having learned the language of man, these creatures had learned his names as well.

 

‘We wish to know your star,’ Jonathon said respectfully. His voice was a duplicate of the other’s. Did the fact that he had not spoken until after the destruction of the tape recorder indicate that he was the leader of the two? Reynolds almost laughed, listening to the words of his own thoughts. Not he, he reminded himself: it.

 

‘I am willing to tell you whatever you wish to know,’ Reynolds said.

 

‘You are a ... priest ... a reverend of the sun?’

 

‘An astronomer,’ Reynolds corrected.

 

‘We would like to know everything you know. And then we would like to visit and converse with your star. ‘

 

‘Of course. I will gladly help you in any way I can.’ Kelly had cautioned him in advance that the aliens were interested in the sun, so none of this came as any surprise to him. But nobody knew what it was in particular that they wanted to know, or why, and Kelly hoped that he might be able to find out. At the moment he could think of only two possible conversational avenues to take; both were questions. He tried the first. ‘What is it you wish to know? Is our star greatly different from others of its type? If it is, we are unaware of this fact.’

 

‘No two stars are the same,’ the alien said. This was Jonathon again. Its voice began to rise in excitement. ‘What is it? Do you not wish to speak here? Is our craft an unsatisfactory place?’

 

‘No, this is fine,’ Reynolds said, wondering if it was wise to continue concealing his puzzlement. ‘I will tell you what I know. Later, I can bring books.’

 

‘No!’ The alien did not shout, but from the way its legs quivered and nostrils trembled, Reynolds gathered he had said something very improper indeed.

 

‘I will tell you,’ he said. ‘In my own words.’

 

Jonathon stood quietly rigid. ‘Fine.’

 

Now it was time for Reynolds to ask his second question. He let it fall within the long silence which had followed Jonathon’s last statement. ‘Why do you wish to know about our star?’

 

‘It is the reason why we have come here. On our travels, we have visited many stars. But it is yours we have sought the  longest. It is so powerful. And benevolent. A rare combination, as you must know.’

 

‘Very rare,’ Reynolds said, thinking that this wasn’t making any sense. But then, why should it? At least he had learned something of the nature of the aliens’ mission, and that alone was more than anyone else had managed to learn during the months the aliens had slowly approached the moon, exploding their hydrogen bombs to decelerate.

 

A sudden burst of confidence surprised Reynolds. He had not felt this sure of himself in years, and just like before, there was no logical reason for his certainty. ‘Would you be willing to answer some questions for me? About your star?’

 

‘Certainly, Bradley Reynolds.’

 

‘Can you tell me our name for your star? Its coordinates?’.

 

‘No,’ Jonathon said, dipping its neck. ‘I cannot.’ It blinked its right eye in a furious fashion. ‘Our galaxy is not one. It is a galaxy too distant for your instruments.’

 

‘I see,’ said Reynolds, because he could not very well c the alien a liar, even if it was. But Jonathon’s hesitancy to reveal the location of its homeworld was not unexpected; Reynolds: would have acted the same in similar circumstances.

 

Richard spoke. ‘May I pay obeisance?’

 

Jonathon, turning to Richard, spoke in a series of shrill ching noises. Then Richard replied in kind.

 

Turning back to Reynolds, Richard again asked, ‘May I pay obeisance?’

 

Reynolds could only say, ‘Yes.’ Why not?

 

Richard acted immediately. Its legs abruptly shot out from beneath its trunk at an angle no giraffe could have managed:’ Richard sat on its belly, legs spread, and its neck came down, the snout gently scraping the floor.

 

‘Thank you,’ Reynolds said, bowing slightly at the waist… ‘But there is much we can learn from you, too.’ He spoke to hide his embarrassment, directing his words at Jonathon while hoping that they might serve to bring Richard back to its feet as well. When this failed to work, Reynolds launched into the speech he had been sent here to deliver. Knowing what he had t say, he ran through the words as hurriedly as possible. ‘We are backward people. Compared to you, we are children in the universe. Our travels have carried us no farther than our sister planets, while you have seen stars whose light takes years to reach your home. We realize you have much to teach us, and we approach you as pupils before a grand philosopher. We are gratified at the chance to share our meager knowledge with you and wish only to be granted the privilege of listening to you in return.’

 

‘You wish to know deeply of our star?’ Jonathon asked.

 

‘Of many things,’ Reynolds said. ‘Your spacecraft, for instance. It is far beyond our meager knowledge.’

 

Jonathon began to blink its right eye furiously. As it spoke, the speed of the blinking increased. ‘You wish to know that?’

 

‘Yes, if you are willing to share your knowledge. We, too, would like to visit the stars.’

 

Its eye moved faster than ever now. It said, ‘Sadly, there is nothing we can tell you of this ship. Unfortunately, we know nothing ourselves.’

 

‘Nothing?’

 

‘The ship was a gift.’

 

‘You mean that you did not make it yourself. No. But you must have mechanics, individuals capable of repairing the craft in the event of some emergency. ‘

 

‘But that has never happened. I do not think the ship could fail.’

 

‘Would you explain?’

 

‘Our race, our world, was once visited by another race of creatures. It was they who presented us with this ship. They had come to us from a distant star in order to make this gift. In return, we have used the ship only to increase the wisdom of our people

 

‘What can you tell me about this other race?’ Reynolds asked.

 

‘Very little, I am afraid. They came from a most ancient star near the true center of the universe.’

 

‘And were they like you? Physically?’

 

‘No, more like you. Like people. But-please-may we be excused to converse about that which is essential. Our time is short. ‘

 

Reynolds nodded, and the moment he did, Jonathon ceased to blink. Reynolds gathered that it had grown tired of lying, which wasn’t surprising; Jonathon was a poor liar. Not only were the lies incredible in themselves, but every time it told a lie it blinked like a madman with an ash in his eye.

 

‘If I tell you about our star,’ Jonathon said, ‘will you consent to tell of yours in return?’ The alien tilted its head forward, long neck swaying gently from side to side. It was plain that Jonathon attached great significance to Reynolds’ reply.

 

So Reynolds said, ‘Yes, gladly,’ though he found he could not conceive of any information about the sun which might come as a surprise to these creatures. Still, he had been sent here to discover as much about the aliens as possible without revealing anything important about mankind. This sharing of information about stars seemed a safe enough course to pursue.

 

‘I will begin,’ Jonathon said, ‘and you must excuse my impreciseness of expression. My knowledge of your language is limited. I imagine you have a special vocabulary for the subject. ‘

 

‘A technical vocabulary, yes.’

 

The alien said, ‘Our star is a brother to yours. Or would it be sister? During periods of the most intense communion, his wisdom-or hers?-is faultless. At times he is angry, unlike your star, but these moments are not frequent. Nor do they last for longer than a few fleeting moments. Twice he has prophesied the termination of our civilization during times of great personal anger, but never has he felt it necessary to carry out his prediction. I would say that he is more kind than raging, more gentle than brutal. I believe he loves our people most truly and fully. Among the stars of the universe, his place is not great, but as our home star, we must revere him. And, of course, we do.’

 

‘Would you go on?’ Reynolds asked.

 

Jonathon went on. Reynolds listened. The alien spoke of its personal relationship with the star, how the star had helped it during times of individual darkness. Once, the star had assisted it in choosing a proper mate; the choice proved not only perfect but divine. Throughout, Jonathon spoke of the star as a reverent Jewish tribesman might have spoken of the Old Testament God. For the first time, Reynolds regretted having had to dispose of the tape recorder. When he tried to tell Kelly about this conversation, she would never believe a word of it. As it spoke, the alien: did not blink, not once, even briefly, for Reynolds watched carefully.

 

At last the alien was done. It said, ‘But this is only a beginning. We have so much to share, Bradley Reynolds. Once I am conversant with your technical vocabulary. Communication between separate entities-the great barriers of language ...’

 

‘I understand,’ said Reynolds.

 

‘We knew you would. But now-it is your turn. Tell me about your star.’

 

‘We call it the sun,’ Reynolds said. Saying this, he felt more than mildly foolish-but what else? How could he tell Jonathon what it wished to know when he did not know himself? All he knew about the sun was facts. He knew how hot it was and how old it was and he knew its size and mass and magnitude. He knew about sunspots and solar winds and solar atmosphere. But that was all he knew. Was the sun a benevolent star? Was it constantly enraged? Did all mankind revere it with the proper quantity of love and dedication? ‘That is its common name. More properly, in an ancient language adopted by science, it is Sol. It lies approximately eight-’

 

‘Oh,’ said Jonathon. ‘All of this, yes, we know. But its demeanor. Its attitudes, both normal and abnormal. You play with us, Bradley Reynolds. You joke. We understand your amusement-but, please, we are simple souls and have traveled far. We must know these other things before daring to make our personal approach to the star. Can you tell us in what fashion it has most often affected your individual life? This would help us immensely.’

 

 

 

Although his room was totally dark, Reynolds, entering did not bother with the light. He knew every inch of this room, knew it as well in the dark as the light. For the past four years, he had spent an average of twelve hours a day here. He knew the four walls, the desk, the bed, the bookshelves and the books, knew them more intimately than he had ever known another person. Reaching the cot without once stubbing his toe or tripping over an open book or stumbling across an unfurled map, he sat down and covered his face with his hands, feeling the wrinkles on his forehead like great wide welts. Alone, he played a game with the wrinkles, pretending that each one represented some event or facet of his life. This one here the big one above the left eyebrow-that was Mars. And this other one-way over here almost by his right ear-that was a girl named Melissa whom he had known back in the 1970s. But he wasn’t in the proper mood for the game now. He lowered his hands. He knew the wrinkles for exactly what they really were: age, purely and simply and honestly age. Each one meant nothing without the others. They represented impersonal and unavoidable erosion. On the outside, they reflected the death that was occurring on the inside.

 

Still, he was happy to be back here in this room. He never realized how important these familiar surroundings were to his state of mind until he was forcefully deprived of them for a length of time. Inside the alien starship, it hadn’t been so bad. The time had passed quickly then; he hadn’t been allowed to get homesick. It was afterward when it had got bad. With Kelly and the others in her dank, ugly impersonal hole of an office. Those had been the unbearable hours.

 

But now he was home, and he would not have to leave again until they told him. He had been appointed official emissary to the aliens, though this did not fool him for a moment. He had been given the appointment only because Jonathon had refused to see anyone else. It wasn’t because anyone liked him or respected him or thought him competent enough to handle the mission. He was different from them, and that made all the difference. When they were still kids, they had seen his face on the old TV networks every night of the week. Kelly wanted someone like herself to handle the aliens. Someone who knew how to take orders, someone ultimately competent, some computer facsimile of a human being. Like herself. Someone who, when given a job, performed it in the most efficient manner in the least possible time.

 

Kelly was the director of the moon base. She had come here two years ago, replacing Bill Newton, a contemporary of Reynolds’, a friend of his. Kelly was the protégée of some U.S. Senator, some powerful idiot from the Midwest, a leader of the anti-NASA faction in the Congress. Kelly’s appointment had been part of a wild attempt to subdue the Senator with favors and special attention. It had worked after a fashion. There were still Americans on the moon. Even the Russians had left two years ago.

 

Leaving the alien starship, he had met Kelly the instant he reached the air lock. He had managed to slip past her and pull on his suit before she could question him. He had known she wouldn’t dare try to converse over the radio; too great a chance of being overheard. She would never trust him to say only the right things.

 

But that little game had done nothing except delay matters a few minutes. The tug had returned to the moon base and then everyone had gone straight to Kelly’s office. Then the interrogation had begun. Reynolds had sat near the back of the room while the rest of them flocked around Kelly like pet sheep.

 

Kelly asked the first question. ‘What do they want?’ He knew her well enough to understand exactly what she meant: What do they want from us in return for what we want from them?

 

Reynolds told her: They wanted to know about the sun.

 

‘We gathered that much,’ Kelly said. ‘But what kind of information do they want? Specifically, what are they after?’

 

With great difficulty, he tried to explain this too.

 

Kelly interrupted him quickly. ‘And what did you tell them?’

 

‘Nothing,’ he said.

 

‘Why?..’

 

‘Because I didn’t know what to tell them.’

 

‘Didn’t you ever happen to think the best thing to tell them might have been whatever it was they wished to hear?’

 

‘I couldn’t do that either,’ he said, ‘because I didn’t know. You tell me: Is the sun benevolent? How does it inspire your daily life? Does it constantly rage? I don’t know, and you don’t know either, and it’s not a thing we can risk lying about, because they may very well know themselves. To them, a star is a living entity. It’s a god, but more than our gods, because they can see a star and feel its heat and never doubt that it’s always there.’

 

‘Will they want you back?’ she asked.

 

‘I think so. They liked me. Or he liked me. It. I only talked to one of them.’

 

‘I thought you told us two.’

 

So he went over the whole story for her once more, from beginning to end, hoping this time she might realize that alien beings are not human beings and should not be expected to respond in familiar ways. When he came to the part about the presence of the two aliens, he said, ‘Look. There are six men in this room right now besides us. But they are here only for show. The whole time, none of them will say a word or think a thought or decide a point. The other alien was in the room with Jonathon and me the whole time. But if it had not been there, nothing would have been changed. I don’t know why it was there, and I don’t expect I ever will. But neither do I understand why you feel you have to have all these men here with you.’

 

She utterly ignored the point. ‘Then that is all they are interested in? They’re pilgrims and they think the sun is Mecca. Mecca. ‘

 

‘More or less,’ he said, with the emphasis on ‘less.’

 

‘Then they won’t want to talk to me-or any of us. You’re the one who knows the sun. Is that correct?’ She jotted a note on a pad, shaking her elbow briskly.

 

‘Reynolds,’ she said, looking up from her pad, ‘I sure as hell hope you know what you’re doing.’

 

He said, ‘Why?’

 

She did not bother to attempt to disguise her contempt. Few of them did any more and especially not Kelly. It was her opinion that Reynolds should not be here at all. Put him in a rest home back on Earth, she would say. The other astronauts-they were considerate enough to retire when life got too complicated for them. What makes this one man, Bradley Reynolds, why is he so special? All right-she would admit-ten years, twenty years ago, he was a great brave man struggling to conquer the unknown. When I was sixteen years old, I couldn’t walk a dozen feet without tripping over his name or face. But what about now? What is he? I’ll tell you what he is: a broken-down, wrinkled relic of an old man. So what if he’s an astronomer as well as an astronaut? So what if he’s the best possible man for the Lunar observatory? I still say he’s more trouble than he’s worth. He walks around the moon base like a dog having a dream. Nobody can communicate with him. He hasn’t attended a single psychological expansion session since he’s been here, and that goes back well before my time. He’s a morale problem; nobody can stand the sight of him any more. And, as far as doing his job goes, he does it, yes-but that’s all. His heart isn’t in it. Look, he didn’t even know about the aliens being in orbit until I called him in and told him they wanted to see him.

 

That last part was not true, of course. Reynolds, like everyone, had known about the aliens, but he did have to admit that their approach had not overly concerned him. He had not shared the hysteria which had gripped the whole of the Earth when the announcement was made that an alien starship had entered the system. The authorities had known about it for months before ever releasing the news. By the time anything was said publicly, it had been clearly determined that the aliens offered Earth no clear or present danger. But that was about all anyone had learned. Then the starship had gone into orbit around the moon, an action intended to confirm their lack of harmful intent toward Earth, and the entire problem had landed with a thud in Kelly’s lap. The aliens said they wanted to meet a man who knew something about the sun, and that had turned out to be Reynolds. Then-and only then-had he had a real reason to become interested in the aliens. That day, for the first time in a half-dozen years, he had actually listened to the daily news broadcasts from Earth. He discovered-and it didn’t particularly surprise him-that everyone else had long since got over their initial interest in the aliens. He gathered that war was brewing again. In Africa this time, which was a change in place if not in substance. The aliens were mentioned once, about halfway through the program, but Reynolds could tell they were no longer considered real news. A meeting between a representative of the American moon base and the aliens was being arranged, the newscaster said. It would take place aboard the aliens’ ship in orbit around the moon, he added. The name Bradley Reynolds was not mentioned. I wonder if they remember me, he had thought.

 

‘It seems to me that you could get more out of them than some babble about stars being gods,’ Kelly said, getting up and pacing around the room, one hand on hip. She shook her head in mock disbelief and the brown curls swirled downward, flowing like dark honey in the light gravity.

 

‘Oh, I did,’ he said casually.

 

‘What?’ There was a rustling of interest in the room.

 

‘A few facts about their planet. Some bits of detail I think fit together. It may even explain their theology.’

 

‘Explain theology with astronomy?’ Kelly said sharply. ‘There’s no mystery to sun worship. It was one of our primitive religions.’ A man next to her nodded.

 

‘Not quite. Our star is relatively mild-mannered, as Jonathon would say. And our planet has a nice, comfortable orbit, nearly circular. ‘

 

‘Theirs doesn’t?’

 

‘No. The planet has a pronounced axial inclination, too, nothing ordinary like Earth’s twenty-three degrees. Their world must be tilted at forty degrees or so to give the effects Jonathon mentioned. ‘

 

‘Hot summers?’ one of the men he didn’t know said, and Reynolds looked up in mild surprise. So the underlings were not just spear-carriers, as he had thought. Well enough.

 

‘Right. The axial tilt causes each hemisphere to alternately slant toward and then away from their star. They have colder winters and hotter summers than we do. But there’s something more, as far as I can figure it out. Jonathon says its world ‘does not move in the perfect path’ and that ours, on the other hand, very nearly does.’

 

‘Perfect path?’ Kelly said, frowning. ‘An eight-fold way? The path of enlightenment?’

 

‘More theology,’ said the man who had spoken.

 

‘Not quite,’ Reynolds said. ‘Pythagoras believed the circle was a perfect form, the most beautiful of all figures. I don’t see why Jonathon shouldn’t. ‘

 

‘Astronomical bodies look like circles. Pythagoras could see the moon,’ Kelly said.

 

‘And the sun,’ Reynolds said.’ I don’t know whether Jonathon’s world has a moon or not. But they can see their star, and in profile it’s a circle.’

 

‘So a circular orbit is a perfect orbit.’

 

‘Q.E.D. Jonathon says its planet doesn’t have one, though.’

 

‘It’s an ellipse.’

 

‘A very eccentric ellipse. That’s my guess, anyway. Jonathon used the terms ‘path-summer’ and ‘pole-summer,’ so they do distinguish between the two effects.’

 

‘I don’t get it,’ the man said.

 

‘An ellipse alone gives alternate summers and winters, but in both hemispheres at the same time,’ Kelly said brusquely, her mouth turning slightly downward. ‘A ‘pole-summer’ must be the kind Earth has.’

 

‘Oh,’ the man said weakly.

 

‘You left out the ‘great-summer,’ my dear,’ Reynolds said with a thin smile.

 

‘What’s that?’ Kelly said carefully.

 

‘When the ‘pole-summer’ coincides with the ‘path-summer’-which it will, every so often. I wouldn’t want to be around when that happens. Evidently neither do the members of Jonathon’s race. ‘

 

‘How do they get away?’ Kelly said intently.

 

‘Migrate. One hemisphere is having a barely tolerable summer while the other is being fried alive, so they go there. The whole race.’

 

‘Nomads,’ Kelly said. ‘An entire culture born with a pack on its back,’ she said distantly. Reynolds raised an eyebrow. It was the first time he had ever heard her say anything that wasn’t crisp, efficient and uninteresting.

 

‘I think that’s why they’re grazing animals, to make it easy even necessary-to keep on the move. A ‘great-summer’ wilts all the vegetation; a ‘great-winter’-they must have those, too freezes a continent solid.’

 

‘God,’ Kelly said quietly.

 

‘Jonathon mentioned huge storms, winds that knocked it down, sand that buried it overnight in dunes. The drastic changes in the climate must stir up hurricanes and tornadoes.’

 

‘Which they have to migrate through,’ Kelly said. Reynolds noticed that the room was strangely quiet.

 

‘Jonathon seems to have been born on one of the Treks. They don’t have much shelter because of the winds and the winters that erode away the rock. It must be hard to build up any sort of technology in an environment like that. I suppose it’s pretty inevitable that they turned out to believe in astrology. ‘

 

‘What?’ Kelly said, surprised.

 

‘Of course.’ Reynolds looked at her, completely deadpan. ‘What else should I call it? With such a premium on reading the stars correctly, so that they know the precise time of year and when the next ‘great-summer’ is coming-what else would they believe in? Astrology would be the obvious, unchallengeable religion-because it worked!’ Reynolds smiled to himself, imagining a flock of atheist giraffes vainly fighting their way through a sandstorm.

 

‘I see,’ Kelly said, clearly at a loss. The men stood around them awkwardly, not knowing quite what to say to such a barrage of unlikely ideas. Reynolds felt a surge of joy. Some lost capacity of his youth had returned: to see himself as the center of things, as the only actor onstage who moved of his own volition, spoke his own unscripted lines. This is the way the world feels: when you are winning, he thought. This was what he had lost, what Mars had taken from him during the long trip back in utter deep silence and loneliness. He had tested himself there and found some inner core, had come to think he did not need people ‘ and the fine edge of competition with them. Work and cramped rooms had warped him.

 

‘I think that’s why they are technologically retarded, despite their age. They don’t really have the feel of machines, they’ve’ never gotten used to them. When they needed a starship for their religion, they built the most awkward one imaginable that would work.’ Reynolds paused, feeling lightheaded. ‘They live inside that machine, but they don’t like it. They stink it up and make it feel like a corral. They mistrusted that tape recorder of mine. They must want to know the stars very badly, to depart so much from their nature just to reach them.’

 

Kelly’s lip stiffened and her eyes narrowed. Her face, Reynolds thought, was returning to its usual expression. ‘This is all very well, Dr. Reynolds,’ she said, and it was the old Kelly, the one he knew; the Kelly who always came out on top. ‘But it is speculation. We need facts. Their starship is crude, but it works. They must have data and photographs of stars. They know things we don’t. There are innumerable details we could only find by making the trip ourselves, and even using their ship, that will take centuries Houston tells me that bomb-thrower of theirs can’t go above one percent of light velocity. I want-’

 

‘I’ll try,’ he said. ‘but I’m afraid it won’t be easy. Whenever I try to approach a subject it does not want to discuss, the alien begins telling me the most fantastic lies.’

 

‘Oh?’ Kelly said suspiciously, and he was sorry he had mentioned that, because it had taken him another quarter-hour of explaining before she had allowed him to escape the confines of her office.

 

Now he was back home again-in his room. Rolling over, he lay flat on his back in the bed, eyes wide open and staring straight ahead at the emptiness of the darkness. He would have liked to go out and visit the observatory, but Kelly had said he was’ excused from all duties until the alien situation was resolved. He gathered she meant that as an order. She must have. One thing about Kelly: she seldom said a word unless it was meant as an order.

 

They came and woke him up. He had not intended to sleep. His room was still pitch-black, and far away there was a fist pounding furiously upon a door. Getting up, taking his time, he went and let the man inside. Then he turned on the light.

 

‘Hung and see the director,’ the man said breathlessly.

 

‘What does she want now?’ Reynolds asked.

 

‘How should I know?’

 

Reynolds shrugged and turned to go. He knew what she wanted anyway. It had to be the aliens; Jonathon was ready to see him again. Well, that was fine, he thought, entering Kelly’s office. From the turn of her expression, he saw that he had guessed correctly. And I know exactly what I’m going to tell them, he thought.

 

Somewhere in his sleep, Reynolds had made an important decision. He had decided he was going to tell Jonathon the truth.

 

 

 

Approaching the alien starship, Reynolds discovered he was no longer so strongly reminded of his old home in Sao Paulo. Now that he had actually been inside the ship and had met the creatures who resided there, his feelings had changed. This time he was struck by how remarkably this strange twisted chunk of metal resembled what a real starship ought to look like.

 

The tug banged against the side of the ship. Without having to be told, Reynolds removed his suit and went to the air lock. Kelly jumped out of her seat and dashed after him. She grabbed the camera off the deck and forced it into his hands. She wanted him to photograph the aliens. He had to admit her logic was quite impeccable. If the aliens were as unfearsome as Reynolds claimed, then a clear and honest photograph could only reassure the population of Earth; hysteria was still a worry to many politicians back home. Many people still claimed that a spaceship full of green monsters was up here orbiting the moon only a few hours’ flight from New York and Moscow. One click of the camera and this fear would be ended.

 

Reynolds had told her Jonathon would never permit a photograph to be taken, but Kelly had remained adamant.

 

‘Who cares?’ he’d asked her.

 

‘Everyone cares,’ she’d insisted.

 

‘Oh, really? I listened to the news yesterday and the aliens weren’t even mentioned. Is that hysteria?’

 

‘That’s because of Africa. Wait till the war’s over, then listen.’

 

He hadn’t argued with her then and he didn’t intend to argue with her now. He accepted the camera without a word, her voice burning his ears with last-minute instructions, and plunged ahead.

 

The smell assaulted him immediately. As he entered the spaceship, the odor seemed to rise up from nowhere and surround him. He made himself push forward. Last time, the odor had been a problem only for a short time. He was sure he could overcome it again this time.

 

It was cold in the ship. He wore only light pants and a light shirt without underwear, because last time it had been rather warm. Had Jonathon, noticing his discomfort, lowered the ship’s temperature accordingly?

 

He turned the first corner and glanced briefly at the distant ceiling. He called out, ‘Hello!’ but there was only a slight echo. He spoke again and the echo was the same, flat and hard.

 

Another turn. He was moving much faster than before. The tight passages no longer caused him to pause and think. He simply plunged ahead, trusting his own knowledge. At Kelly’s urging he was wearing a radio attached to his belt. He noticed that it was beeping furiously at him. Apparently Kelly had neglected some important last-minute direction. He didn’t mind. He already had enough orders to ignore; one less would make little difference.

 

Here was the place. Pausing in the doorway, he removed the radio, turning it off. Then he placed the camera on the floor beside it and stepped into the room.

 

Despite the chill in the air, the room was not otherwise different from before. There were two aliens standing against the farthest wall. Reynolds went straight toward them, holding his hands over his head in greeting. One was taller than the other. Reynolds spoke to it. ‘Are you Jonathon?’

 

‘Yes,’ Jonathon said, in its child’s piping voice. ‘And this is Richard.’

 

‘May I pay obeisance?’ Richard asked eagerly.

 

Reynolds nodded. ‘If you wish.’

 

Jonathon waited until Richard had regained its feet, then said; ‘We wish to discuss your star now.’

 

‘All right,’ Reynolds said. ‘But there’s something I have to tell you first.’ Saying this, for the first time since he had made his decision, he wasn’t sure. Was the truth really the best solution in this situation? Kelly wanted him to lie: tell them whatever they wanted to hear, making certain he didn’t tell them quite everything. Kelly was afraid the aliens might go sailing off to the sun once they had learned what they had come here to learn. She wanted a chance to get engineers and scientists inside their ship before the aliens left. And wasn’t this a real possibility? What if Kelly was right and the aliens went away? Then what would he say?

 

‘You want to tell us that your sun is not a conscious being,’ Jonathon said. ‘Am I correct?’

 

The problem was instantly solved. Reynolds felt no more compulsion to lie. He said, ‘Yes.’

 

‘I am afraid that you are wrong,’ said Jonathon.

 

‘We live here, don’t we? Wouldn’t we know? You asked for me because I know our sun, and I do. But there are other men on our homeworld who know far more than I do. But no one has ever discovered the least shred of evidence to support your theory.’

 

‘A theory is a guess,’ Jonathon said. ‘We do not guess; we know.’

 

‘Then,’ Reynolds said, ‘explain it to me. Because I don’t know.’ He watched the alien’s eyes carefully, waiting for the first indication of a blinking fit.

 

But Jonathon’s gaze remained steady and certain. ‘Would you like to hear of our journey?’ it asked.

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘We left our homeworld a great many of your years ago. I cannot tell you exactly when, for reasons I’m certain you can understand, but I will reveal that it was more than a century ago. In that time we have visited nine stars. The ones we would visit were chosen for us beforehand. Our priests-our leaders determined the stars that were within our reach and also able to help in our quest. You see, we have journeyed here in order to ask certain questions.’

 

‘Questions of the stars?’

 

‘Yes, of course. The questions we have are questions only a star may answer.’

 

‘And what are they?’ Reynolds asked.

 

‘We have discovered the existence of other universes parallel with our own. Certain creatures-devils and demons-have come from these universes in order to attack and capture our stars. We feel we must-’

 

‘Oh, yes,’ Reynolds said. ‘I understand. We’ve run across several of these creatures recently.’ And he blinked, matching the twitching of Jonathon’s eye. ‘They are awfully fearsome, aren’t they?’ When Jonathon stopped, he stopped too. He said, ‘You don’t have to tell me everything. But can you tell me this: these other stars you have visited, have they been able to answer any of your questions?’

 

‘Oh, yes. We have learned much from them. These stars were very great-very different from our own.’

 

‘But they weren’t able to answer all your questions?’

 

‘If they had, we would not be here now.’

 

‘And you believe our star may be able to help you?’

 

‘All may help, but the one we seek is the one that can save us.’

 

‘When do you plan to go to the sun?’

 

‘At once, ‘ Jonathon said. ‘As soon as you leave. I am afraid there is little else you can tell us.’

 

‘I’d like to ask you to stay,’ Reynolds said. And forced himself to go ahead. He knew he could not convince Jonathon without revealing everything, yet, by doing so, he might also be putting an end to all his hopes. Still, he told the alien about Kelly and, more generally, he told it what the attitude of man was toward their visit. He told it what man wished to know from them, and why.

 

Jonathon seemed amazed. It moved about the floor as Reynolds spoke, its feet clanking dully. Then it stopped and stood, its feet only a few inches apart, a position that impressed Reynolds as one of incredulous amazement. ‘Your people wish to travel farther into space? You want to visit the stars? But why, Reynolds? Your people do not believe. Why?’

 

Reynolds smiled. Each time Jonathon said something to him, he felt he knew these people-and how they thought and  reacted-a little better than he had before. There was another question he would very much have liked to ask Jonathon. How long have your people possessed the means of visiting the stars? A very long time, he imagined. Perhaps a longer time than the whole lifespan of the human race. And why hadn’t they gone before now? Reynolds thought he knew: because, until now, they had had no reason for going.

 

Now Reynolds tried to answer Jonathon’s question. If anyone could, it should be him. ‘We wish to go to the stars because we are a dissatisfied people. Because we do not live a very long time as individuals, we feel we must place an important part of our lives into the human race as a whole. In a sense, we surrender a portion of our individual person in return for a sense of greater immortality. What is an accomplishment for man as a race is also an accomplishment for each individual man. And what are these accomplishments? Basically this: anything a man does that no other man has done before-whether it is good or evil or neither one or both-is considered by us to be a great accomplishment.’

 

And-to add emphasis to the point-he blinked once.

 

Then, holding his eyes steady, he said, ‘I want you to teach me to talk to the stars. I want you to stay here around the moon long enough to do that.’

 

Instantly Jonathon said, ‘No.’

 

There was an added force to the way it said it, an emphasis its voice had not previously possessed. Then Reynolds realized what that was: at the same moment Jonathon had spoken, Richard too had said, ‘No.’

 

‘Then you may be doomed to fail,’ Reynolds said. ‘Didn’t I tell you? I know our star better than any man available to you. Teach me to talk to the stars and I may be able to help you with this one. Or would you prefer to continue wandering the galaxy forever, failing to find what you seek wherever you go?’

 

‘You are a sensible man, Reynolds. You may be correct. We will ask our home star and see.’

 

‘Do that. And if it says yes and I promise to do what you wish, then I must ask you to promise me something in return. I want you to allow a team of our scientists and technicians to enter and inspect your ship. You will answer their questions to the best of your ability. And that means truthfully.’

 

‘We always tell the truth,’ Jonathon said, blinking savagely.

 

 

 

The moon had made one full circuit of the Earth since Reynolds’ initial meeting with the aliens, and he was quite satisfied with the progress he had made up to now, especially during the past ten days after Kelly had stopped accompanying him in his daily shuttles to and from the orbiting starship. As a matter of fact, in all that time, he had not had a single face-to-face meeting with her and they had talked on the phone only once. And she wasn’t here now either, which was strange, since it was noon and she always ate here with the others.

 

Reynolds had a table to himself in the cafeteria. The food was poor, but it always was, and he was used to that by now. What did bother him, now that he was thinking about it, was Kelly’s absence. Most days he skipped lunch himself. He tried to remember the last time he had come here. It was more than a week ago, he remembered-more than ten days ago. He didn’t like the sound of that answer.

 

Leaning over, he attracted the attention of a girl at an adjoining table. He knew her vaguely. Her father had been an important wheel in NASA when Reynolds was still a star astronaut. He couldn’t remember the man’s name. His daughter had a tiny cute face and a billowing body about two sizes too big for the head. Also, she had a brain that was much too limited for much of anything. She worked in the administrative section, which meant she slept with most of the men on the base at one time or another.

 

‘Have you seen Kelly?’ he asked her.

 

‘Must be in her office.’

 

‘No, I mean when was the last time you saw her here?’

 

‘In here? Oh-’ The girl thought for a moment. ‘Doesn’t she eat with the other chiefs?’

 

Kelly never ate with the other chiefs. She always ate in the cafeteria-for morale purposes-and the fact that the girl did not remember having seen her meant that it had been several days at least since Kelly had last put in an appearance. Leaving his lunch where it lay, Reynolds got up, nodded politely at the, girl, who stared at him as if he were a freak; and hurried away.

 

It wasn’t a long walk, but he ran. He had no intention of going to see Kelly, He knew that would prove useless. Instead, he was going to see John Sims. At fifty-two, Sims was the second oldest man in the base. Like Reynolds, he was a former astronaut. In 1987, when Reynolds, then a famous man, was living in Sao Paulo, Sims had commanded the first (and only) truly successful Mars expedition. During those few months, the world had heard his name, but people forgot quickly, and Sims was one of the things they forgot. He had never done more than what he was: expected to do; the threat of death had never come near Sims’s expedition. Reynolds, on the other hand, had failed. On Mars with him, three men had died. Yet it was he-Reynolds, the failure-who had been the hero, not Sims.

 

And maybe I’m a hero again, he thought as he knocked evenly on the door to Sims’s office. Maybe down there the world is once more reading about, me daily. He hadn’t listened to a news broadcast since the night before his first trip to the ship. Had the story been released to the public yet? He couldn’t see any reason why it should be suppressed, but that seldom was important. He would ask Sims. Sims would know.

 

The door opened and Reynolds went inside. Sims was a huge man who wore his black hair in a crewcut. The style had been out of fashion for thirty or forty years; Reynolds doubted there was another crewcut man in the universe. But he could not imagine Sims any other way.

 

‘What’s wrong?’ Sims asked, guessing accurately the first time. He led Reynolds to a chair and sat him down. The office was big but empty. A local phone sat upon the desk along with a couple of daily status reports. Sims was assistant administrative chief, whatever that meant. Reynolds had never understood the functions of the position, if any. But there was one thing that was clear: Sims knew more about the inner workings of the moon base than any other man. And that included the director as well.

 

‘I want to know about Vonda,’ Reynolds said. With Sims, everything stood on a first-name basis. Vonda was Vonda Kelly. The name tasted strangely upon Reynolds’ lips. ‘Why isn’t she eating at the cafeteria?’

 

Sims answered unhesitantly. ‘Because she’s afraid to leave her desk.’

 

‘It has something to do with the aliens?’

 

‘It does, but I shouldn’t tell you what. She doesn’t want you to know. ‘

 

‘Tell me. Please.’ His desperation cleared the smile from Sims’s lips. And he had almost added: for old times’ sake. He was glad he had controlled himself.

 

‘The main reason is the war,’ Sims said. ‘If it starts, she wants to know at once.’

 

‘Will it?’

 

Sims shook his head. ‘I’m smart but I’m not God. As usual, I imagine everything will work out as long as no one makes a stupid mistake. The worst will be a small local war lasting may a month. But how long can you depend upon politicians to ac intelligently? It goes against the grain with diem.’

 

‘But what about the aliens?’

 

‘Well, as I said, that’s part of it too.’ Sims stuck his pipe in his mouth. Reynolds had never seen it lit, never seen hum smoking it, but the pipe was invariable there between his teeth.

 

‘A group of men are coming here from Washington, arriving tomorrow. They want to talk with your pets. It seems nobody least of all Vonda-is very happy with your progress.’

 

‘I am.’

 

Sims shrugged, as if to say: that is of no significance.

 

‘The aliens will never agree to see them,’ Reynolds said.

 

‘How are they going to stop them? Withdraw the welcome mat: Turn out the lights? That won’t work.’

 

‘But that will ruin everything. All my work up until now.’

 

‘What work?’ Sims got up and walked around his desk until he stood hovering above Reynolds. ‘As far as anybody can see, you haven’t accomplished a damn thing since you went up there. People want results, Bradley, not a lot of noise. All you’ve given anyone is the noise. This isn’t a private game of yours. This is one of the most significant events in the history of the human race. If anyone ought to know that, it’s you. Christ.’ And he wandered back to his chair again, jiggling his pipe.

 

‘What is it they want from me?’ Reynolds said. ‘Look-I got them what they asked for. The aliens have agreed to let a team of scientists study their ship.’

 

‘We want more than that now. Among other things, we want an alien to come down and visit Washington. Think of the propaganda value of than, and right now is a time when we damn well need something like that. Here we are, the only country with sense enough to stay on the moon. And being here has finally paid off in a way the politicians can understand. They’ve given you a month in which to play around-after all, you’re a hero and the publicity is good-but how much longer do you expect them to wait? No, they want action and I’m afraid they want it now.’

 

Reynolds was ready to go. He had found out as much as he was apt to find here. And he already knew what he was going to have to do. He would go and find Kelly and tell her she had to keep the men from Earth away from the aliens. If she wouldn’t agree, then he would go up and tell the aliens and they would leave for the sun. But what if Kelly wouldn’t let him go? He had to consider that. He knew; he would tell her this: If you don’t let me see them, if you try to keep me away, they’ll know something is wrong and they’ll leave without a backward glance. Maybe he could tell her the aliens were telepaths; he doubted she would know any better.

 

He had the plan all worked out so that it could not fail.

 

He had his hand on the doorknob when Sims called him back. ‘There’s another thing I better tell you, Bradley.’

 

‘All right. What’s that?’

 

‘Vonda. She’s on your side. She told them to stay away, but it wasn’t enough. She’s been relieved of duty. A replacement is coming with the others.’

 

‘Oh,’ said Reynolds.

 

 

 

Properly suited, Reynolds sat in the cockpit of the shuttle tug watching the pilot beside him going through the ritual of a final inspection prior to take-off. The dead desolate surface of the moon stretched briefly away from where the tug sat, the horizon so near that it almost looked touchable: Reynolds liked the moon. If he had not, he would never have elected to return here to stay. It was the Earth he hated. Better than the moon was space itself, the dark endless void beyond the reach of man’s ugly grasping hands. That was where Reynolds was going now. Up. Out. Into the void. He was impatient to leave.

 

The pilot’s voice came to him softly through the suit radio, a low murmur, not loud enough for him to understand what the man was saying. The pilot was talking to himself as he worked, using the rumble of his own voice as a way of patterning his mind so that it would not lose concentration. The pilot was a young man in his middle twenties, probably on loan from the Air Force, a lieutenant or, at most, a junior Air Force captain. He was barely old enough to remember when space had really been a frontier. Mankind had decided to go out, and Reynolds had been one of the men chosen to take the giant steps, but now it was late-the giant steps of twenty years ago were mere tentative contusions in the dust of the centuries-and man was coming back. From where he sat, looking out, Reynolds could see exactly 50 percent of the present American space program: the protruding bubble of the moon base. The other half was the orbiting space lab that circled the Earth itself, a battered relic of the expansive seventies. Well beyond the nearby horizon, maybe a hundred miles away, there had once been another bubble, but it was gone now. The brave men who had lived and worked and struggled and died and survived there-they were all gone too. Where? The Russians still maintained an orbiting space station, so some of their former moon colonists were undoubtedly there, but where were the rest? In Siberia? Working there? Hadn’t the Russians decided that Siberia-the old barless prison state of the czars and early Communists-was a more practical frontier than the moon?

 

And weren’t they maybe right? Reynolds did not like to think so, for he had poured his life into this-into the moon and the void beyond. But at times, like now, peering through the artificial window of his suit, seeing the bare bubble of the base clinging to the edge of this dead world like a wart on an old woman’s face, starkly vulnerable, he found it hard to see the point of it. He was an old enough man to recall the first time he had ever been moved by the spirit of conquest. As a schoolboy, he remembered the first time men conquered Mount Everest-it was around 1956 or ‘57-and he had religiously followed the newspaper reports. Afterward, a movie had been made, and watching that film, seeing the shadows of pale mountaineers clinging to the edge of that white god, he had decided that was what he wanted to be. And he had never been taught otherwise: only by the time he was old enough to act, all the mountains had long since been conquered. And he had ended up as an astronomer, able if nothing else to gaze outward at the distant shining peaks of the void, and from there he had been pointed toward space. So he had gone to Mars and become famous, but fame had turned him inward, so that now, without the brilliance of his past, he would have been nobody but another of those anonymous old men who dot the cities of the world, inhabiting identically bleak book-lined rooms, eating daily in bad restaurants, their minds always a billion miles away from the dead shells of their bodies.

 

‘We can go now, Dr. Reynolds,’ the pilot was saying.

 

Reynolds grunted in reply, his mind several miles distant from his waiting body. He was thinking that there was something, after all. How could he think in terms of pointlessness and futility when he alone had actually seen them with his own eyes?

 

Creatures, intelligent beings, born far away, light-years from the insignificant world of man? Didn’t that in itself prove something? Yes. He was sure that it did. But what?

 

The tug lifted with a murmur from the surface of the moon. Crouched deeply within his seat, Reynolds thought that it wouldn’t be long now.

 

And they found us, he thought, we did not find them. And when had they gone into space? Late. Very late. At a moment in their history comparable to man a hundred thousand years from now. They had avoided space until a pressing reason had come for venturing out, and then they had gone. He remembered that he had been unable to explain to Jonathon why man wanted to visit the stars when he did not believe in the divinity of the suns. Was there a reason? And, if so, did it make sense?

 

The journey was not long.

 

It didn’t smell. The air ran clean and sharp and sweet through the corridors, and if there was any odor to it, the odor was one of purity and freshness, almost pine needles or mint. The air was good for his spirits. As soon as Reynolds came aboard the starship, his depression and melancholy were forgotten. Perhaps he was only letting the apparent grimness of the situation get the better of him. It had been too long a time since he’d last had to fight. Jonathon would know what to do. The alien was more than three hundred years old, a product of a civilization and culture that had reached its maturity at a time when man was not yet man, when he was barely a skinny undersized ape, a carrion eater upon the hot plains of Africa.

 

When Reynolds reached the meeting room, he saw that Jonathon and Richard were not alone this time. The third alien Reynolds sensed it was someone important-was introduced as Vergnan. No adopted Earth name for it.

 

‘This is ours who best knows the stars,’ Jonathon said. ‘It has spoken with yours and hopes it may be able to assist you. ‘

 

Reynolds had almost forgotten that part. The sudden pressures of the past few hours had driven everything else from his mind. His training. His unsuccessful attempts to speak to the stars. He had failed. Jonathon had been unable to teach him, but he thought that was probably because he simply did not believe.

 

‘Now we shall leave you,’ Jonathon said.

 

‘But-’ said Reynolds.

 

‘We are not permitted to stay.’

 

‘But there’s something I must tell you.’

 

It was too late. Jonathon and Richard headed for the corridor, walking with surprising gracefulness. Their long necks bobbed, their skinny legs shook, but they still managed to move as swiftly and sleekly as any cat, almost rippling as they went.

 

Reynolds turned toward Vergnan. Should he tell this one about the visitors from Earth? He did not think so. Vergnan was’ old, his skin much paler than the others’, almost totally hairless.

 

His eyes were wrinkled and one ear was tom.

 

Vergnan’s eyes were closed.

 

Remembering his lessons, Reynolds too closed his eyes.

 

And kept them closed. In the dark, time passed more quickly than it seemed, but he was positive that five minutes went by.

 

Then the alien began to speak. No-he did not speak; he, simply sang, his voice trilling with the high searching notes of a; well-tuned violin, dashing up and down the scale, a pleasant: sound, soothing, cool. Reynolds tried desperately to concentrates upon the song, ignoring the existence of all other sensations, recognizing nothing and no one but Vergnan. Reynolds ignored the taste and smell of the air and the distant throbbing of the ship’s machinery. The alien sang deeper and clearer, his voice rising higher and higher, directed now at the stars. Jonathan, too, had sung, but never like this. When Jonathon sang, its voice had dashed away in a frightened search, shifting and darting wildly about, seeking vainly a place to land. Vergnan sang’ without doubt. It-it-was certain. Reynolds sensed the over whelming maleness of this being, his patriarchal strength and dignity. His voice and song never straggled or wavered. He’ knew always exactly where he was going.

 

Had he felt something? Reynolds did not know. If so, then what? No, no, he thought, and concentrated more fully upon the voice, alive, renewed, resurrected. I’m anew man. Reynolds is dead. He is another. These thoughts came to him like the whispering words of another. Go, Reynolds. Fly. Leave. Fly.

 

Then he realized that he was singing too. He could not imitate Vergnan, for his voice was too alien, but he tried and heard his own voice coming frighteningly near, almost fading into and being lost within the constant tones of the other. The two voices suddenly became one-mingling indiscriminately-merging and that one voice rose higher, floating, then higher again, rising, farther, going farther out-farther and deeper.

 

Then he felt it. Reynolds. And he knew it for what it was.

 

The Sun.

 

More ancient than the whole of the Earth itself. A greater, vaster being, more powerful and knowing. Divinity as a ball of heat and energy.

 

Reynolds spoke to the stars.

 

And, knowing this, balking at the concept, he drew back instinctively in fear, his voice faltering, dwindling, collapsing, Reynolds scurried back, seeking the Earth, but, grasping, pulling, Vergnan drew him on. Beyond the shallow exterior light of the sun, he witnessed the totality of that which lay hidden within. The core. The impenetrable darkness within. Fear gripped him once more. He begged to be allowed to flee. Tears streaking his face with the heat of fire, he pleaded. Vergnan benignly drew him on. Come forward come-see-know. Forces coiled to a point …

 

And he saw.

 

Could he describe it as evil? Thought was an absurdity. Not thinking, instead sensing and feeling, he experienced the wholeness of this entity-a star-the sun-and saw that it was not evil. He sensed the sheer totality of its opening nothingness. Sensation was absent. Colder than cold, more terrifying than hate, more sordid than fear, blacker than evil. The vast inner whole nothingness of everything that was anything, of all.

 

I have seen enough. No!

 

Yes, cried Vergnan, agreeing.

 

To stay a moment longer would mean never returning again. Vergnan knew this too, and he released Reynolds, allowed him to go.

 

And still he sang. The song was different from before. Struggling within himself, Reynolds sang too, trying to match his voice to that of the alien. It was easier this time. The two voices merged, mingled, became one.

 

And then Reynolds awoke.

 

He was lying on the floor in the starship, the rainbow walls swirling brightly around him.

 

Vergnan stepped over him. He saw the alien’s protruding belly as he passed. He did not look down or back, but continued onward, out the door, gone, as quick and cold as the inner soul of the sun itself. For a brief moment, he hated Vergnan more deeply than he had ever hated anything in his life. Then he sat up, gripping himself, forcing a return to sanity. I am all right now, he insisted. I am back. I am alive. The walls ceased spinning. At his back the floor shed its clinging coat of roughness. The shadows in the comers of his eyes dispersed.

 

Jonathon entered the room alone. ‘Now you have seen,’ it said, crossing the room and assuming its usual place beside the wall.

 

‘Yes,’ said Reynolds, not attempting to stand.

 

‘And now you know why we search. For centuries our star was kind to us, loving, but now it too-like yours-is changed.’

 

‘You are looking for a new home?’

 

‘True. ‘

 

‘And?’

 

‘And we find nothing. All are alike. We have seen nine, visiting all. They are nothing. ‘

 

‘Then you leave here too?’

 

‘We must, but first we will approach your star. Not until we have drawn so close that we have seen everything, not until then can we dare admit our failure. This time we thought we had succeeded. When we met you, this is what we thought, for you are unlike your star. We felt that the star could not produce you-or your race without the presence of benevolence. But it is gone now. We meet only the blackness. We struggle to penetrate to a deeper core. And fail.’

 

‘I am not typical of my race,’ Reynolds said.

 

‘We shall see.’

 

He remained with Jonathon until he felt strong enough to stand. The floor hummed. Feeling it with moist palms, he planted a kiss upon the creased cold metal. A wind swept through the room, carrying a hint of returned life. Jonathon faded, rippled, returned to a sharp outline of crisp reality. Reynolds was suddenly hungry and the oily taste of meat swirled up through his nostrils. The cords in his neck stood out with the strain until, gradually, the tension passed from him.

 

He left and went to the tug. During the great fall to the silver moon he said not a word, thought not a thought. The trip was long.

 

Reynolds lay on his back in the dark room, staring upward at the faint shadow of a ceiling, refusing to see.

 

Hypnosis? Or a more powerful alien equivalent of the same? Wasn’t that, as an explanation, more likely than admitting that he had indeed communicated with sun, discovering a force greater than evil, blacker than black? Or-here was another theory: wasn’t it possible that these aliens, because of the conditions on their own world, so thoroughly accepted the consciousness of the stars that they could make him believe as well? Similar things had happened on Earth. Religious miracles, the curing of diseases through faith, men who claimed to have spoken with God. What about flying saucers and little green men and all the other incidents of mass hysteria? Wasn’t that the answer here? Hysteria? Hypnosis? Perhaps even a drug of some sort: a drug released into the air. Reynolds had plenty of possible solutions-he could choose one or all-but he decided that he did not really care.

 

He had gone into this thing knowing exactly what he was doing and now that it had happened he did not regret the experience. He had found a way of fulfilling his required mission while at the same time experiencing something personal that no other man would ever know. Whether he had actually seen the sun was immaterial; the experience, as such, was still his own. Nobody could ever take that away from him.

 

It was some time after this when he realized that a fist was pounding on the door. He decided he might as well ignore that, because sometimes when you ignored things, they went away. But the knocking did not go away-it only got louder. Finally Reynolds got up. He opened the door.

 

Kelly glared at his nakedness and said, ‘Did I wake you?’

 

‘No.’

 

‘May I come in?’

 

‘No.’

 

‘I’ve got something to tell you.’ She forced her way past him, sliding into the room. Then Reynolds saw that she wasn’t alone. A big, red-faced beefy man followed, forcing his way into the room too.

 

Reynolds shut the door, cutting off the corridor light, but the big man went over and turned on the overhead light. ‘All right,’ he said, as though it were an order.

 

‘Who the hell are you?’ Reynolds said.

 

‘Forget him,’ Kelly said. ‘I’ll talk.’

 

‘Talk,’ said Reynolds.

 

‘The committee is here. The men from Washington. They arrived an hour ago and I’ve kept them busy since. You may not believe this, but I’m on your side.’

 

‘Sims told me.’

 

‘He told me he told you. ‘

 

‘I knew he would. Mind telling me why? He didn’t know.’

 

‘Because I’m not an idiot,’ Kelly said. ‘I’ve known enough petty bureaucrats in my life. Those things up there are alien beings. You can’t send these fools up there to go stomping all over their toes.’

 

Reynolds gathered this would not be over soon. He put on his pants.

 

‘This is George O’Hara,’ Kelly said. ‘He’s the new director. ‘

 

‘I want to offer my resignation,’ Reynolds said casually, fixing the snaps of his shirt.

 

‘You have to accompany us to the starship,’ O’Hara said.

 

‘I want you to,’ Kelly said. ‘You owe this to someone. If not me, then the aliens. If you had told me the truth, this might never have happened. If anyone is to blame for this mess, it’s you, Reynolds. Why won’t you tell me what’s been going on up there the last month? It has to be something.’

 

‘It is,’ Reynolds said. ‘Don’t laugh, but I was trying to talk to the sun. I told you that’s why the aliens came here. They’re taking a cruise of the galaxy, pausing here and there to chat with the stars.’

 

‘Don’t be frivolous. And, yes, you told me all that.’

 

‘I have to be frivolous. Otherwise, it sounds too ridiculous. I made an agreement with them. I wanted to learn to talk to the sun. I told them, since I lived here, I could find out what they wanted to know better than they could. I could tell they were doubtful, but they let me go ahead. In return for my favor, when I was done, whether I succeeded or failed, they would give us what we wanted. A team of men could go and freely examine their ship. They would describe their voyage to us-where they had been, what they had found. They promised cooperation in return for my chat with the sun.’

 

‘So, then nothing happened?’

 

‘I didn’t say that. I talked with sun today. And saw it. And now I’m not going to do anything except sit on my hands. You can take it from here.’

 

‘What are you talking about?’

 

He knew he could not answer that. ‘I failed,’ he said. ‘I didn’t find out anything they didn’t know.’

 

‘Well, will you go with us or not? That’s all I want to know right now.’ She was losing her patience, but there was also more than a minor note of pleading in her voice. He knew he ought to feel satisfied hearing that, but he didn’t.

 

‘Oh, hell,’ Reynolds said. ‘Yes-all right-I will go. But don’t ask me why. Just give me an hour to get ready.’

 

‘Good man,’ O’Hara said, beaming happily.

 

Ignoring him, Reynolds opened his closets and began tossing clothes and other belongings into various boxes and crates.

 

‘What do you think you’ll need all that for?’ Kelly asked him.

 

‘I don’t think I’m coming back,’ Reynolds said.

 

‘They won’t hurt you,’ she said.

 

‘No. I won’t be coming back because I won’t be wanting to come back.’

 

‘You can’t do that,’ O’Hara said.

 

‘Sure I can,’ said Reynolds.

 

It took the base’s entire fleet of seven shuttle tugs to ferry the delegation from Washington up to the starship. At that, a good quarter of the group had to be left behind for lack of room. Reynolds had requested and received permission to call the starship prior to departure, so the aliens were aware of what was coming up to meet them. They had not protested, but Reynolds knew they wouldn’t, at least not over the radio. Like almost all mechanical or electronic gadgets, a radio was a fearsome object to them.

 

Kelly and Reynolds arrived with the first group and entered the air lock. At intervals of a minute or two, the others arrived. When the entire party was clustered in the lock, the last tug holding to the hull in preparation for the return trip, Reynolds signaled that it was time to move out.

 

‘Wait a minute,’ one of the men called. ‘We’re not all here. Acton and Dodd went back to the tug to get suits.’

 

‘Then they’ll have to stay there,’ Reynolds said. ‘The air is pure here-nobody needs a suit.’

 

‘But,’ said another man, pinching his nose. ‘This smell. It’s awful.’

 

Reynolds smiled. He had barely noticed the odor. Compared to the stench of the first few days, this was nothing today. ‘The aliens won’t talk if you’re wearing suits. They have a taboo against artificial communication. The smell gets better as you go farther inside. Until then, hold your nose, breathe through your mouth. ‘

 

‘It’s making me almost sick,’ confided a man at Reynolds’ elbow. ‘You’re sure what you say is true, Doctor?’

 

‘Cross my heart,’ Reynolds said. The two men who had left to fetch the suits returned. Reynolds wasted another minute lecturing them.

 

‘Stop enjoying yourself so much,’ Kelly whispered when they were at last under way.

 

Before they reached the first of the tight passages where crawling was necessary, three men had dropped away, dashing back toward the tug. Working from a hasty map given him by the aliens, he was leading the party toward a section of the ship where he had never before. The walk was less difficult than usual. In most places a man could walk comfortably and the ceilings were high enough to accommodate the aliens themselves. Reynolds ignored the occasional shouted exclamation from the men behind. He steered a silent course toward his destination.

 

The room, when they reached it, was huge, big as a basketball gymnasium, the ceiling lost in the deep shadows above. Turning, Reynolds counted the aliens present: fifteen ... twenty ... thirty ... forty ... forty-five ... forty-six. That had to be about all. He wondered if this was the full crew.

 

Then he counted his own people: twenty-two. Better than he had expected-only six lost en route, victims of the smell.

 

He spoke directly to the alien who stood in front of the others.

 

‘Greetings,’ he said. The alien wasn’t Vergnan, but it could have been Jonathon.

 

From behind, he heard, ‘They’re just like giraffes.’

 

‘And they even seem intelligent,’ said another.

 

‘Exceedingly so. Their eyes.’

 

‘And friendly too.’

 

‘Hello, Reynolds,’ the alien said. ‘Are these the ones?’

 

‘Jonathon?’ asked Reynolds.

 

‘Yes. ‘

 

‘These are the ones.’

 

‘They are your leaders-they wish to question my people. ‘

 

‘They do.’

 

‘May I serve as our spokesman in order to save time?’

 

‘Of course,’ Reynolds said. He turned and faced his party, looking from face to face, hoping to spot a single glimmer of intelligence, no matter how minute. But he found nothing. ‘Gentlemen?’ he said. ‘You heard?’

 

‘His name is Jonathon?’ said one.

 

‘It is a convenient expression. Do you have a real question?’

 

‘Yes,’ the man said. He continued speaking to Reynolds. ‘Where is your homeworld located?’

 

Jonathon ignored the man’s rudeness and promptly named a star.

 

‘Where is that?’ the man asked, speaking directly to the alien now.

 

Reynolds told him it lay some thirty light-years from Earth. As a star, it was very much like the sun, though somewhat larger.

 

‘Exactly how many miles in a light-year?’ a man wanted to know.

 

Reynolds tried to explain. The man claimed he understood, though Reynolds remained skeptical.

 

It was time for another question.

 

‘Why have you come to our world?’

 

‘Our mission is purely one of exploration and discovery,’ Jonathon said.

 

‘Have you discovered any other intelligent races besides our own?’

 

‘Yes. Several.’

 

This answer elicited a murmur of surprise from the men. Reynolds wondered who they were, how they had been chosen for this mission. Not what they were, but who. What made them tick. He knew what they were: politicians, NASA bureaucrats, a sprinkling of real scientists. But who?

 

‘Are any of these people aggressive?’ asked a man, almost certainly a politician. ‘Do they pose a threat to you-or to us?’

 

‘No,’ Jonathon said. ‘None.’

 

Reynolds was barely hearing the questions and answers now.

 

His attention was focused upon Jonathon’s eyes. He had stopped blinking now. The last two questions-the ones dealing with intelligent life forms-he had told the truth. Reynolds thought he was beginning to understand. He had underestimated these creatures. Plainly, they had encountered other races during their travels before coming to Faith. They were experienced Jonathon was lying-yes-but unlike before, he was lying well, only when the truth would not suffice.

 

‘How long do you intend to remain in orbit about our moon?’

 

‘Until the moment you and your friends leave our craft. Then we shall depart.’

 

This set up an immediate clamor among the men. Waving his arms furiously, Reynolds attempted to silence them. The man who had been unfamiliar with the term ‘light-year’ shouted out an invitation for Jonathon to visit Earth.

 

This did what Reynolds himself could not do. The others fell silent in order to hear Jonathon’s reply.

 

‘It is impossible,’ Jonathon said. ‘Our established schedule requires us to depart immediately.’

 

‘Is it this man’s fault?’ demanded a voice. ‘He should have asked you himself long before now.’

 

‘No, ‘ Jonathon said. ‘I could not have come-or any of my people-because we were uncertain of your peaceful intentions. Not until we came to know Reynolds well did we fully comprehend the benevolence of your race.’ The alien blinked rapidly now.

 

He stopped during the technical questions. The politicians and bureaucrats stepped back to speak among themselves and the scientists came forward. Reynolds was amazed at the intelligence of their questions. To this extent at least, the expedition had not been wholly a farce.’

 

Then the questions were over and all the men came forward to listen to Jonathon’s last words.

 

‘We will soon return to our homeworld and when we do we shall tell the leaders of our race of the greatness and glory of the human race. In passing here, we have come to know your star and through it you people who live beneath its soothing rays. I consider your visit here a personal honor to me as an individual. I am sure my brothers share my pride and only regret an inability to utter their gratitude. ‘

 

Then Jonathon ceased blinking and looked hard at Reynolds. ‘Will you be going too?’

 

‘No,’ Reynolds said. ‘I’d like to talk to you alone if I can.’

 

‘Certainly,’ Jonathon said.

 

Several of the men in the party protested to Kelly or O’Hara, but there was nothing they could do. One by one they left the chamber to wait in the corridor. Kelly was the last to leave. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ she cautioned.

 

‘I won’t,’ he said.

 

When the men had gone, Jonathon took Reynolds away from the central room. It was only a brief walk to the old room where they had always met before. As if practicing a routine, Jonathon promptly marched to the farthest wall and stood there waiting. Reynolds smiled. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

 

‘You are welcome.’

 

‘For lying to them. I was afraid they would offend you with their stupidity. I thought you would show your contempt by lying badly, offending them in return. I underestimated you. You handled them very well.’

 

‘But you have something you wish to ask of me?’

 

‘Yes,’ Reynolds said. ‘I want you to take me away with you.’

 

As always, Jonathon remained expressionless. Still, for a long time, it said nothing. Then, ‘Why do you wish this? We shall never return here.’

 

‘I don’t care. I told you before: I am not typical of my race. I can never be happy here.’

 

‘But are you typical of my race? Would you not be unhappy with us?’

 

‘I don’t know. But I’d like to try.’

 

‘It is impossible,’ Jonathon said.

 

‘But-but-why?’

 

‘Because we have neither the time nor the abilities to care for you. Our mission is a most desperate one. Already, during our absence, our homeworld may have gone mad. We must hurry. Our time is growing brief. And you will not be of any help to us. I am sorry, but you know that is true.’

 

‘I can talk to the stars.’

 

‘No,’ Jonathon said. ‘You cannot.’

 

‘But I did.’

 

‘Vergnan did. Without him, you could not.’

 

‘Your answer is final? There’s no one else I can ask? The captain?’

 

‘I am the captain.’

 

Reynolds nodded. He had carried his suitcases and crates all this way and now he would have to haul them home again. Home? No, not home. Only the moon. ‘Could you find out if they left a tug for me?’ he asked.

 

‘Yes. One moment.’

 

Jonathon rippled lightly away, disappearing into the corridor. Reynolds turned and looked at the walls. Again, as he stared, the rainbow patterns appeared to shift and dance and swirl of their own volition. Watching this, he felt sad, but his sadness was not that of grief. It was the sadness of emptiness and aloneness. This emptiness had so long been a part of him that he sometimes forgot it was there. He knew it now. He knew, whether consciously aware of it or not, that he had spent the past ten years of his life searching vainly for a way of filling this void. Perhaps even more than that: perhaps his whole life had been nothing more than a search for that one moment of real completion. Only twice had he ever really come close. The first time had been on Mars. When he had lived and watched while the others had died. Then he had not been alone or empty. And the other time had been right here in this very room-with Vergnan. Only twice in his life had he been allowed to approach the edge of true meaning. Twice in fifty-eight long and endless years. Would it ever happen again? When? How?

 

Jonathon returned, pausing in the doorway. ‘A pilot is there,’ it said.

 

Reynolds went toward the door, ready to leave. ‘Are you still planning to visit our sun?’ he asked.

 

‘Oh, yes. We shall continue trying, searching. We know nothing else. You do not believe-even-after what Vergnan showed you-do you, Reynolds? I sympathize. All of us-even I-sometimes we have doubts. ‘

 

Reynolds continued forward into the corridor. Behind, he heard a heavy clipping noise and turned to see Jonathon coming after him. He waited for the alien to join him and then they walked together. In the narrow corridor, there was barely room for both.

 

Reynolds did not try to talk. As far as he could see, there was nothing left to be said that might possibly be said in so short a time as that which remained. Better to say nothing, he thought, than to say too little.

 

The air lock was open. Past it, Reynolds glimpsed the squat bulk of the shuttle tug clinging to the creased skin of the starship.

 

There was nothing left to say. Turning to Jonathon, he said, ‘Goodbye,’ and as he said it; for the first time he wondered about what he was going back to. More than likely, he would find himself a hero once again. A celebrity. But that was all right: fame was fleeting; it was bearable. Two hundred forty thousand miles was still a great distance. He would be all right.

 

As if reading his thoughts, Jonathon asked, ‘Will you be remaining here or will you return to your homeworld?’

 

The question surprised Reynolds; it was the first time the alien had ever evidenced a personal interest in him. ‘I’ll stay here. I’m happier.’

 

‘And there will be a new director?’

 

‘Yes. How did you know that? But I think I’m going to be famous again. I can get Kelly retained.’

 

‘You could have the job yourself,’ Jonathon said.

 

‘But I don’t want it. How do you know all this? About Kelly and so on?’

 

‘I listen to the stars,’ Jonathon said in its high warbling voice.

 

‘They are alive, aren’t they?’ Reynolds said suddenly.

 

‘Of course. We are permitted to see them for what they are. You do not. But you are young.’

 

‘They are balls of ionized gas. Thermonuclear reactions.’

 

The alien moved, shifting its neck as though a joint lay in the middle of it. Reynolds did not understand the gesture. Nor would he ever. Time had run out at last.

 

Jonathon said, ‘When they come to you, they assume a disguise you can see. That is how they spend their time in this universe. Think of them as doorways.’

 

‘Through which I cannot pass.’

 

‘Yes. ‘

 

Reynolds smiled, nodded and passed into the lock. It contracted behind him, engulfing the image of his friend. A few moments of drifting silence, then the other end of the lock furled open.

 

The pilot was a stranger. Ignoring the man, Reynolds dressed, strapped himself down and thought about Jonathon. What was it that it had said? I listen to the stars. Yes, and the stars had told it that Kelly had been fired?

 

He did not like that part. But the part he liked even less was this: when it said it, Jonathon had not blinked.

 

(1) It had been telling the truth. (2) It could lie without flicking a lash.

 

Choose one.

 

Reynolds did, and the tug fell toward the moon.

 

<<Contents>>

 

* * * *

 

WHEN THE VERTICAL WORLD BECOMES HORIZONTAL

 

by Alexei Panshin

 

 

Alexei Panshin, who won a Nebula Award for his novel Rite of Passage, contributes a warm, happy story about the day the world’s consciousness changed. This is an odd story, unlike any you’ve read before in science fiction; you could call it a very far out children’s story. Or maybe it’s an unusually sophisticated story for grown-ups.

 

* * * *

 

THE RAIN is coming closer, sending the heat running before it. I can see the rain, hanging like twists of smoke over the roofs. The city will be scrubbed clean.

 

This is an acute moment. The wind is raising gooseflesh on my arms. I can feel the thunder as electricity and the electricity as thunder. Down in the street I hear voices calling around the corner. I think I even hear the music.

 

This is the moment. I know it’s here.

 

I’ve been waiting so long. I’ll savor this last bit of waiting. The dark is so dark, so close-wrapped. The electricity is white. The streets are going to steam.

 

There has never been a better moment since the world began. This is it! It’s here.

 

It’s never happened since the last time, and it’s going to happen now. The beginning of the world was a better moment. It was exalting. As nearly as I can tell, there have been two good moments since. I missed them both.

 

I’m going to be here for this one.

 

So are you.

 

I know the sun is baking the sidewalks. The heat is now. But listen with your skin. Rain is in the air.

 

It’s going to be good. When you see the rain and steam and sun and people all mixed together in the afternoon, you’ll know their tune is the one that’s been in your head all along. Close your eyes. Feel the wind rising.

 

I’ll tell you how good it’s going to be. I’ll tell you what it was like for someone who knew even less than you do about what is happening.

 

Woody Asenion was raised in the largest closet of an apartment at 206 W. 104th St. in Manhattan. Once there had been four—Papa, Granny, Mama and him—but now there were only two. There was room now for Woody to stretch out, but at night he still slept at Papa’s feet, just like always, for the comfort of just like always.

 

Woody had never been out of the closet without permission. Well, once. When he was very small he had slipped out into the apartment one night and wandered the aisles alone until the blinking and bubbling became too frightening to bear and the robot found him, shook a finger at him and led him back home. He had never done it again.

 

But on this day, the vertical world was turning horizontal. People were no longer cringing and bullying. They were starting to think of other things.

 

It was already this close: When Woody’s father, who was very vertical, flung the door of the closet open while in the grip of an intense excitement, Woody had his hand on the knob and the knob three quarters turned. That was a quarter-turn more than he usually dared when he toyed with strange thoughts of an afternoon.

 

Mr. Asenion broke Woody’s grip on the knob with an automatic gesture. “You promised your papa,” he said and rapped his knuckles with a demodulator he happened to have in his hand. But the moment was quickly forgotten in his excitement.

 

“I had it all backwards! I had it all backwards! It’s the particular that represents the general.”

 

That was part of the vertical world turning horizontal, too. Since he had flunked out of Columbia University in 1928, Mr. Asenion had been working on a Dimensional Redistributor. He had been seeking to open gateways to the many strange dimensions that exist around us. He had never been successful.

 

He had never been successful in the vertical world, either. He had fallen out of its bottom. He told himself that he did not fit because he hadn’t yet found his place. He was very vertical. He knew the power that would be his if he ever invented the Dimensional Redistributor, and so labored all the harder through the many years of failure. It was his key to entry at the top of the pyramid.

 

But suddenly, on this day when the vertical world was turning horizontal, enough people being ready for that to happen, he had been struck with a crucial insight as he was standing with a demodulator in his hand. He suddenly saw that you could turn things around. The answer was not many gateways to many strange dimensions. It was one gateway, one gateway into this world.

 

He knew how to build it, too.

 

“I’ll need a 28K-916 Hersh.,” he said. That was a vacuum tube with special rhodomagnetic properties that had been out of stock for forty-two years.

 

There was only one place in New York, perhaps in all the world, where such a tube might be found, Stewart’s Out-of-Stock Supply. Stewart’s has everything that is out of stock, and Mr. Asenion had seen a 28K-916 Hersh. there in 1934. He had not needed it then, however.

 

Stewart’s has everything out of stock that an out-of-date inventor might need, but they may not sell it to you if they disapprove of you. Mr. Asenion had not been welcome in Stewart’s since the fall of 1937 when he had incautiously announced his ambitions under stern cross-questioning.

 

“Woodrow,” Mr. Asenion said, “you must go to Stewart’s in Brooklyn. They will have a 28K-916 Hersh. It’s all I need to finish my machine. Then I will rule the world.”

 

“Brooklyn?” said Woody. “I’ve never been to Brooklyn, Papa.”

 

He had heard of Brooklyn from the lips of his dead mother. She said she had been to Brooklyn once.

 

Sometimes he had thought about Brooklyn when his father was experimenting and he was alone in the closet.

 

He had seen the Heights of Brooklyn once, the great towering wall of rock that conceals all but the spires of the land beyond. Or he believed that he had. Sometimes he thought that he must have imagined it when he was small. He would know if he should ever see it again. But to go to Brooklyn?

 

“It’s farther than I’ve ever been. Why don’t you go, Papa?”

 

“There are reasons,” said Mr. Asenion with dignity. “At this special moment, I must stay with my machine. Further inspiration may come to me. I must be ready.”

 

He had a point. Lack of success in the vertical world is no index of lack of skill in invention. He had something in the Dimensional Redistributor. What’s more, his insight on this day when the vertical world was turning horizontal, was valid: with the particular representing the general, one reversed gateway, and a 28K-916 Hersh. in place, his Dimensional Redistributor would work. And there are even alternatives to the 28K-916 Hersh. which inspiration can reveal and ingenuity confirm.

 

Woody shook his head in fear and excitement. “I can’t do it.”

 

Mr. Asenion heard only the fear. “There’s no need to be afraid, just because it’s Brooklyn. I’ll write out the way, just as I always do. And I’ll send the robot along to keep you company. You will be safe as long as you stick to the path and carry your umbrella.”

 

The robot nodded dumbly from behind Mr. Asenion. When Woody had run errands in the neighborhood, it had always kept him silent company.

 

“I don’t want to,” said Woody.

 

“I command you to go. You owe it to me, your father, for all the many years I’ve fed you and kept a roof over your head and let you sleep at my feet”

 

He was right if you look at things vertically.

 

“All right” said Woody. “I will go.”

 

Mr. Asenion patted Woody on the head. “Good boy,” he said.

 

When the Dimensional Redistributor was in operation, he meant to pat the whole world on the head when it did what he said. “Good boy,” he would say.

 

As soon as Mr. Asenion turned away, Woody kicked the robot. It could not complain, but it did look reproachful.

 

So there you have Woody Asenion, raised in a closet, lower than the lowest in the vertical world, somebody who knows even less than you do about what is going on. He is even more limited than you know. Last birthday, Woody was thirty-seven years old.

 

Woody gave the robot one of his hands and held his map and directions tight in the other so as not to lose his way, said goodbye to his father, who turned away to putter with his machine, and with one deep breath cleared the first three thresholds—the door of the closet, the door of the apartment, and the door of the building at 206 W. 104th St. in Manhattan—and stood blinking in the sun, heat and sidewalk traffic. There were threats, noise and distraction all about him. Cars clawed and roared at each other, seeking advantage. Signs in bright colors loomed at Woody yelling, “Number *1* in Quantity,” and “Do As You’re Told, Son,” and “Step Backward.” It was confusing to Woody, but he knew that if he did not panic, if he followed his instructions, stayed on the path and did not lose his umbrella, he could pass through the danger unscathed.

 

He let his breath out. The air in the street was wet and sticky. The sunlight was oppressive. He seized the robot’s hand all the tighter, and they set off down the street. It was the robot who carried the rolled umbrella.

 

The people they threaded through were these:

 

Three white men—one in a business suit, one an old man, one a bum.

 

Two black men—one grateful, one not.

 

A student.

 

Three old women.

 

Five Puerto Ricans of both sexes and various ages.

 

Two young women—one bitter, one not.

 

A minister of the Church of God.

 

A group of snazzy black buccaneers talking bad.

 

And a little girl who also lived at 206 W. 104th St in Manhattan.

 

“Hi, Woody,” she said. “Hi, It.”

 

Five of these twenty-five saw Woody Asenion walking along the street with his hand in the hand of a tall skinny cuproberyl robot and knew him immediately to be their inferior. All the others weren’t sure or didn’t care about things like that any more.

 

That’s how close the vertical world was to turning horizontal. But it hadn’t happened yet.

 

The map led Woody directly to the subway station. There was a hooded green pit, an orange railing, and stairs leading down.

 

In his closet, when Woody was small, he could feel the force of the subway train. When it prowled, the building would shudder. His mother had told him not to be afraid.

 

Woody and the robot, on their errands in the neighborhood, had twice walked past the stairpit into the subway. Once Woody had stepped three steps down and then back up again quickly. That was like a half-turn of the doorknob to the closet, but more daring. And now their directions led them down the stairs. Woody looked to the robot for assurance. The robot nodded, held Woody’s hand and took each stair first.

 

It was cooler in the dark cavern under the street. Only one light was visible, a yellow light in a huddled booth. Woody and the robot walked between dim pillars to the booth in the distance. Sitting on a stool in the booth was a blue extraterrestrial. It looked something like a hound, something like Fred MacMurray. It was dressed in a blue Friends of the New York Subway System uniform.

 

Woody looked at his directions. “Four toll tokens,” he said to the alien in the tollbooth.

 

The alien said, “Are you Woody Asenion?”

 

Woody stepped behind the robot. “How did you know me?”

 

The alien waved at him and turned away for the telephone. “Just forget I asked. It really isn’t important, Woody.” He dialed a number. While he waited for the ring, he said, “I’d only buy two toll tokens, if I were you. You’ll only need two. Oh, hello, Oishnor. Listen, ‘it’s about to rain.’ Right.”

 

Woody looked at his directions. They said to buy four toll tokens. He set his jaw. “Four toll tokens, please,” he said. “And how did you know me?”

 

“I was set here to ask,” said the blue alien in the blue Friends of the New York Subway System uniform. “We’re just observers here for the rain and we wanted to have warning.”

 

“Rain?” said Woody.

 

“The weather forecast says that when Woody Asenion goes to Brooklyn it’s going to rain.” The alien passed four tokens under the grill of the booth. “See if it doesn’t.”

 

“Oh, is that how it is,” said Woody, who wasn’t sure how weather forecasts were made. He hadn’t thought he was that important, though of course he was. Well, he was safe. The robot had the umbrella.

 

Woody and the robot turned away. There was a white electric sign on the other side of the booth. It had a black arrow and black letters that blinked and said, “To the Subway.” They followed the arrow. Behind them, the tollbooth closed and the yellow light went off.

 

The directions and map mentioned the black arrow and the sign. Woody and the robot walked through the darkness between the metal pillars until they came to another stair. An automatic machine guarded the top of the stair. It held out a hand until Woody gave it two toll tokens and then it let them pass.

 

There was light at the bottom of the stairs and the stairs were very tall. Down they walked, down and down, until Woody was not at all sure that he wanted to go to Brooklyn at all, even to buy his father a 28K-916 Hersh to finish his Dimensional Redistributor and control the world.

 

The station was a great vaulted catacomb. The walls were covered with grime-coated mosaics celebrating the muses of Science and Industry. Woody and the robot were all alone on the echoing platform.

 

Then suddenly a wind blew through the station, fluttering the map and directions in Woody’s hand, a chill wind. Following the wind, the squealing, clashing and roaring of the great behemoth. Following the noise, the subway train itself. It hurtled into the station under the tight command of its pilot, whom Woody could see seated in the front window, and came to a stop with a tortured screech of metal. A voice more commanding than even Mr. Asenion’s said, “Passengers will stand clear of the moving platform as trains enter and leave the station!” A shelf of metal moved silently out to the train as a pair of doors slammed open in front of them. Woody squeezed the robot’s hand hard.

 

The robot nodded reassuringly and led Woody onto the metal shelf and aboard the train. One last look. The shelf began to withdraw and the doors closed like a trap, and Woody was committed.

 

Woody was afraid. He sat, uneasy as a cricket, on the seat next to the robot. Blackness hurtled by the window behind his head. There was great constantly modulating noise. All the passengers stared straight ahead.

 

But this was no ordinary subway train, even though it now ran on an obscure local line. There was a plaque on the wall across from Woody. It said, “This train, the Lyman R. Long, was dedicated at the New York World’s Fair as the Subway Train of the Future, July 7, 1939.” In no time at all, this great old train brought them into the gleaming Central Station of the New York Subway System.

 

They left the Subway Train of the Future then, and ventured out into the echoing bustle of this bright high-ceilinged underground world. The walls were alive with texture and color. High overhead, dominating Central Station, was a great stained glass window lit like a neon sign. It, too, celebrated the muses of Science and Industry, but it was much grander.

 

Woody took no notice of the wonder around him. He ignored the people. He ignored the color. He ignored the light. He ignored the shops that filled the caverns of the Central Station. He held tight to the robot’s hand and looked resolutely straight ahead. All this around him was distraction. Woody was going to Brooklyn to buy his father a 28K-916 Hersh. so that he could finish his Dimensional Redistributor and control the world. If he lost his path, Woody would not dare to guess at his fate.

 

His directions said . . . but there it was, directly before him. The sign said, “To Brooklyn.” Under it sat the plasteel form of a new modem train, doors open wide, waiting patiently. The Lyman R. Long was 1939’s vision of the future, now relegated to a local line. This was the future made present. This was tomorrow now.

 

This smugly superior subway train was far more frightening somehow as it sat, quietly waiting. This open door was the last threshold. If Woody passed beyond it, he would be swallowed and carried to Brooklyn. He would not be able to help himself.

 

But he had no choice. He could not help himself now. He must stay on the path, and the path led to Brooklyn. Stepping aboard the train had the same disconcerting finality as the bursting of a soap bubble.

 

There were but two seats left together in the car, and Woody and his companion, the robot, sat down. As soon as they sat, as though by signal, the doors of the car slid shut automatically and silently, and automatically and silently the subway train slid out of the Central Station of the New York Subway System, bound for Brooklyn. It plunged immediately into the cold dark earth tunnel under the East River and down, down it went without consideration of what it might discover. Down. Noiselessly down. Relentlessly down.

 

One instant they were in the station. One instant there was still connection to the familiar world. One instant they were still in Manhattan. The next moment they were hurtling into an unknown nether world. It was all too sudden. Woody was paralyzed with fear.

 

It felt to him as though a hand were wringing his brain, and another hand were squeezing his throat, and another hand were tickling his heart, toying with his life and certainty. And the only hand that was really there was the strong cuproberyl hand of the robot Woody Asenion’s father had made to keep Woody in the closet and safe from other harm. Woody held that familiar hand tight. He looked at the map and directions that he held. That was his talisman. He had not left the path. As long as he did not leave the path, he would be safe.

 

The train bumped a bottom bump and the lights in the car dimmed and then came up. The door between cars at Woody’s left slammed open, allowing a brief snatch of the whirring whine of the rubberite wheels on the tracks, and three young people burst threateningly in. They were dangerous because no one in the subway car had ever seen anything like them. They were not apprentices. They were not secretaries. They were not management trainees. They were neither soldiers nor students. They were not hip, but then neither were they straight.

 

One was a boy, narrow, tall, ugly and graceful as a hatchet. He wore an extravagant white suit, dandy and neat, and carried a yellow chrysanthemum to play with. The other boy was short, dark, curly and cute. He wore a casual brown doublet over an orange shirt. He bounced and bubbled. The girl wore cheerfully vulgar purple to her ankle with a slit back up to the thigh. She was pale and her black hair was severe and dramatic.

 

The girl was the first into the car. She swung around and around the pole in front of Woody, laughing. The bouncy boy galloped in after her, swung with her around the pole and then stopped her with a sudden kiss, even though an ad over his shoulder from Amy Vanderbilt suggested to him that public emotion is not good manners. The ugly one strolled in gracefully, shut the door to the car and blessed the two with his yellow mum, tapping them each on the head, saying nothing.

 

Then he turned and waved his flower menacingly at the rest of the car. He danced. This was too much for one vertical soul who leaped to his feet and said authoritatively, “We are all good citizens here on our way to Brooklyn. What do you mean by this intrusion?”

 

“Don’t you feel it?” the bouncy one asked. “The world has changed. The Great Common Dream is changing and so is the world. We’re going to Brooklyn to dance in the rain and celebrate. Come on along.”

 

The girl looked directly at the questioning man. “Listen with your skin,” she said. “Don’t you feel it? Don’t you want to celebrate?”

 

The man looked puzzled. But he listened with his skin and you could tell he knew they were right, even if they were a little early. He was horizontal in his heart which is why he was so quick to seem vertical. He thought it might be noticed if he wasn’t. But now he said, “I do feel it! I do feel it! You’re right. You’re right!” He howled a joyous howl of celebration.

 

And he began to dance in the aisles. “I feel it, too,” someone else yelled. “I do.” Who? It might have been any of the first six people to join him in the aisles.

 

Now that’s how close the vertical world was to turning horizontal. All that was necessary was the suggestion. People were ready to go multiform as soon as they knew it was time.

 

Woody tugged at the sleeve of the tall boy in the extravagant white suit.

 

“Yes, sir, may I be of practical assistance?” said he, and winked.

 

“Is it raining now?” asked Woody. It seemed important that he should ask, since the strange blue toll-token seller had suggested that it was going to rain and he wanted to be prepared. The robot carried Woody’s umbrella in his capable cuproberyl hand. He would be all right as long as he knew before he got wet.

 

“Raining,” said the ugly one. “Raining? How would I know if it’s raining? We’re in a subway train under the East River.”

 

“Oh, hey now, it’s Woody,” said the girl. “Go easy on Woody. It’s going to rain, Woody. Don’t you want to come along with us and dance in the rain?”

 

But she was too insistent for poor Woody. He didn’t know enough of the world to be sure what it was that she intended, but be suspected the world too much to want to learn. She was a distraction. The whole car was a distraction, dancing, gadding and larking. He stared straight ahead of him at the subway ad for Amy Vanderbilt’s new etiquette book. “Know Your Place in the Space Age,” the ad whispered to him when it knew it had his full attention. And that was another distraction.

 

“Hey, dance with us, Woody,” said the curly one in orange. “You can do any step you like. You can do a step no one else has ever done.”

 

Woody explained, “I have this map and these directions.” He pointed to them. “I’m very busy now. I’m running an errand for my father. I’m going to buy a 28K-916 Hersh so that he can finish his Dimensional Redistributor and control the world.”

 

The tall narrow boy said, “Why doesn’t your father run his own errands? He’s all grown up now.” He said it impatiently. Woody didn’t like him.

 

Woody stared straight ahead with all the best deafness he could muster. It was the deafness he used to do when he sat in the corner of the closet with his back to the world and wouldn’t hear. He could shut out lots.

 

The other boy and the girl said, “Come on, Woody. The vertical world is turning horizontal. Come with us, Woody. We’re in Brooklyn now. This is New Lots. This is our stop. This is our place. Take a chance, Woody. Be the first to celebrate. Dare. Dance. Dance in the rain.”

 

And everybody in the car said, “Come one, come all, Woody. There’s room for you. There’s room for everyone.”

 

But Woody stared straight ahead, which made everything on either side blurry, and wouldn’t hear. It was as good as shutting his eyes. He held onto his map and his directions with both hands so that he would not become lost.

 

Woody felt the subway come to a smooth stop. He wouldn’t admit it, but he heard the doors slide gently open. He wouldn’t admit it, but after a long moment he heard the doors slide gently shut again. He only unblinked his eyes when he felt the train begin to move again.

 

He was alone in the car. There was no one else there. The girl in the purple dress down to her ankle and up to her thigh was gone. The boy in the white suit was gone. The boy in the brown doublet and the orange shirt was gone. All the people in the car were gone. Even the robot was gone, and the umbrella was gone with him. You can imagine how that made Woody feel.

 

No hand to hold. No umbrella to keep him dry and safe if it did rain.

 

But still he had his map and directions. He wasn’t completely lost.

 

He was driven to walk the length of the train. Every car was empty. Every car was as empty as his car when everyone had gone. He was alone. He walked from one end of the train to the other and he saw no one. When he got to the head of the train he looked in the window at the driver. But there was no pilot.

 

And still the train hurtled on. Woody was afraid.

 

He went back to his own seat. He sat there alone studying his map and directions. They said to get off at Rockaway Parkway.

 

And then the train came to a halt. An automatic voice said automatically, “Rockaway Parkway. End of the line.” And the door slid open. Woody bolted through it and up the stairs.

 

There was another orange railing. The stairs ended between two great boulders with white lamps that said, “Subway.” Woody was standing in a great rock park. And this was Brooklyn.

 

It was not raining, but the air was hot, damp and heavy in Brooklyn, like a warm smothering washcloth. Woody wished he had his umbrella.

 

He looked at his directions. They said, “Follow the path to Stewart’s.”

 

So he followed the path and in a few minutes he came to the edge of the hill. He could see the flatlands below and on across the damp sand flats even to the palm-lined shores of Jamaica Bay itself. He could see the palms swaying sullenly under the threatening sky. He followed the path farther, never straying, and when he reached Flatlands Avenue he could suddenly see the great porcelain height of his landmark, white but marked by stains of rust. That was the Paerdegat Basin, and close by the Paerdegat Basin was Stewart’s.

 

It was an easy walk. Woody had time to study his instructions. They were frightening, for they asked him to lie. He wasn’t good at that. When he lied, his father always caught him out.

 

And then, almost before he knew, his feet had followed the true path to Stewart’s Out-of-Stock Supply. It was a small block building. He hesitated and then he entered.

 

The small building was filled with many amazing machines, some of them a bit dusty, displayed to show the successes of the shop. All of them had been made of parts supplied by Stewart’s. There was a four-dimensional roller-press, a positronic calculator, an in-gravity parachute—which seemed to be a metal harness with pads to protect the body—and a mobile can opener.

 

At the back of the building was a sharp-featured, crew-cut old man with a positive manner. He looked as though he had his mind made up about everything.

 

“Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me. I’ve got my theory,” the old man said. He looked at Woody, measuring him with his eye. Then he punched authoritatively at a button console on the counter in front of him. The wall behind him dissolved as though it had forgotten to remember itself, and there were immense aisles with racks and bins and shelves filled with out-of-stock supplies. A sign overhead said, “1947-1957.” And another sign said, “At Last. 4 Amazing New Scientific Discoveries Help to Make You Feel Like a New Person and More Alive!”

 

The old man put on a golf cap and said, “There. I’m right so far, aren’t I? Now let me see. The rest of it should be easy. Yes, you’re really quite simple, young man. I see to the bottom of you.”

 

He punched a series of buttons. A little robot rolled by, made a right turn down an aisle and then a left turn out of sight. The old man stood waiting with a sure-footed expression on his face. In a moment, the robot rolled back. It placed a flat plate in the old man’s hand, and the old man placed the plate on the counter. Then he patted the robot on the head and it rolled away.

 

“There, you see. You’re the right age. You’re obviously a broad-headed Alpine. The half-life of strontium ninety is twenty-eight years. You’re here to replace the tactile plate on your Erasmus Bean machine. Am I right?”

 

Woody shook his head.

 

“But of course I’m right.”

 

Woody shook his head.

 

“Then what are you here for?”

 

Woody read from his paper, ‘“I want a 28K-916 Hersh. It was discontinued in 1932.’”

 

“Don’t tell me my business,” the old man said, hanging up the golf cap reluctantly. “It’s strange. You don’t look like a 1932.”

 

He punched again, and the configuration of aisles flickered and restabilized. The overhead sign now said, “1926-1935.” And another sign said, “Are You Caught Behind the Bars of a ‘Small-Time’ Job? Learn Electricity! Earn $3000 a Year!” The old man slapped a straw skimmer on his head.

 

“We did have a 28K-916 Hersh.,” he said. “Once. We don’t have much call for one of those. I recollect seeing it along about 1934.”

 

The little robot rolled out once again, made a right turn down an aisle and then a left turn out of sight.

 

The old man turned suddenly to Woody and said, “This tube isn’t for your own invention, is it? You’re not a 1932 at all. Who are you here for? Murray? Stanton? Hyatt?”

 

Woody lowered his eyes. He shook his head.

 

The robot rolled suddenly back into view. It placed an orange-and-black box, as shiny and new as though this were 1932 and it were fresh from the Hersh. factory, in the hand of the sharp-featured old man.

 

“This is a rare tube with special rhodomagnetic properties,” the old man said. “Just how do you propose to put it to use?”

 

Woody looked down again. Below the counter top he looked again at his instructions and he read his lie. He read, ‘“lama collector. I mean to collect one of every vacuum tube in the world. When I own a 28K-916 Hersh, my collection will be complete.’”

 

But the old man looked over the counter and saw him reading and his suspicions were aroused. He snatched the map and directions from Woody’s hands, and discovered their meaning with a single glance.

 

“Woodrow Asenion!” he said. “I barred your father from this store in 1937! You know what that man intends. He means to make a Dimensional Redistributor and control the world. Well, not with help from Stewart’s. Power is to be used responsibly.”

 

He threw the map and instructions behind him, seized Woody and hustled him through the showroom, past the four-dimensional roller-press, the positronic calculator, the in-gravity parachute, the mobile can opener and all the many other amazing inventions. He threw Woody onto the sand under the palm tree in front of the building.

 

“And never come back,” he said. He straightened his skimmer. Then he looked up. Very slowly he said, “Why, I do believe it’s going to rain.”

 

The old man slammed the door and pulled down a curtain that said, “Closed on Account of Rain.”

 

Woody looked around desperately. He looked at the sky. It was going to rain and he had no umbrella. He had not bought the tube. He had no map and directions. He was almost lost. He beat desperately on the door but it would not open. While he beat, all the lights within went out. The building was silent. Then thunder rumbled overhead.

 

In panic, Woody retreated along Flatlands Avenue. The sky was crackling and snarling. It was flaring and fleering. Woody wished desperately that he were safe at home in the comfort of his own familiar closet. He felt very vulnerable. He felt naked and alone in a strange country. What was he to do? What was he to do?

 

Woody thought that if he could only find the subway station in the rock park again, the green stairs with the orange railing under the lamps that said, “Subway,” he might find his way home to 206 W. 104th St. in Manhattan. Home to his father and his own closet. Desperately, he began to run across the sand.

 

And then, suddenly, there they all were. There was the boy in the white suit. There was the boy in the brown doublet. There was the girl in the long purple dress. And behind them a pied piper’s gathering of people, dancing, larking and gadding. And that was just anticipation, for the moment of shift when the old vertical world was forgotten and the new guiding dream was dreamed had not yet come. It had not yet begun to rain.

 

“Hi, Woody,” said the boy in brown. “Are you ready to join us?”

 

“Hi, Woody,” said the girl in purple. “Are you ready to dance in the rain?”

 

That was too frightening. Woody said to the tall ugly boy in white, “Where is my robot? It has my umbrella.”

 

“He,” said that one, and tapped Woody on the forehead with his yellow chrysanthemum. “He. And he isn’t yours. And I have my doubts about the umbrella, too.”

 

“Ha,” everybody said. “Get wet.”

 

“Ho,” everybody said. “It will hardly hurt at all.”

 

That was terrifying. Woody knew who he was now. He was the one at the bottom—and that was a secure position. If he left the path and joined this many, who would he be? He would be lost. He would not know himself.

 

“Who?” he said. “Who?”

 

“You,” they said. “You.”

 

They laughed. And they were singing, some of them. And doing other things. Celebrating beneath this final black threatening sky, this roiling heaven.

 

Woody could not bear it. “I have to find a 28K-916 Hersh,” he said. “I can’t stay. I have to go.”

 

“Goodbye. Goodbye,” they called as he hurried away. He looked back from the hillside and some were looking up at the sky and waiting. Waiting for the clouds to open and the rain to pour down. Woody feared the rain. He ran.

 

No map. No directions. No map. No instructions. No umbrella. But he still had two toll tokens.

 

Down the path he ran into the rock park. Along the path. Still on the true path. And there before him were the twin boulders. Before him was the green stair with the orange railing. Before him was haven.

 

But there was a chain across the top of the stair. There was a locked gate across the bottom of the stair. And the lamps at the entrance were not lit. All said, “Closed.” All said, “Try Other Entrance.”

 

The other entrance. The other entrance. Where was the other entrance? There it was! It was visible on the other side of the rock park, marked by another pair of lamps set atop another pair of boulders.

 

Woody left the path and struck toward them. He ran in all his hope of home. He ran in all his fear of rain. His understanding was not profound, but he knew that if he were rained upon, nothing would be as it was.

 

He did not notice that in leaving the path his father had marked for him before Woody had ventured out of the closet, he had lost his last protection. First the robot, sturdy and comforting. Then the umbrella to shield him. Then he had lost his map and instructions. And finally he had left the true path.

 

Woody reached the other entrance. There was a chain across the top of the stairs. There was a gate across the bottom of the stairs. There were signs and the signs said, “Closed,” and “Try Other Entrance.”

 

The other entrance. The other entrance. Where was the other entrance? There it was! It was visible on the other side of the rock park.

 

Woody hurried toward it. But then halfway between the two he stopped. That was where he had already been. He looked confused. He began to spin. Around and around on his toe he went. He did not know what to do. Overhead the skies impended. Poor Woody. He really needed someone in charge to tell him what to do next.

 

Around and around he went. Suddenly an imposing figure flashed into being before him. It glowed lemon-yellow and it was very tall.

 

“Halt. Cease that,” it said. It was an even stranger foreign creature than the blue alien in the Friends of the New York Subway System uniform. “Woody Asenion?”

 

Woody nodded. “Yes, sir.”

 

“I know all about you. You’re late. You’re very late. It’s time for the rain to start. It should have started by now.”

 

“Is it going to rain?” Woody asked. “Is it truly going to rain?”

 

“Yes, it is.”

 

“But I don’t want it to rain,” Woody said. “I want to be home safe in my own closet. Is it because I left the path?”

 

“Yes, it is,” the strange creature said. “And now you’re going to get wet.”

 

“No,” said Woody. “I won’t. I’ll run between the raindrops. I won’t get wet”

 

And he started to run in fear and in trembling. The lightning lightened to see him run. Thunder clapped the stale air between its hands. The forefinger of the rain prodded after Woody.

 

Rain fell at Woody, but he dodged and ducked. He was slicker than a greased pig. He ran down Grapefruit Street, and the rain missed him. He ran up Joralemon and it spattered around him and never touched him. He ran past the infamous Red Hook of Brooklyn. He ran through the marketplaces and bazaars of Brooklyn. He ran through a quiet sleeping town of little brown houses, all like beehives. He ran through all the places of Brooklyn and the rain pursued him everywhere.

 

And he would not be touched. This was Woody Asenion, who was raised in a closet and who didn’t dare to open the door by himself. Who would have thought he would be so daring? Who would have thought he would be so nimble? Fear took him to heights he had never dreamed of. Fear made him magnificent.

 

Watching people paused and cheered as he passed. They had to admire him. Pigeons fled before him. Lightning circled his head. Thunder thundered. The skies rolled and tumbled blackly, but not a drop of rain could touch Woody Asenion.

 

Then at last as he ran up the long slow slope to Prospect Park, he began to tire. His breath was sharp in his throat. His steps grew labored. His dodges grew less canny. And then of a sudden lightning struck all around him. It struck before him. It struck behind him. It struck on his either hand. All at once. Woody was engulfed in thunder, drowned in thunder, rolled and tossed by thunder. He was washed to the ground. He was beached. He was helpless.

 

And as he lay there, unable to help himself, it rained on Woody. A single giant drop of water. The drop surrounded him and gently drenched him from head to toe, and after that Woody was not the same. That was a very strange drop of rain.

 

And now Woody was all wet. He stood and looked down at himself. He held his arms out and watched them drip. Then he laughed. He shook himself and laughed. He was really changed.

 

All the other multiforms, all the other people, came running up to Woody and surrounded him. They were all wet, too.

 

“Here,” said the boy in the doublet. “Look what we found for you.” It was an orange-and-black box, factory-new. It was a 28K-916 Hersh. It said so on the box. He gave it to Woody.

 

The girl said, “Woody. You made it, Woody.” She kissed him and Woody could only smile and laugh some more. He was happy.

 

The boy in the white suit handed Woody his chrysanthemum. “We waited for you,” he said. “We didn’t get wet until you did.”

 

It was such a great secret to be included in. It didn’t matter to Woody that he was the very last to know. He was the first to get wet. How lucky he was.

 

Woody began to dance then. If fear had made him an inspired dodger, the promise of the new horizontal world made him an intoxicated dancer. His dance was brilliant. His dance was so brilliant that everybody danced Woody’s dance for a time. But nobody danced it as well as Woody did.

 

Woody danced, and with him danced all the no-longer-verticals. With him danced three alien beings—two blue, one lemon-yellow. With him danced the two boys and the girl. With him danced all the people from the subway train. With him danced all the people from his neighborhood, including the little girl who also lived at 206 W. 104th St. in Manhattan. She danced between two robots, one tall, one short.

 

Then Woody saw his father. His father was dancing Woody’s dance, too! There were three other men of his age dancing with him.

 

Woody danced over to his father and everybody danced after him. Mr. Asenion said, “These are my friends, Murray, Stanton and Hyatt. We are going to invent together.”

 

Woody said, “I have your 28K-916 Hersh.”

 

“No need,” his father said, waving it away, never ceasing to dance. “No need. I made do without it.” And everybody cheered for Woody’s father.

 

Then the step changed and everybody danced his own way again. But Woody was still happy. Woody celebrated, too. And the horizontal world began.